Neon Dave
Age: 44
Home State: Connecticut
Profession: Neon artist
Bar of Choice: The Downtown Lounge
Drink of Choice: Narragansett with a lime
Established in 1979, The Downtown Lounge (DTL) in Portland’s Arts District is the bar a lot of other bars try to be. From its cheap drinks to its low and lumpy booths to its cramped, graffiti-riddled bathrooms to its eclectic, often noisy, clientele, DTL is the real deal. Is this beloved establishment a “dive” bar? Maybe. Call it whatever you want.
If you walk into DTL most nights around 6, chances are good you’ll see the artist whose neon scorpion graces the bar’s entrance. They call him Neon Dave.
Where are you from originally?
I was born in Connecticut, but spent a lot of summers in Maine at a family cabin. I moved to Florida for high school and college and moved around after that somewhat. I’ve been in Portland since 2010.
Is that around the time you started coming to DTL?
I started coming here fairly early on, but I guess a funny story is that the very first time I came in here was the first year I lived in Portland. I walked right in and it was a complete shit show. I turned around and walked right back out. Then I started coming in earlier.
What keeps you coming back?
I used to like Norm [Jabar, the former owner] yelling at people when more than one person would try to go in the bathroom. That was always fun. I like when nights are different because there’s a show at the State Theatre across the street, and then you have a different sort of crowd, or you can just watch the line.
I like how many regulars there really are, and how Cheers-like it is. On a slow night, it’s pretty common for the bar to be full, and I know or at least recognize every single person. I would say DTL’s got, like, an artistic and quirky vibe, but it also attracts people who aren’t into fancy, precious stuff. I was very appreciative that it stood and didn’t turn into something else when ownership changed.
Do you have a favorite bartender?
Oh, I wouldn’t want to pick — are you kidding?! It’s a great crew now.
How did you get your start in neon work?
I was already doing art, and then I had a job at a graphic design ad agency which really wasn’t a bad job. I just didn’t like the office setting and everything. I had a lot of time to surf the Web, and my art was already getting really shiny and sparkly, so I decided I wanted to learn neon, and that was when I went out west and found a place to learn how to do neon at a trade school. It takes quite a bit to learn. It’d be quite difficult to pick it up on your own.
What are some of your favorite neon projects you’ve done around town?
The scorpion is obviously one of the older things I’ve done, but it’s pretty good and detailed and I come here a lot, so it’s one of my tops. I always kind of say with art in general, and also commercial art, if the last thing you did wasn’t one of the best things you did, then what are you doing? Some of my more recent, pretty good projects I’ve done are the Low Stakes Lodge cowboy and the horse’s head over at Nosh.
Soon, Silver Street by Taj is opening up, and the new one they’re going to have there — I’m gonna be outdoing myself. One that’s pretty cool that a lot of locals don’t get to see is the Top of the East, because no one I know goes there, but that’s a pretty crazy piece where I worked with a muralist, so it’s a mural with neon on top of it, right when you exit the elevators. I also made a Godzilla footprint on the ceiling of The Send brewery — that might be my favorite recent work.
How do you feel about LEDs becoming more widely used than neon?
People have always been calling neon a dying art. It comes in waves and certainly has setbacks and is not used in the same way it was. There were peaks, which would be more like the ’40s and ’50s, and it then had a downturn. Then it peaked again in the ’80s and early ’90s. It had sort of another little mini-peak with social media and the art world embracing it.
Now, obviously, LEDs are marketed as a much cheaper alternative, but they’re not really competition, they’re just a worse version. If that’s what people want, then go ahead and get it, because it’s so much cheaper, and I don’t want to be working on boring projects anyway. But it pains me to see it. People who know the difference appreciate the real stuff.
How much creative control do you have with your projects?
It varies. I’m willing to work with people. If it’s a logo or design they already have, I’m going to still be translating it into the material. Other times, it’s my idea, my design, my creation. Other times, I’ll just do something for the money, and I’m happy to not have to think so much about it.
I’ll do wholesale for a bigger sign company. Big sign companies used to do neon in-house, now they don’t anymore. A few of the larger sign companies will subcontract me to do either a wholesale new job or to just repair something that already exists, because there really isn’t anyone else to do that.
Are there any other local neon artists?
There are people in New Hampshire, Boston and Providence, but as far as Maine goes, the original old-timer that was here, he retired the other year, and then another guy was doing some custom work, but also a lot of repairs for beer signs. He retired just the other year, and I bought his equipment. And then, like I said, the bigger sign companies have all, to the best of my knowledge, closed down their in-house shops. So, I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s anyone else in Maine doing neon work.
Know an interesting bar regular? Send them our way at theregularsmaine@gmail.com.
