Iconic Santa Monica Pier Sign To Be Dismantled This Fall
Neon Beckons from the Santa Monica Pier. Photo by web4camguy
From Los Angeles Magazine: The Santa Monica Pier Sign is getting a makeover, with an extensive refurbishment of the pier access road taking place this fall. Construction of a new $35 million pier bridge will cause multiple closures of roads, ramps, and walkways which also includes the historic 20′ blue, white and yellow neon sign being removed temporarily.
So tourists and visitors won’t miss out; a smaller half-scale replica of the sign will be installed by the city government just to the left of the original near Pier Burger. The miniature will remain for the duration of the project.
A love letter to the luncheonette
The Comfort Diner (exterior), 214 East 45th Street, Midtown East. © James T & Karla L Murray, 2026
From the Financial Times: You could say I have an unusual personal interest in diners. I spent a considerable portion of my twenties working in them, and passed countless days staring out over the griddle at the broadest mix of American humanity enjoying the stuff we were cooking. You’d have to be pretty hard boiled for that experience not to have marked you.
Now these spaces are being celebrated in a new book by James and Karla Murray, interior and architectural photographers living in New York’s East Village. Having covered local bars and record stores in previous works, they’ve turned their attentions to “New York City’s Greatest Diners and Luncheonettes” in their new book Counter Culture. Emma Orlow, a New York-based journalist, has written a brilliant essay on each location.
Maine’s most endangered historic places include Wild Blueberry Land and historic tombs
Wild Blueberry Land. SOURCE: Jim Stewart
From WMTW: Maine Preservation has released its annual list of the Most Endangered Historic Places in Maine, this year featuring four sites.
The nonprofit advocacy organization says the locations are all those whose future is uncertain due to pressing threats.
The group says a fifth location was initially on the list, but the Advertiser Block in Norway was removed after a plan to redevelop the property, instead of demolishing it, was approved.
The Shocking Truth About Big Tex
Alex Eben Meye
From D Magazine: Earlier this year, the State Fair of Texas announced that a 31-year-old designer named Aaliyah McNeal had won the 2026 Big Tex Boot Design Contest, beating out nearly 450 entries for the right to have her artwork painted onto the world’s most famous and second-largest pair of cowboy boots. (A roadside attraction in San Antonio has Big Tex beat for size but not for swagger.) McNeal grew up around the corner from Fair Park. Her design features longhorns, bluebonnets, pecan trees, prickly pears, and the Texas Star Ferris wheel. Lucchese will handcraft the boots. They will debut on Big Tex when the fair opens September 25.
It is, by any measure, a lovely story. It is also wrong about one very specific thing.
Every outlet that covered the Big Tex Boot Design Contest story ran the same number: the boots are size 96. D Magazine said it. The Dallas Morning News. NBC 5. Heck, the State Fair’s own press release said it. Lucchese, the bootmaker, repeats the size 96 stat on its website. The number has been reported so many times, by so many outlets, in so many press releases and puff pieces, that it has achieved the status of fact by accumulation, which is how facts often work in this town.
NEON SIGNS IN MOVIES AND THE 5 THINGS FILMS STILL GET WRONG
Unsplash by Collins Lesulie
From Film Threat: Los Angeles told itself a tidy origin story for decades. In 1923, legend has it, a car dealer named Earle C. Anthony brought two “Packard” signs back from Paris and gave America its first neon. Then researchers Dydia DeLyser and Paul Greenstein went looking for proof.
Aerial photos of the downtown corner where the signs were said to hang showed nothing there until 1925, and by October 1924 the trade magazine Signs of the Times had already reported several neon signs in New York. (The same magazine suggests Anthony’s San Francisco showroom may still have hosted the country’s first outdoor neon in 1923.)
So Hollywood’s hometown got its own neon story wrong. Fitting, really. Neon signs in movies have been bending the facts ever since, and after enough late-night viewing, the fibs start to feel like common knowledge. Some are harmless. A few quietly shape how indie crews light a set and how people pick a sign for their own wall.
National Park Service recognizes Portland’s Union Station for its significance to Black History
From Portland.gov: On Aug. 31, 2026, the National Park Service approved an application by the City of Portland to formally recognize Union Station for its significant role in Portland’s African American history. Originally listed in the National Register in 1975, the National Park Service has long recognized Union Station’s notable 19th-century Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival-style design and its enduring role as Portland’s primary passenger rail terminal. However, the original documentation completed for the listing omitted an important aspect of the station’s story: the generations of Black Portlanders who worked at Union Station and on the railroads it served. The recently approved documentation recognizes Union Station’s legacy as an important place in the development of Portland’s Black community, as a source of economic opportunity for Black workers, and as a center of Black labor organizing.
Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership announces 14 Preservation & Economic Development grant recipients
From Route 66 News: The Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership recently announced it was awarding a total of 14 Preservation & Economic Development Grants worth $2,500 each in 2026.
Recipients were chosen from 124 applications. Qualifying projects were reviewed by an independent review committee from across the eight Route 66 states.
Eligible activities included capital improvements, historic preservation planning or work, and accessibility or community outreach for businesses and attractions located on Route 66 that employ fewer than 20 or are a small, locally owned franchise with five or fewer locations.