Restoration of Winking Elf Sign May Light Way for Return of Neon

You stick to your hobbies, I’ll stick to mine.

One of mine is heralding the imminent return of neon as an advertising and artistic medium. I do it every couple of years.

A good inert gas with luminous properties is hard to

find, and neon needs all the help it can find. It’s warm and three-dimensional.

Which brings me to the restoration of the Winking Elf neon sign at the Shoe Palace shoe repair store at 2911 University Ave. in North Park. This is a good thing for at least three reasons.

First is the restoration itself.

The Winking Elf is designated as Historical Site Register Number 239. It was designed in 1949 for Wink’s Shoe Repair on Broadway; later it migrated to University Avenue under new ownership and fell into disrepair.

The second piece of good news is that neon is attracting political support.

Councilman John Hartley will flip the switch at a special ceremony Feb. 23 and the sign will move, blink and spark. Given his man-of-the-people persona, I had feared Hartley’s artistic tastes would be limited to portraits of dogs playing poker.

Thirdly, I am heartened that half of the $3,500 restoration cost was paid by the city under the Mid-City Commercial Facade Improvement Rebate Program.

The work is being done by Ultraneon Sign Co. of Kearny Mesa, which largely does work for franchise restaurants like Sizzler, Souplantation and El Torito. The company did some subcontracting for Sea World’s “Summer Nights” set.

“Neon is coming back,” said Ultraneon’s Donna Marin.

I like that kind of talk. I really do.

History Lessons

There’s history and then there’s History.

* The San Diego City Council is set to vote today on Deputy Mayor Abbe Wolfsheimer’s edict restricting access by reporters to council offices on the 10th floor of City Hall.

Councilman Bruce Henderson issued a three-page plea/demand that Wolfsheimer be overruled.

He quotes the famous line from Thomas Jefferson that given the choice between newspapers without government, or vice-versa, he’d go for newspapers.

True enough, but Jefferson also feuded bitterly with newspapers and called journalists a pox on the republic. His attempt to jail editors of the Hartford Courant was blocked only by the U.S. Supreme Court.

If there had been an access code on the door to the White House, he’d have changed it.

* Joseph L. Rauh Jr., a major figure in labor law and civil liberties since the 1930s, will deliver two free public lectures this week at UC San Diego: 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday at the Price Center Theater.

Topic: “Personal Reflections on the Supreme Court: From FDR to Bush.”

He was a clerk to Justices Cardozo and Frankfurter. He represented the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Canadians battling the CIA over “brainwashing,” and Arthur Miller and Lillian Hellman versus the House Un-American Activities Committee.

He’s 79 but age has not changed his principles. He’s set to do a question-and-answer session Friday with editors at the Union-Tribune.

But he has said if there is a picket line because of the U-T’s labor problems, they can forget it: he’s never crossed a picket line and he’s not about to start.

Busting a Bad Business

Customer relations are so important.

* A 22-year-old Chula Vista man was busted for possession of methamphetamine for sale. He tried to escape on his bicycle but the cops caught him.

The evidence against him looks pretty bad: a quantity of meth, a pager, IOU sheets from customers and business cards.

The cards give his name and phone number and list his profession as “entrepreneur, available 24 hours a day.”

* SDG&E; President Tom Page is on the hot seat after last week’s one-two punch to the proposed merger with Southern California Edison.

After March 31, the SDG&E; board can back out of the deal. Look for business heavyweights to ask Page to recommend that the merger be scuttled: “Let San Diego be San Diego. Send Edison packing.”