Old neon signs used to feel different and I don’t think it’s just nostalgia
To understand why so many people still love real neon lights, I honestly think we need to go back a little before the LED explosion happened everywhere.
Around 2015 or so, my city still had a few old neon repair shops. Small places. Usually one older guy inside surrounded by dusty transformers, broken tubing and half-finished bar signs hanging from the ceiling. I remember walking past one as a teenager and thinking it looked like some kind of science lab.
Now almost every new “neon” sign I see is actually LED inside plastic.
I’m not saying LED signs are useless. Some honestly look nice from far away. They are cheaper, lighter and easier for businesses to replace. I even know people who ordered custom signs from Alibaba and were happy with them for bedroom setups or gaming rooms. But when you stand next to real glass neon, it feels completely different. The glow is softer. The buzzing sound is weirdly calming. Even the small imperfections in the bends make it feel handmade.
This actually happened before too. If you look at old sign industry forums from the late 2000s, people were already warning that fewer young people were learning tube bending because shops were closing or switching to faster production methods.
And now we wonder why so much street signage feels lifeless compared to older cities and old roadside motels.