Sunny’s Bar(In Red Hook on Conover Street btwn Reed & Beard Streets)  I’ve written about Sunny’s before, but I’m here now to tell you that Sunny’s needs your help. This wonderful bar is in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and as many of you know, Red Hook was hit hard by the storm. Sunny’s did not escape damage. Head on over to Kickstarter to help reopen Sunny’s, or head to Hamilton Gallery Theater on Saturday for another fundraiser. Their Kickstarter project has some really great rewards, including a miniature version of their awesome neon sign. Help out if you can!
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Sunny’s Bar
(In Red Hook on Conover Street btwn Reed & Beard Streets) 

I’ve written about Sunny’s before, but I’m here now to tell you that Sunny’s needs your help. This wonderful bar is in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and as many of you know, Red Hook was hit hard by the storm. Sunny’s did not escape damage.

Head on over to Kickstarter to help reopen Sunny’s, or head to Hamilton Gallery Theater on Saturday for another fundraiser. Their Kickstarter project has some really great rewards, including a miniature version of their awesome neon sign. Help out if you can!

Sunny’s Bar(In Red Hook on Conover Street btwn Reed & Beard Streets)  Pardon the repetition, but things have been a little crazy here in New York City this week. We’re hunkered down now, waiting for the hurricane (it just started raining hard). My apartment is on relatively high ground so there’s little danger of flooding, but a power outage seems likely. Scout, Mojo, and I have stocked the larders and battened the hatches, though, so I’m sure we’ll be fine. Last night Paul & I went to Sunny’s to calm our jittery pre-hurricane nerves. Sunny’s is so snug, and warm, and welcoming, it’s pretty much the best place to be. It’s in the evacuation zone so it’s closed up now, but last night, tucked into the end of the bar and looking down the room past amiable faces to the friendly glow of the anchor & fish in the window, all felt right with the world. A good antidote for too much fretting. Of course I’m worried about my fellow New Yorkers (and others up and down the Eastern Seaboard), but I’m also worried for New York’s neon signs. Too often uncaring owners use wind damage as an excuse to scrap lovely signs—I hope it doesn’t happen this time. I’m printing and packing Kickstarter rewards until the power goes out, and this weekend I’ll start beta-testing the app (very excited for this!). Oh, and the Observer posted an article about neon (including a big section on Project Neon) in Sunday’s edition. Very cool! [Edit:  there’s a slideshow, too, with some of my photos—though the photo of me in front of Katz’s didn’t make the cut…] That’s all from here. If the subways are up and running on Monday and I can get around, I’ll check out some signs and file a report. In the mean time, everyone stay safe! PS:  I nearly forgot to say—the Project Neon photo show is set to open on Friday September 23 at the City Reliquary. More details soon!
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Sunny’s Bar
(In Red Hook on Conover Street btwn Reed & Beard Streets) 

Pardon the repetition, but things have been a little crazy here in New York City this week. We’re hunkered down now, waiting for the hurricane (it just started raining hard). My apartment is on relatively high ground so there’s little danger of flooding, but a power outage seems likely. Scout, Mojo, and I have stocked the larders and battened the hatches, though, so I’m sure we’ll be fine.

Last night Paul & I went to Sunny’s to calm our jittery pre-hurricane nerves. Sunny’s is so snug, and warm, and welcoming, it’s pretty much the best place to be. It’s in the evacuation zone so it’s closed up now, but last night, tucked into the end of the bar and looking down the room past amiable faces to the friendly glow of the anchor & fish in the window, all felt right with the world. A good antidote for too much fretting.

Of course I’m worried about my fellow New Yorkers (and others up and down the Eastern Seaboard), but I’m also worried for New York’s neon signs. Too often uncaring owners use wind damage as an excuse to scrap lovely signs—I hope it doesn’t happen this time.

I’m printing and packing Kickstarter rewards until the power goes out, and this weekend I’ll start beta-testing the app (very excited for this!). Oh, and the Observer posted an article about neon (including a big section on Project Neon) in Sunday’s edition. Very cool! [Edit:  there’s a slideshow, too, with some of my photos—though the photo of me in front of Katz’s didn’t make the cut…]

That’s all from here. If the subways are up and running on Monday and I can get around, I’ll check out some signs and file a report. In the mean time, everyone stay safe!

PS:  I nearly forgot to say—the Project Neon photo show is set to open on Friday September 23 at the City Reliquary. More details soon!

Sunny’s Bar (On Conover Street btwn Reed & Beard Streets in Red Hook, Brooklyn) Conover Street on a freezing February evening is a cold, dark, lonely place to be. Or at least it is until you see this, one of my favorite neon signs in New York. If you can see that sign, you must be within spitting distance of Sunny’s, and that is a very happy place to be. If the sign is lit, better still—it must be after 8 o’clock on a Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday, which is when Sunny’s is open (originally it was Fridays only).  ”When you enter Sunny’s,” as my friend Paul describes it, “The rest of the world just falls away, and suddenly there is no other place but This Place.” It happens to be a place that’s bit of a hike from the not-always-reliable G train, so I cajoled Paul into driving last night—though that’s not exactly a hard sell for anyone acquainted with the charms of this Brooklyn institution. If you ever hear someone say Sunny’s is the best bar in the world, you shouldn’t contradict them, you should just go. You might think I failed to focus properly when taking this photo—nope, the blur is from the steamy window, caught between the outdoor chill and the indoor warmth. Neon in a steamy window entirely makes up for the fact that the neon is in a window in the first place—not a configuration I usually prefer since the glow has nowhere to go. But the steam not only showcases the glow, it shows you that there is a warm refuge on the other side. When we arrived shortly after opening last night there were only a couple of people there, which you can tell just looking at the window then. By the time we left, though, things were in a Sunny’s kind of low-key full swing, and the window had steamed up nicely. I love this sign not only for being a beacon for a warm, inviting place, but also for its design. The colors are great—I never noticed until I photographed it that the dolphin (is that a dolphin or a stylized whale?) has a green nose. Nice. The shape of the anchor, the curves of the fishy thing—it’s all graceful but simple, tough but welcoming, and totally appropriate for the waterfront location down the street from where stevedoring still happens. And for the price of a couple of beers I got to admire the glow of the sign and the warmth behind it.
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Sunny’s Bar
(On Conover Street btwn Reed & Beard Streets in Red Hook, Brooklyn)

Conover Street on a freezing February evening is a cold, dark, lonely place to be. Or at least it is until you see this, one of my favorite neon signs in New York. If you can see that sign, you must be within spitting distance of Sunny’s, and that is a very happy place to be. If the sign is lit, better still—it must be after 8 o’clock on a Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday, which is when Sunny’s is open (originally it was Fridays only).  ”When you enter Sunny’s,” as my friend Paul describes it, “The rest of the world just falls away, and suddenly there is no other place but This Place.”

It happens to be a place that’s bit of a hike from the not-always-reliable G train, so I cajoled Paul into driving last night—though that’s not exactly a hard sell for anyone acquainted with the charms of this Brooklyn institution. If you ever hear someone say Sunny’s is the best bar in the world, you shouldn’t contradict them, you should just go.

You might think I failed to focus properly when taking this photo—nope, the blur is from the steamy window, caught between the outdoor chill and the indoor warmth. Neon in a steamy window entirely makes up for the fact that the neon is in a window in the first place—not a configuration I usually prefer since the glow has nowhere to go. But the steam not only showcases the glow, it shows you that there is a warm refuge on the other side. When we arrived shortly after opening last night there were only a couple of people there, which you can tell just looking at the window then. By the time we left, though, things were in a Sunny’s kind of low-key full swing, and the window had steamed up nicely.

I love this sign not only for being a beacon for a warm, inviting place, but also for its design. The colors are great—I never noticed until I photographed it that the dolphin (is that a dolphin or a stylized whale?) has a green nose. Nice. The shape of the anchor, the curves of the fishy thing—it’s all graceful but simple, tough but welcoming, and totally appropriate for the waterfront location down the street from where stevedoring still happens. And for the price of a couple of beers I got to admire the glow of the sign and the warmth behind it.