Neon Signs

Len Davidson has added another jewel to his collection. It's the crown jewel, the one he waited 15 years for. Diamonds, rubies, gold . . . A real beaut. Enough to light up anybody's night. "Sensational, spectacular," he gushes. "I've never seen anything like it in Philadelphia. There'll never be another. " Davidson stakes his reputation on it. The 48-year-old former sociology professor from Brewerytown collects and restores old neon signs. At last count, he had somewhere around 75. About 15 are hanging in what Davidson calls his "Neon Museum," restaurants, diners and bars in and around Center City.

In 20 years of tracking down and restoring the giant neon signs that are part of Philadelphia's commercial heritage, Lenny Davidson had never seen anything quite like the life-size Caterpillar tractor he recently rebuilt. "I didn't know anything like this still existed," he said, gingerly pulling a broken neon tube from the large Caterpillar tractor sign on the roof of the Giles & Ransome dealership in Bensalem. "There is kind of a hierarchy of these classic signs, and this is absolutely the epitome of that technology.

The door, pulled off its hinges and propped up against a window at the Notre Dame Motel here, said it as well as anything: For Sale - Everything read the spray-painted door against which a beaming Jeff Wenz leaned. Wenz is one of about 17 Wildwood Crest and North Wildwood motel owners selling up - that is, selling at a profit - this off-season. The result is a series of demolitions that preservationists call the biggest tear-down boom yet on an island once famous for its schlocky but beloved places to stay but now in the thick of a major development wave driving up property values.

Wayne and Helen Johnson shine a pair of old boots that will be stored with some of their more valuable collectibles in the engine compartment of their broken-down car on Parkside Avenue and 40th Street in West Philadelphia. They hope to get the car running again before the city hauls away their stuff. Johnson, who calls himself a recycler, holds up a poster print of Randall Cunningham (right) while his wife Helen looks over a collection of old stoves, neon signs, pots, pans and suits.

Temple basketball coach John Chaney made a fashion statement yesterday: He said Jos. A. Bank Clothiers wouldn't know a clotheshorse if it bit them. Chaney and Indiana coach Bobby Knight, who tests sweaters for elasticity daily, were considered "fashionably challenged" by the clothiers who ranked NCAA Tournament coaches. Kentucky's Rick Pitino topped the list. Georgia coach Tubby Smith and Duke's Mike Kryzyzewski were also given high marks. Chaney's shirttails were hung out to dry by the clothiers.

Throughout the 20th century, sinuous neon tubing illuminated public signs and commercial architecture. The glowing gas was a proven lure for customers. Today, collectors have begun to preserve and display the best vintage work, while artists explore new ways to use neon. Local collector Len Davidson gave up academia to become a neon bender. While still teaching in Florida, he says, "I got so interested in the neon that one day a week I went to a sign shop. I said, 'I'll apprentice for free if you teach me about neon.

As an isolated behavior, it is insignificant, hardly more than a tic. When Shane Perski is happy or excited or anxious, she clasps her hands together at mid-chest, squints her eyes and gives a little grunt. But the gesture, which Shane has made as often as 98 times an hour, is neither isolated nor insignificant. At Elwyn Institute in Delaware County, where Shane, 15, is a student, teacher Debbie Konar has chronicled similar self-hugging in four other mentally retarded, school-age children - all of them recently diagnosed with Smith-Magenis Syndrome, a rare form of nonhereditary, genetic mental retardation.

The Diner on the Square is history, following a feeding frenzy by buyers so hungry for bargains that they gobbled up all the restaurant's equipment. "It's a shame the auction had to happen, the result of high taxes and high rents that burden a small business," sighed disappointed owner Peter Bruhn. The economic facts of life in the 1990s forced Bruhn earlier this month to close the tile-and-chrome eatery he opened in 1986. But his voice was the only one tinged with disappointment in the shuttered diner yesterday as buyers looking for deals made bids on 118 assorted lots of items in 100 minutes flat.

What began as an entrepreneurial gimmick born of plywood and plush carpeting has turned into a free-speech debate to be decided in federal court. Residents and shop owners say the 7 1/2-foot-tall "Rugman" that salutes shoppers outside Donahue's Carpets on South Main Street and greets TV viewers in commercials is downright tacky. Owner Paul Donahue says it is necessary for business. Since he opened his Yardley store two years ago, Donahue has tussled with the borough over his techniques of pulling in shoppers.

Wildwood's Doo Wop Preservation League has opened a museum whose mission is to celebrate the pop-culture imagery of the 1950s and 1960s in this seaside community. If you are looking for neon, pink flamingos and other icons of the 1950s and 1960s, the newly opened museum is a "must see," said Jack Morey, the president of the preservation league. The Doo Wop Museum, located a block away from the beach at 3201 Pacific Ave., spotlights Americana from that era as well as Wildwood's odd architectural heritage, including flamboyant styles from the 1950s that are found in abundance in this resort town.

Fishtown residents who worried about what the SugarHouse Casino would bring to their neighborhood are now being confronted with neon signs that advertise a "cash for gold" business, which they say targets casino-goers desperate for gambling money. Residents are encouraged by last week's cease-operations order that forces the business to remove the signs posted on the storefront on Delaware Avenue near Allen Street. But they fear it may not be enough to stop the business from opening.

LEN DAVIDSON has a bright idea. You could call it "electric" - or even, in '80s-speak, "tubular. " Yes, Davidson is a neon man, a collector and restorer of classic neon signs and a neon artist himself. He wrote the book on vintage neon, 1999's "Vintage Neon" (Schiffer Press), and is always ready to sing the praises of Philly's great neon signs from the mid-20th century, what he calls "imaginative cartoon drawings in light. " He'll do so in a talk on neon's history . One thing you learn from talking to Davidson: There's neon and there's neon.

Throughout the 20th century, sinuous neon tubing illuminated public signs and commercial architecture. The glowing gas was a proven lure for customers. Today, collectors have begun to preserve and display the best vintage work, while artists explore new ways to use neon. Local collector Len Davidson gave up academia to become a neon bender. While still teaching in Florida, he says, "I got so interested in the neon that one day a week I went to a sign shop. I said, 'I'll apprentice for free if you teach me about neon.

Among this city's appreciators of the subtleties of the pizza-making arts there are, if you probe discreetly, a sizable number who will concede that for one of the finest examples you have long had to leave town, drive up I-95, cross the Delaware, and thread your way through the ghost streets of humbled Trenton. There on Hudson Street in the shadow of the old Roebling wire cable works is a pine-paneled, rowhouse pizza parlor, dating to 1947 and a hidden mecca ever since. It is called De Lorenzo's, and technically it serves what are called "tomato pies," the primary distinction of which is, well, that the mozzarella is on the bottom, and the crushed tomato is on the top, making its flavor the distinguishing characteristic.

Jim Sheil had just climbed into bed at midnight - tired, but thrilled over the Phillies' win two hours earlier - when he got a call from his store's burglar-alarm service. "They're in your store," Sheil, manager of Robinson Luggage, said he was told. World Series victory euphoria drew thousands of celebrating fans to Center City on Wednesday night. But a minority trashed the area - demolishing bus shelters, overturning planters, tearing down signs, and vandalizing stores, such as Sheil's.

Once more, historic buildings have been torn down in Philadelphia. Some people might call it progress while others might call it short-sighted expediency or greed. Commonwealth Court Judge Keith B. Quigley's decision allowing the state to demolish two buildings in the path of the Convention Center expansion - despite an agreement to save them - strikes at the very heart of our ability to preserve and learn from our past. It doesn't have to be that way. All over the region, and the world, there are examples of adaptively reusing historical structures.

If the 20th-century art deco movement had breath, it might have consisted of neon, the gas that, when electrically stimulated, produces light. Early on, New York City, particularly Times Square, became identified with spectacular neon lighting, thanks in large part to a company called Artkraft Strauss. On Thursday, Freeman's will offer more than 70 lots of lighting and related objects from the Artkraft Strauss collection in conjunction with a sale of 20th-century design. "The objects in this collection evoke a brief moment, when Times Square, the 'Crossroads of the World,' was defined by neon, that glorious and now almost extinct medium," Artkraft Strauss president Tama Starr writes in a foreword to the auction catalog.

Imagine 70,000 square feet of high-tech neon signs and graphics on giant screens glistening over the ocean, a sort of mini-Times Square on a luxury cruise liner. That sea of signage, stretching from the famed Boardwalk to the beach here, is what Scott Gordon, president of Gordon Group Holdings L.L.C., envisions for the enormous structure now standing on the pier. "It will give the city a whole new dimension - an attraction to bring people in," said Gordon, the developer behind the $175 million Pier at Caesars luxury shopping and entertainment complex.

The door, pulled off its hinges and propped up against a window at the Notre Dame Motel here, said it as well as anything: For Sale - Everything read the spray-painted door against which a beaming Jeff Wenz leaned. Wenz is one of about 17 Wildwood Crest and North Wildwood motel owners selling up - that is, selling at a profit - this off-season. The result is a series of demolitions that preservationists call the biggest tear-down boom yet on an island once famous for its schlocky but beloved places to stay but now in the thick of a major development wave driving up property values.

In a Paris where everyone speaks American and is either an artist or a gangster, a struggling painter (Agathe de la Boulaye) claps eyes on a flame-haired blues singer (Claire Keim) who lights her torch. The torrid affair between The Painter and The Girl metaphorically and literally upsets The Man (personified by Cyril Lecomte), who in this archetype-thick melodrama specifically might be The Girl's pimp but also represents the generic Male Principle that enslaves and degrades the Female Spirit.