Posts by Zach Margolis

If you know me, you know I love a walking tour, and a list of items to check off. Over the last few years, I’ve been taking all the walking tours offered by SF Neon, a nonprofit org run by Randall Ann and her husband Al Barna.

They have six neighborhood tours in SF, a bonus one in Alameda, and every so often a few other tours pop up:

• North Beach
• Cow Hollow
• Roxie-Mission
• Chinatown
• Alameda
• Downtown SF
• Lower Nob Hill
• She Bends at the Museum of Craft and Design

I first found out about SF Neon in 2019 or so. I happened to attend an SF design week talk with my friend Lily that was from Randall Ann. She talked about her work that lead her to form SF Neon, where she and her husband Al began documenting the neon landscape of San Francisco. They made a book, and then they started giving neon walking tours to promote their book. The tours became relatively successful on their own and they kept giving then occasionally.

After a little bit of delay due to the COVID pandemic starting in 2020, the outdoor walking tours resumed and I finally went on my first one in 2023, with Lily! I had a great time and learned a bunch, so eventually I signed up for another!

On one of the tours, Randall Ann mentioned that people who do all six SF neon tours get a little 9-mile pin (because after six 1.5mi tours, you’ve walked 9 miles). Collection task, walking tour, prize at the end? I had to go for it.

Each tour has a familiar start, we meet out on the streets in front of a business that has a neon sign (or the remains of one). Sometimes Randall, someties Al, or sometimes both of them together lead the tour. They explain their work, how they’ve evolved from documenting to preservation and advocacy of neon signs. Throughout the tour they use an iPad to show historical photos to compare with the present day, like working versions of signs that no longer work, or photos that show how entire blocks used to have many more signs.

The tours do a great job at highlighting novel design features of the signs: uncommmon letterforms, creative shapes, the differences in materials, the shapes of the “cans” and guides the glass is set in.

I really enjoyed the tours and would recommend them to anybody interested! You learn a lot of little tidbits about each neighborhood.

Looking back at my photos, I think I definitely got better at taking photos of neon over time. My first ones were almost all automatic settings, and I started to figure out more manual tweaks to get the signs to pop, but still show lots of detail.

North Beach

September 9, 2023

This was my first tour, and because of the time of year, the longer days meant it was brighter out and the signs stood out less.

Cow Hollow

November 23, 2024

There are a lot of former theaters in this neighborhood, many of them have become gyms! I learned that some of the gyms preserved the internal layouts better than others, which the conservationists appreciate.

Roxie-Mission

January 25, 2025

The Mission has changed a lot over time and there were some great historical photos of the previous lives of many of the buildings we passed.

Chinatown

April 5, 2025

The signs of Chinatown had incredible levels of detail, because Chinese characters are more complex than Latin script.

Alameda

September 7, 2025

Since Alameda is its own city, this is a bonus tour, not technically part of the 9 miles of SF circuit. Instead of Randall Ann and Al hosting, Alameda local Devil Doll gave the tour. There were a lot of great signs, and a lot of places where more great signs used to be.

Downtown SF

December 5, 2025

This tour had probably most amount of signs that are still working!

Lower Nob Hill

January 22, 2026

My last tour! This tour included a lot of places that also happened to be locations for films like Vertigo.

She Bends at the Museum of Craft and Design

August-September 2024

This was not one of the walking tours, but the SF Museum of Craft and Design had an exhibit with the work of She Bends, a group supporting women in neon. The Neon as Soulcraft exhibit was really fun, and the museum had a reception with a live neon-bending demo that was a treat to watch.

The walking tours describe some of what makes neon bending complex is having to manage tight turns with glass, and seeing it live really makes it clear how much talent goes into every single neon sign. Both SF Neon and She Bends remind us that neon signs are all done by hand (as opposed to LED signs which can be mass-produced much more easily).

As a fun aside, I went to a similar demo and exhibit at the SF Contemporary Jewish Museum the year before called First Light, but didn’t get many good photos of that one.

I would say that, the only main critique of these tours is how close they veer into NIMBY territory. They align themselves with my least-favorite former SF Supervisor, Aaron Peskin (chief NIMBY). They point out how rare neon signs are these days, how it is a little bit of a dying art form, and how neon is meant to exist in the real world. While places like the Las Vegas Neon Museum are great at keeping signs from being thrown out, their display all together, not even all working, in the “graveyard” loses most of their context and meaning. Their ideal way to keep signs is to keep them in the place they were originally installed, which makes sense!

However, I think that is only true to a degree. Businesses change over time, not every store can last as-is forever! On my first tour, the guides pointed out a neon clock (very rare! worth preserving!) on the front of an old, now-vacant building that used to be a meatpacking warehouse. There’s no way industry like meatpacking would come back to North Beach today, so I asked the guides if they’d support a way to preserve the fascade, but allow the rest of the building to be torn down and become something more useful to the neighborhood. Their response was no, that the entire building needs to stay as is. I don’t think that’s reasonable to hold an entire plot of land hostage in a city with a housing shortage!

In the end, the tours are still a great way to appreciate these unique pieces and I would recommend going on them.