“In the Mission, the signs are bigger,” Homan explains. “You have the Mission Theater, the Roxie and the 500 Club.”

Cow Hollow and the Marina district are on the opposite end of the spectrum, with small signs.

“They fit the scale of the neighborhood and buildings there,” Barna adds.

Lights Out

In the late 1960s, interest in neon began to dim.

“Neon came to be seen as blight,” Homan says.

Movies of the era used neon signs to highlight danger. It became associated with gangsters, crime, dodgy bars and strip clubs.

“You always think of the man standing by the window, desperate and alone, with the neon sign flashing in his face," says Homan.

Not only was neon seen as the light source of seedy places, but it was also viewed as expensive and polluting.

It was in 1898 when British scientists William Ramsay and Morris Travers filled the first glass tubes with neon gas and lit it with a small electrode. Their invention would go on to give cities around the globe a special glow.

“But that’s far from the truth,” says neon artist Shawna Peterson. “If you properly dispose it, it’s not more toxic than other lights, such as fluorescent lamps.”

Peterson is one of the few remaining neon artists left in the Bay Area. In the past decade, she and her colleagues have had a hard time accessing the materials they need.

“We are buying up old shops that people put on eBay ... their old glass stock and equipment. We’re turning into hoarders of neon," she says. "Our local distributors, that we used to buy everything from, they’re not carrying neon anymore.”

This is even more frustrating to Peterson, as neon is slowing making a comeback and business is picking up.

“Everyone is reverting to a historical look, a vintage look. It’s very popular now, but there’s less of us doing it, and we’re all swamped,” she says.

The city has changed its tune on neon signs, too. The tenant facade improvement program that once gave businesses money to remove their neon signs now gives out grants to restore signs.

Market Street will probably never again look like it did in the 1950s and '60s, but with more businesses opting to go neon, some of that old glow is returning to San Francisco.