The Neon Line

Jasper Thorne’s workshop in North Miami is a room filled with brilliant, humming lines of red, blue, and green light. For forty years, Thorne has been bending glass tubing and filling it with rare gases to create the glowing signs that defined the Art Deco skyline of Miami Beach. Now seventy-one, he is one of the few remaining neon craftsmen in the state who still works with a manual bombarding transformer and mercury-vapor pumps. His hands are covered in callouses from the heat of the gas burners, which he uses to soften the lead glass before bending it into intricate shapes.

Thorne’s paradox is his deep nostalgia for a city he spent much of his youth trying to escape. He remembers Miami Beach in the seventies as a decaying, sun-bleached retirement community, yet he now works tirelessly to preserve the physical markers of that era. He has watched as historic hotels replace their custom-made neon with cheap, low-maintenance LED strips, which he describes as a flat, sterile insult to the eyes. "Neon operates on a molecular level; it is a live gas trapped in a glass tube," Thorne said, testing a newly filled letter with a hand-held electrode. "LEDs are just cold, digital dots that don't have a soul."

Outside his shop, the sun has set, and the Miami skyline is beginning to glow with its nightly neon and LED display. Thorne stands by his window, watching a giant pink flamingo sign that he restored ten years ago flicker to life on a distant rooftop. The warm, soft glow of the gas-filled tube stands out against the cold white light of the surrounding condos. He knows that his craft is slowly dying, but he is determined to keep his fires burning as long as there is a single glass tube left to bend. He returns to his bench and lights his torch.