Saving the neon

The sign out front is the first thing people photograph and the last thing we fixed. It took Lupe four months, eleven new tubes and one very patient landlord.

When we arrived, the sign hadn’t lit since 1994. The transformers were dead, half the tubes were cracked and a family of finches had moved into the arrow. We asked around town about who might fix it, and every answer came back with the same name.

Meet Lupe

Lupe has been bending glass for thirty-one years, first for liquor stores and diners in Los Angeles, then for anyone in the desert with a sign worth saving. Her workshop is a converted garage two towns over, full of glass rods, gas cylinders and photographs of signs she has brought back, pinned up like family snapshots.

She came out to look at ours on a Tuesday evening, stood in the parking lot for a long time without saying anything, and then said, “That’s a good sign.” We took it as a yes.

One tube at a time

Restoring neon is slow, careful work, and Lupe doesn’t hurry it. Every tube had to be measured, drawn out full size on paper and bent by hand over a ribbon burner, matching the curves of the original letters to within a few millimetres. The four months went roughly like this:

• Two weeks taking the old sign down, cataloguing every tube and photographing every bracket.

• Six weeks bending eleven new tubes to replace the ones cracked beyond saving.

• Three weeks rewiring with new transformers, safer and quieter than the old ones.

• A final week back on the pole, adjusting, testing and waiting for a clear night.

The patient landlord, for the record, owns the empty lot next door, where the sign’s pole actually stands thanks to a surveying mistake in 1962. He let us close his driveway for a fortnight and asked only for a free night in Room 7.

Matching the colours

The original sign used two gases: neon for the warm red-orange of “Vacancy” and argon for the cool blue of the arrow. Lupe matched the colours from a single faded photograph that a former owner’s grandson sent us, taken from the back seat of a car in 1964. Stand under the sign at night and you’ll see the old and new tubes side by side. You won’t be able to tell which is which.

Why it flickers

It doesn’t, really. We added the flicker on the website because it felt right. The real one is steady as anything, and buzzes a little when it rains.

The “No” in front of “Vacancy” is a different story. It’s wired to its own switch at the front desk, and we’ve only turned it on twice: once for a wedding that booked every room, and once by accident, for about an hour, before a guest pointed it out. If you ever see it lit, you’ve caught us on a very good night.

Visiting the sign

The sign comes on at dusk and goes off at two. The best photo is from across the road, just after sunset, while the sky behind it is still purple. Please don’t climb the pole. Lupe will hear about it, and she will not be pleased.