The smell of ozone is a sharp, metallic ghost that haunts the back of the throat long after the power has been cut. Chen W.J. doesn’t mind it. To him, it is the scent of a heartbeat returning to a body that the rest of the world has already declared dead. He stands hunched over a 1962 porcelain enamel sign, his fingers tracing the jagged edges where the neon tubing once sat. The workshop is small, cramped with the skeletons of 32 different projects, each one a testament to a time when we expected things to last longer than a seasonal fashion cycle. His hands are mapped with 22 distinct scars, small pale lines earned from the bite of shattered glass and the sting of transformers that weren’t as discharged as they claimed to be.
Chen is currently engaged in the delicate surgery of stripping 52 years of grime and poor decisions. Someone, likely in the late 1982 era, had tried to ‘modernize’ this beauty with a coat of flat grey latex paint. It is a crime against history, the kind of innovation that feels more like a slow-motion demolition. We are obsessed with the new, convinced that the next iteration of a plastic casing will finally provide the fulfillment we lack. But Chen knows better. He knows that true progress isn’t found in the relentless march toward the landfill; it’s found in the stubborn refusal to let the light go out.
“The contrarian truth is that the most radical thing you can do in a world of 12-month upgrade cycles is to fix something that was built to outlive you. We treat our objects like disposable lovers, discardable as soon as a wrinkle appears or the glow dims.”
The Dance of Physics and Intent
He picks up a length of glass tubing. It’s a 12-millimeter diameter, thin and fragile as a bird’s wing. He heats it over a ribbon burner, the flame a pale blue hiss. This is the moment where the physics of the material meets the intent of the artist. If he waits 2 seconds too long, the glass collapses. If he moves 2 seconds too early, it snaps. It is a dance of precise timing that requires a level of presence we rarely afford anything anymore. We scroll through 102 different headlines before we’ve even finished our morning coffee, but Chen is focused on the molecular transition of silica.
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The weight of the past is the only thing that keeps the present from floating away
There is a deeper meaning in the flicker of a neon sign. It’s not just advertisement; it’s a promise. When a diner puts up a sign that says ‘Open,’ and that sign is crafted from hand-bent glass and filled with ionized gas, it is a commitment to the street. It says, ‘I am here, and I intend to stay here.’ Modern LED strips are cheap, efficient, and utterly soulless. They have a lifespan of maybe 12,000 hours if you’re lucky, and when they fail, they are tossed into a bin. You cannot repair a diode. You cannot see the history of a circuit board in the way you can see the ripples in hand-blown glass.
The Value of Mass vs. Efficiency
Chen tells me about a sign he fixed from a theater built in 1932. It took him 152 hours of labor. He had to source a specific transformer from a collector in Ohio who charged him $222 for it. Most people would say that’s a waste of money. They’d say you could buy a digital screen for half that price and show 42 different movies at once.
Commitment Breakdown (Conceptual)
Labor (75%)
Parts ($222)
Meaning (Total)
But a digital screen doesn’t hum. It doesn’t have a soul. It doesn’t require the specialized knowledge of someone like rickg energy to understand the flow of the current. When the theater sign finally lit up, it didn’t just illuminate the sidewalk; it anchored the entire block. It gave people a sense of place that a flat-screen television never could.