![dancing bear grateful dead neon dancing bear grateful dead neon](https://i.etsystatic.com/10626498/r/il/3b5d91/2543844454/il_794xN.2543844454_4f0u.jpg)
![dancing bear grateful dead neon dancing bear grateful dead neon](https://media.printables.com/media/prints/775380/images/6026375_7710c44d-6eb8-49bd-9632-4c4738152dcb_4699a416-6ff2-4b72-a658-1f64f7c13f3d/20240221_224919.jpg)
I love this scepter (or is it a torch?) intersected by a giant arrow - that points toward nothing:Īmidst all the rusty, broken-down signs, a few displays still retained an air of Vegas glitz:īecause many of the signs were packed so close together, their various elements sometimes coalesced into interesting composite arrangments:Īnd here’s a bonus: The museum’s visitor’s center was originally the lobby of the La Concha Motel, which was in a different part of Vegas and was relocated to the museum site in 2012.
![dancing bear grateful dead neon dancing bear grateful dead neon](https://i.etsystatic.com/44397885/r/il/0bf76c/5823610881/il_794xN.5823610881_lztg.jpg)
No neon on this one, so I suppose you could say it doesn’t really belong in the museum, but whatever - it’s so cool: That’s a guy who was shooting pool as part of a big sign display. If you look in the background of that last shot, you can see a figure bending over. I really wish this sign, from a dry cleaner, had been operational, since it apparently showed a smiley-faced shirt moving its arms/sleeves up and down: And this one…” So I’ll try to stick to just a few highlights, beginning with this sign, which was my favorite (and is also, according to our tour guide, the oldest sign in the museum’s collection, dating back to the mid-1930s) - what a beauty: I took a lot of photos, and I don’t want to go overboard by saying, “I really liked this one. You can get a sense of the scale of the place in this shot of our tour guide surrounded by assorted signage: I found most of it completely compelling. Some of the signs are fully intact others are just pieces - a stray letter here, a random design detail there. But there’s a grandeur to most of them, despite (or sometimes accentuated by) their slow decay. The short version: The boneyard features scores of signs, almost all of them from Vegas, most of them rusting and fading in various states of disrepair. I declined the umbrella and was fine, although a few people peeled off and retreated to the air-conditioned visitor’s center about halfway through our tour. (It would hit a Vegas-record 117 º later that day.) Our tour guide pretty much insisted that we all bring along a bottle of water, and the museum offered umbrellas to anyone who wanted some additional shade. My evenings on this trip were already spoken for, so I booked myself on a tour at 9:20am, when the temperature was “only” about 95 º. (The ideal option, I’ve been told, is to get the best of both worlds by going at dusk.) If you go at night, you can see the illumination of the handful of signs in the collection that have been restored and do light up, but you don’t get as good a view of all the inoperable signs. Each option has its pros and cons: If you go during daylight, you get the best view of all the signs, most of which no longer light up.
![dancing bear grateful dead neon dancing bear grateful dead neon](https://i.etsystatic.com/44397885/r/il/c242de/5818901731/il_794xN.5818901731_sg83.jpg)
Because of Vegas’s summer heat, tours this time of year take place only during the morning and evening. The museum’s collection of old signs is spread out across an outdoor site (commonly known as the “boneyard”), which is only accessible via one-hour guided tours. We’re going to go off-uni today, because I want to talk about a highlight of my recent trip to Las Vegas: a visit to the Neon Museum, which I’d been wanting to check out for years. For all of today’s photos, click to enlarge