Jude Cook: The Neon Historian Preserving Tucson’s Glowing Past

Tucson’s rich cultural heritage shines brightly, not only in its landmarks but also through its colorful history of neon signage. In this episode of Life Along the Streetcar, we delve into the world of vintage neon signs and meet the man who’s working tirelessly to preserve these iconic symbols—Jude Cook. His mission is as vibrant as the lights he restores, safeguarding Tucson’s glowing past for future generations. As the founder of Ignite Sign Art Museum, Jude isn’t just restoring signs—he’s reviving the soul of Tucson’s history, one neon light at a time.

The Man Behind the Glow: Meet Jude Cook

Jude Cook is more than a collector or a craftsman—he’s a historian of light. With a passion for neon signs that began in the 1970s, Jude has spent decades preserving pieces of Tucson’s commercial past. Starting as a graphic arts student who fell in love with sign painting, he has evolved into a guardian of Tucson’s neon history. From his early days as a sign painter to his work today, restoring large neon installations, Jude’s journey is one of passion, dedication, and a deep love for Tucson.

Jude’s expertise goes beyond restoration—he approaches each project like an archeologist. Whether it’s an old motel sign or a forgotten commercial clock, Jude uncovers the hidden history of each piece. His commitment to this craft and to preserving the integrity of these relics has made him a beacon of Tucson’s cultural preservation efforts. When you see a restored sign glowing in the night, you’re not just seeing a light—you’re witnessing a piece of Tucson’s story, brought back to life through Jude’s hands.

Where Neon Dreams Shine: Inside Ignite Sign Art Museum

Ignite Sign Art Museum is Tucson’s home for neon history. Founded by Jude Cook in 2018, the museum is a treasure trove of vintage signs that once lit up the streets of Tucson and beyond. With over 17,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space, Ignite is filled with relics from Tucson’s past, including signs from local businesses like Club Esquire and House of Carpet. The museum is not just a collection of signs; it’s a living testament to Tucson’s commercial and cultural history.

At Ignite, visitors can witness the art and craftsmanship that went into creating these neon masterpieces. The museum also offers neon bending classes, allowing visitors to engage with the craft firsthand. As the only museum of its kind in Tucson, Ignite serves as both a historical archive and an educational space, ensuring that the art of neon restoration doesn’t fade away with time. Whether you’re a history buff, an art lover, or simply curious about Tucson’s past, Ignite Sign Art Museum is a must-visit destination.

Lighting the Past for the Future: Why We Need Ignite Sign Art Museum

Why should we care about neon signs? Because they represent more than just advertisements—they are visual landmarks that tell the story of Tucson’s growth and identity. Each sign carries the essence of its era, from the art deco designs of the 1930s to the sleek, modern looks of the 1960s. By restoring and preserving these signs, Jude Cook ensures that Tucson’s past isn’t erased by modern development. Neon signs are a blend of art, technology, and history, and losing them would mean losing a key part of Tucson’s visual and cultural heritage.

Jude’s work is especially crucial as many of these neon relics are endangered by time and neglect. Without restoration, these signs would be lost forever, taking with them the memories of Tucson’s vibrant past. By visiting Ignite Sign Art Museum, you’re not just viewing signs—you’re connecting with the history, commerce, and culture that helped shape Tucson into the city it is today.

Bringing It All Together

Jude Cook is not only preserving signs—he’s preserving Tucson’s glowing past. Through his work at Ignite Sign Art Museum, he’s ensuring that the neon lights that once lit up Tucson’s streets continue to shine for future generations. His passion and dedication remind us all of the importance of preserving our history, one sign at a time.

If you’re interested in learning more or visiting the museum, you can find Ignite Sign Art Museum at ignitemuseum.com. They are located at 331 S. Olsen Ave, Tucson, AZ, and open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 AM to 4 PM. For direct inquiries, contact Jude Cook at [email protected] or (520) 319-0888.

And if you or someone you know is doing something terrific in Tucson, Tom Heath would love to hear from you! Share your story by contacting Tom through Life Along the Streetcar or through our social media channels on Facebook and Instagram.

Tom Heath
Good morning. It’s a beautiful Sunday in the Old Pueblo. And you’re listening to Kate Tucson. Thank you for spending a part of your brunch hour with us on your downtown Tucson community. Sponsored, all volunteer powered rock and roll radio station. This week we speak with Jude Cook, the visionary owner behind the Ignite Science Museum. Judith spent years preserving and celebrating the vibrant history of neon signs and commercial art, showcasing pieces that tell the story of advertising and creativity.

Tom Heath
In our conversation, we explore the glowing world of neon, an incredible journey behind the museum and its collection. Today, September 29th, 2024. My name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to Life Along the Streetcar. Each and every Sunday, our focus is on social, cultural and economic impacts in Tucson’s urban core, and we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about.

Tom Heath
From a mountain to the University of Arizona and all stops in between. You get the inside track right here on 99.1 FM streaming on Downtown radio.org. We’re also available on your iPhone or Android using our very own Downtown Radio Tucson app. And if you want to interact with us here on the show, we do recommend you explore Facebook and Instagram for that.

Tom Heath
It’s life along the streetcar on our website. Lifelong streetcar.org has information about past episodes, our book, and little contact button on there in case you want to showcase a story for us to, to highlight here on the on the air. And, we always, ask you to listen to that podcast. If you missed the live version, you can hear that on Spotify, iTunes, AI Heart Radio, and many other platforms where you you listen to your podcasts.

Tom Heath
Well, you know, October 2017, I said, I’m going to do a show and I’m going to do it about the urban core, which means I’m only going to cover stories that really impact mountains, the University of Arizona. And for the most part, we’ve we’ve held on to that, that geographical footprint. And it’s it’s somewhat arbitrary, but honestly, it’s I think I need that boundary to make sure that I was focused on the mission.

Tom Heath
Otherwise the show could just spiral into all the amazing things happening in the Tucson region. Well, we hit the 300th episode and I said, you know what? We’re going to expand that footprint a little bit for special occasions, calling on going road trips. And today we’re we’re taking our first road trip out of the urban core. Not too far, not too far, just going down Broadway a couple of miles.

Tom Heath
But we’re going to talk with, with Jud Cook of the Ignite Cine Museum. They have a big coming up, big event coming up on October 12th. And yeah, he’s been in the paper quite a bit recently, salvaging signs and and, showcasing some of the work that he’s been doing and, all the we’ve asked for, it’s been it’s been on our mind for a while to have the show.

Tom Heath
But now that we’re doing these road trips, it’s like, this is the one we wanted to launch with. So I sat down with you just a few days ago, at the, Tucson Gallery Studios and, recorded this interview. You know, the the show has been a footprint, sort of arbitrarily decided. But when I created the show, it was I’m out of the University of Arizona.

Tom Heath
That’s what I wanted to cover. That’s the streetcar route. That’s life along the streetcar. And we had our 300th episode and like, screw that. I want to see what else has happened in the world. So ignite. I mean, it’s not too far away, but it’s slightly off our beaten path.

Jude Cook
It is a little outside the path.

Tom Heath
But it’s I think it’s a worthwhile venture for people to, to explore.

Jude Cook
You know, we’ve got I think we’re having an impact and I think we’re reaching we’re reaching people and we’re, you know, we’re salvaging Tucson history.

Tom Heath
Is that you are. And you’re doing it in a fairly large facility. Ignite, ignite. Same museum. It’s on Olsen, right.

Jude Cook
It’s on Olsen three blocks south of Broadway.

Tom Heath
And it’s it’s a fairly large space.

Jude Cook
Building itself is 7 to 7000 square foot. And then we have another 10,000 square foot outdoors. So we’ve got about 17,000ft².

Tom Heath
And this is filled with vintage signs.

Jude Cook
We’ve got the bulk of the bulk of the significant signs are Tucson signs. The the it’s filled with stuff I started collecting 50 years ago. I’ve got signs that I picked up starting in 74, and I just collected things that I liked and anything that was sign related that I thought had good style, good construction, good design, and I just hang on to it.

Jude Cook
And then I and I started collecting clocks. I’ve got probably 75 clocks function need a.

Tom Heath
Commercial.

Jude Cook
Box to advertise advertising clocks. I’ve got I’ve got a good collection of, excuse me, a good collection of neon clocks and then just the regular ones. They will have incandescent bulbs and non lighter stuff. Just clocks are small and functional, so they were easy to collect and, and so there’s a lot of clocks printed through. And we’ve got, we’ve got a few signs.

Jude Cook
Got one sign out of Murray Utah which is near Salt Lake City. I’ve got two signs right now out of Phoenix, so but the bulk of it is southern Arizona, Tucson and southern Arizona.

Tom Heath
And these are, these are signs that have been operational in Tucson at some point and maybe because of development or.

Jude Cook
You know, if you go through the ones we’ve got, and some of them are old and some of them aren’t that old, you know, the first one that came to mind was the Red Robin neon sign from Tucson Mall that, you know, it’s was probably almost 30 years old now, but it came down and I had it in my yard, and I just kept it because it was it’s weld milled neon, you know, it’s got classic red neon in it, which is an expensive product.

Jude Cook
So it had value even though it’s not that old. I’ve got Hollywood videos, Hollywood studio sign, I’ve got, Valencia mark, an old neon sign that got replaced with a new plastic one. I’ve got, House of carpet sign that came down because of the construction on Grant road. I’ve got these come in to me. I’ve got a just a mixed bag.

Jude Cook
Most of this stuff is stuff that was coming down, and if we hadn’t grabbed it, probably would have been thrown away.

Tom Heath
That was going to be next question. That there’s there’s no one else really doing this in the area.

Jude Cook
To know there’s some private collectors that have things and there’s stuff out in the city that I’m aware of that are in private collections. And once in a while they surface, you know, the, the grille that was right down here on Congress. It came down in 11. I knew Patrick had it. And Patrick, I think what transpired was I think the wife said it’s time to clean up.

Jude Cook
So and it wasn’t working when we got it. You know, we we went through that one and completely repainted it, put neon on it, rewired it, and, you know, the grille is such a piece of Tucson.

Tom Heath
Yeah, I remember the article in the paper. A lot of people were excited that just to hear that name back and, you know, surfacing it.

Jude Cook
That it came back around, you know, those are the kind of things that are hard. You know, we had we had, right down here, middle of the block on the north side used to be the club Esquire. Club Esquire was in the middle of the block, and the Manhattan bar was on the other corner. They tore it down to build the strand bus station.

Jude Cook
About two and a half years ago, we had an event at the museum, and this gal says, my, my parents have the Manhattan bar sign. I said, really? And I said, you know, I sell it, donate it, loan it. And about a year later, I finally caught up with her and she said, I’ll be in town next weekend.

Jude Cook
So I went out to her place and I walked into the backyard and there’s a neon sign laying there, bad shape. And I said, so what’s what’s that? She goes, well, that’s the Manhattan bar. And I said, that’s not the Manhattan bar. And they had the Club Esquire sign, but had been in the same block, and it’s in rough shape, but there’s enough there to see what it is.

Jude Cook
I have a photo of it in place right down here on, on Congress.

Tom Heath
It.

Jude Cook
Was it where it was, was right where the busses pull in. They used to have an entrance on Congress, and they had an entrance on 10th. Which 10th isn’t there anymore? 10th is where we had what is the patio of Hotel Congress now? On the north side. And it used to go across behind the MLK building and connect with sixth over there.

Jude Cook
So they had an entrance on two sides. That side had a neon martini glass.

Tom Heath
Okay.

Jude Cook
And Todd, I think it is over. The hotel Congress actually has it. Yeah. So that’s one of those things that’s out there.

Tom Heath
Let’s let’s take a step back. You said you got your first sign in 74. Were you in business at that point for for signage or liquid? No, I got you.

Jude Cook
I, I, I graduated high school in 72 and I went to a community college for graphic arts, actually called it commercial art back then. And I, I got into it and realized I didn’t want to be a commercial artist, but it led me into sign painting. And so I, I got Ahold of an old teacher I had and I said, you know, I would not really going to be a commercial artist, but the sign thing is kind of cool.

Jude Cook
He did guided me to the local sign painter and I walked in and he was lettering on a panel and I was like, oh, I could do that. And that was really the beginning of getting into signs. So that was 1972. Okay. The first sign I picked up was a porcelain Coca-Cola sign that I found under the bench in his shop.

Jude Cook
And I still have it. And I just started picking up things. Just anything that came by that seemed like it was worth preserving. I went ahead and grabbed it and just held on to it. Hung it on my walls. And so, you know, I had reached the point where I kind of needed to either do something or stop collecting.

Tom Heath
Yeah, I was going to say that when you open the museum, probably the happiest people were my wife, your family and your neighbors.

Jude Cook
You know, we had a lot of it at home, actually. I didn’t have that much stuff at home. But when I finally got a neon in the living room, I knew I’d won.

Tom Heath
Was that in the wedding vows?

Jude Cook
But you know, after that. But no. So. And a lot of it was at my shop and a lot of it was just stuffed in corners. And, you know, some of it wasn’t hung, some of it was. But we’ve gone through and I still have a lot of stuff in my sign shop.

Tom Heath
When did you open ignite?

Jude Cook
We opened Ignite in October of 2018. So it’s coming up on six years right now.

Tom Heath
Wow. That was a year after we launched the show. There must be some synergy. October’s a good.

Jude Cook
Month. October is a good month. Yeah, we bought the building in October of 2017 and spent a year getting it initially set up, and we spent another five years adding to that.

Tom Heath
But in this, I mean obviously leads into your your profession because cooking and cooking company signs that’s that’s beyond just, you know, the collection side of things. You’re actually functional.

Jude Cook
And you know, we’re we’re a running shop. I’ve got you know, we’ve got 15 people work at and we’re doing, you know, we’re the only neon shop in southern Arizona, currently. Have you guys been in glass full time? And then we’re doing fabrication, installation, service and repair. So we do, you know, we work down here all the time.

Jude Cook
We work on Fourth Avenue, and we work all over the city.

Tom Heath
And I recently I remember watching in the news some, I think it was the Coronado Hotel or something. There was the wind damage, and it’s.

Jude Cook
About ready to go back up.

Tom Heath
And you you can’t. They called you out.

Jude Cook
Because I actually I actually was driving on the Barraza, glanced over my shoulder and saw the sign and went, something’s wrong. So I drove by the next morning and it had actually been. The wind had actually bent the supports and twisted the sign on the wall. It didn’t fall, but we went to. I called them up. They followed through on the management company and said, I saw this sign.

Jude Cook
I restored this sign back and not 12 or 13. I said, you probably need to get that thing down. And they had they’ve hired me to to pick the sign up, get it put back together. And we’re, we’re close to putting it back up again.

Tom Heath
So what does that entail? Before we go on the air, you’re talking about the challenges with materials and supplies.

Jude Cook
How does that you know, in this particular sign pretty much everything we need is available. You know, it’s just steel and sheet metal and paint. So that hasn’t been a problem. And the sign, this particular sign had been kept up. It was pretty much functioning and working. So all’s we really did was had to go in, open the sign up, remove him, remove the damaged steel and put in new steel again.

Jude Cook
So this one was fairly easy. It wasn’t a it’s not a full restoration because the signs not bad shape. We’re just cleaning it up and repairing it.

Tom Heath
And so some of the signs you work on, they haven’t been operational for years. No.

Jude Cook
No. A lot of the signs we get, you know, that once in a while we get lucky. We actually picked up a sign in Phoenix, the Glendale Historical Society got a hold of me because the sign was coming down. They didn’t want to see it. Gone was functional sign when it came down, and it’s still a functional sign.

Jude Cook
But most of the stuff we did pretty much all the neons gone a lot of times the paints and such bad shape, you can’t tell what it is. We’ve got a we’ve got a piece in there right now that was from Kittle lock and key, out on Speedway. And from what I can tell, the sign hasn’t been up for 40 years.

Jude Cook
I think it’s been sitting on the ground. Virtually all the paint fell off. There’s no neon. It had incandescent bulbs, all of sockets or fuzed with the base of the bulbs. We had to open it up completely, completely rewire the entire thing, prime it painted and re letter it put new neon on it. That’s not unusual. That’s typical what we run into.

Tom Heath
We are speaking with Jude Cook of cook and Company signs, as well as the Ignite Sign Art Museum, and I will be back to the second half of this interview in just a few moments. But first, I want to remind you that you’re listening to lifelong The Streetcar, Downtown Radio 99.1 FM and streaming on downtown radio.org.

Tom Heath
Oh, cut you off there. DJ, paleo Dave. Sorry about that. Hey, we’re in the middle of our interview with Jude Cook. He is the owner of the Night Sign Art Museum, does a lot of restoration work as well as practical, work on signs across Tucson, slightly outside of our normal footprints. But this is one of those road trips we’d promised you.

Tom Heath
And, we’ve talked a little bit about his history, and we’re kind of get into some of the technical side of things now about actually how he repairs signs and an interesting story about, the history of neon. So, hang tight now, are there other standards, like where you rehab something, you revitalize something, you modernize thing? I mean, there’s some some of these parts and pieces aren’t.

Jude Cook
Doing the things that we do do. I mean, the neon is still down the way the neon has been done for the last 120 years. You know, it hasn’t changed.

Tom Heath
But yeah, it’s been around for 120 years.

Jude Cook
It’s 110 ish is probably closer. It was introduced in the, it neon was introduced for the first time as signs at the Paris Auto Show in 1910. Yeah. And it hit, you know, it hit its stride here. It really hit the United States somewhere in the mid 20s. There’s discussion about when it actually got here, but from what we can tell, mid to early 20s, and it really hit its stride in the, in the, in the years from there until about 1960, 65.

Jude Cook
And we were still using neon, but with the introduction of plastic, neon went undercover and went behind plastic pieces. So neon has been around 100, at least 110 years. And they actually had figured it out in the late 1800s.

Tom Heath
So when you’re doing a restoration, you’re saying it’s the same.

Jude Cook
It’s the same process. I mean, the some of the equipment’s a little different, but it’s still bent by hand, you know, and the equipment, you know, you know, currently I’m still able to track down most of the color of glass I need. I can still get argon, I can still get neon. I can still get the housings.

Jude Cook
I can still get the wire. So, you know, we’ve got a few supplier in town. Colors change. That’s problematic. Colors we’ve used for years. They change, you know, the greens aren’t as green as they used to be. And we hope that that’s something that’ll rectify itself. But, you know, there’s there’s there’s still a certain amount of of push and demand for neon.

Jude Cook
And so, you know, you typically will have a neon shop or two in any reasonably sized community. But there’s the average age of a tube bender these days is about 60 to 65. Not a good thing.

Tom Heath
Yeah. They’ve been doing it for for a while. They’ve been.

Jude Cook
Doing it. My guy been doing it for 38 years I guess.

Tom Heath
Is the more modern demand just sort of to look retro or is there, is there a really functional.

Jude Cook
You know, the fact that I’m keeping two guys bending is it’s made up of a certain amount of repair, which the repairs eventually will get phased out, and the sides that are using neon will get switched out into LEDs. So you’re going to lose some of the neon demand there. But we’re still doing custom neon for people. We’re still doing repairs for, you know, beer signs.

Jude Cook
People buy a people buy a beer sign from Amazon or eBay and it comes bro, we get to we fix that. And we get new stuff. I don’t it’s beyond my comprehension that I’m able to keep two guys busy. I the my second guy showed up about a year a little over a year ago, wanted to come to work for me, and I said, want to come in and work with Eddie for a day or two.

Jude Cook
And he never left. So I’m currently I’m keeping two guys busy.

Tom Heath
Fantastic.

Jude Cook
It is, it.

Tom Heath
Is it’s I think it’s also I don’t know if other communities like this. I think Tucson is also very much connect, trying to make sense.

Jude Cook
Tucson has enough sense to appreciate what they have. You know, like and I you have to give credit to Tucson Historic Preservation and the city council back in, I was back in ten. The city council actually asked for an amendment to this code that allow you to take your sign down, designated historic. It fit within a certain criteria, and you could restore it and put it back up.

Jude Cook
And it didn’t count against your sign allowance and allowed us to preserve signs. So in town here, I personally have done 20. I’m on my 27th or 28th restoration, and there’s more that have been done that I didn’t do. So you know and and it, it has, it has a pool. People come through town specifically to see what’s left of our neon collection.

Jude Cook
And it’s good that we it’s good the city did that because it raised the awareness. I mean, I wouldn’t have the amount of restoration if that hadn’t happened.

Tom Heath
Yeah. And you know what? We’ve, done a lot of tours for people in the area, and we will go down, maybe Brockman and show them that road signs behind Pima Community College and, and and it may have been a quote that I heard from you or read, but I attribute it to you, the importance of signs, because it’s not just a sign, it’s it’s a it’s a sense of commerce.

Tom Heath
It’s a sense of history. It’s a sense of technology. It’s a sense of culture.

Jude Cook
It’s a landmark. You know, the Hotel Congress sign.

Tom Heath
There, their signs that were created in the 30s that we could not create today for social.

Jude Cook
Reasons. No, no, no and no. There’s a lot of that.

Tom Heath
And, you know, there’s there’s signs that, like you’re saying technologically haven’t changed. But it’d be curious to see, you know, as you get into some of this wiring and looking at, you know, the way it may have been designed, like, oh, that’s an interesting way to put together.

Jude Cook
There’s definitely been some interesting stuff. You open up stuff and you kind of sometimes wonder what they were thinking. But for the most part, you know, the trade has been really good about being at least following what would be considered typical practices. I find different practices, things are built differently. From one period of time to another. You know, a couple of the signs we’ve taken have a fabrication technique that must have been a window of maybe ten years.

Jude Cook
They’re not built that way anymore. Yeah.

Tom Heath
So that’s the thing that’s interesting to me, because now you’re starting to talk about technology, history, like all these things like that that are sort of under the surface of what’s, what’s showing.

Jude Cook
It’s it’s fascinating the stuff you run into, you know, a little off the track of what you’re saying. But when you start, when you start going into these signs to get them restored, we we took down this SPCA sign. It’s up near where Ghostbusters Dent Busters is. I’ve known Stone. I knew about the signs. It had been repainted because it was obvious.

Jude Cook
It wasn’t the message. It was on there. And I got a call from Tucson Historic Preservation saying the signs down on the ground, if we want it, we need to pick it up today. So we picked it up. I brought it back to the museum, and I spent about six hours with an orbital sander sanding through the paint, and I found four different messages on the same, so we took it back.

Jude Cook
I knew that the sign had been built in the late 40s early 50s, and I knew that it. So the one.

Tom Heath
Name you were able to sand off just enough.

Jude Cook
Just to see that it had it had been repainted and repainted and repainted, it wasn’t one where the paint, it had only been painted one time. It had started out as as Desert Small Animal Hospital in the 40s, late 40s, early 50s. And the transformer. It is from 1949, so that pretty much narrows down when it had to have been built, because it would have been maybe the transformer was made in 49, the sign was built 50.

Jude Cook
The place was put together. The guy, whoever had it, sold it and it changed name to Tucson Small Animal Hospital. So the only thing they changed was the word Tucson. The colors were the same and then that closed. They moved to the east side, is what I understand. It probably got it probably set just delinquent, delinquent, derelict for a period of time.

Jude Cook
And it got rent. The building got rented by South Tucson Animal Control. Okay. Which is interesting. And the color scheme went from green and gold to green, gold and white to white blue. And that was the first thing I found was after I sanded through the paint, I uncovers South Tucson animal Control. And then when I stand it farther, I found Small Animal Hospital and I.

Jude Cook
I uncovered Tucson, which wasn’t what it was originally, and the neon holes were in the wrong place. So I kept standing around where the neon holes were, and I actually uncovered Desert Small Animal Hospital, so I actually got down to the original paint.

Tom Heath
And so you’re you’re approaching these the way an archeologist would look at a dig site. You’re so delicate.

Jude Cook
You’re in ecology.

Tom Heath
It.

Jude Cook
You know that virtually. That’s what you have to do, you know, and and sometimes, like, you know, old hotels, you just search online for postcards and you sometimes can find a postcard for the hotel, which will give you hints about what the graphics were. Because we had the, at Pima College, we’ve got the you got the Arizona motel.

Jude Cook
And on the other side, it’s the Arizona motel. No Copper State. It was the copper Copper State Motel. But when it came down, it was the Arizona motel, and we didn’t have a rough week. We could see some of the ghost and lettering under the paint. What was still there. But we actually found a matchbook, and that showed us what the script looked like, and we kind of could see what the script was, but it helps solve it.

Jude Cook
So you gotta you’ve got to look at a lot of resources.

Tom Heath
How does the funding for this happen?

Jude Cook
Initially we did we did three of the four signs at Pima College and Tucson Historic Preservation went out and fundraised. Buffalo Exchange paid for one of them. I think Tucson Historic Preservation paid for some of them. The first the first restoration I did, which wasn’t a it wasn’t designated historic was for the Monterey Court.

Tom Heath

Jude Cook
We got hired from the folks that own it to restore the sign and change it from Monterey Monterey Motel to Monterey Court, which was actually a name that we, they found when they tore down walls in the, in the one building they found Monterey Court lettered on the wall. So that was the original name. And then it got renamed into Monterey Motel.

Jude Cook
It’s just it’s just it’s just it’s just you never know what you’re going to run into, you know?

Tom Heath
So on the museum, then your, what are your you’re open to the public. You’re what? What are your hours?

Jude Cook
But it was open Wednesday through Saturday, 10 to 4.

Tom Heath
Okay.

Jude Cook
And then we, you know, we we do, we do some classes. We do a, we do a neon project class and a neon bending class. We do the project class once a month pretty much all year. The neon bending class, we do it from October through maybe May. I’ve got two volunteers and one of them escapes Tucson in the summertime.

Jude Cook
So we we have to have two guys. So we do that. You know, the museum, usually during the season we’re doing neon bending demos on Friday and Saturday. We’ve got two guys that come in and do that for us. And we, you know, the space is available for events.

Tom Heath
I’ve got and there’s there there’s a cost to go to the museum.

Jude Cook
Museum has, as a general admission of 14 discounts for seniors, military students, children.

Tom Heath
Okay. And, website.

Jude Cook
Ignite museum.com.

Tom Heath
Okay. That’s pretty, pretty.

Jude Cook
Pretty easy, pretty easy.

Tom Heath
Easy to find. The, we’ll link to that from, from our website so that people can, oh, good. Can can track that. And, I’m just it’s embarrassed to say that I haven’t been I’m going to go this.

Jude Cook
We’re the we’re the best kept secret in Tucson.

Tom Heath
Well, you know, now you’re on a podcast with at least four listeners. So.

Jude Cook
You know, it’s it’s, the best neon museum probably in the world is the American Museum in Cincinnati. And his his comment is we’re better known everywhere else.

Tom Heath
Yeah.

Jude Cook
You know, and and you don’t have to go to a museum in your own town, but if you’re visiting, you have to you want to go see what you can see because it’s.

Tom Heath
On that list of things to do. Right.

Jude Cook
So and we do, you know, we do, we do. Well, we’re probably we’re probably 50, 50 visitors and locals.

Tom Heath
Can’t even tell you how much I appreciate the time and energy you put into Tucson and, and taking a few minutes today to chat with us.

Jude Cook
Yeah, I like Tucson. You know, Tucson’s treated me good and it’s got a lot of character.

Tom Heath
That was Jud Cook of Cook a sign company here in Tucson, as well as the Ignite Sign Art Museum. Looking forward to that event on October 12th. Hey, we’re running long today, but don’t go anywhere. Ted Brazell ski words and work starts in just a couple of minutes. And we want to thank James Portis, our production specialist.

Tom Heath
My name is Tom Heath, your host and producer. We start each week’s show with, the pleasure of Ryan Hood’s music. And, today we’re going to leave you with a little, funky music from, the Swedish hits goes metal. It’s a song you’ll probably recognize and appropriate for the, the subject matter today. It’s from 2011.

Tom Heath
The song is called The Sign. But as you can tell, it’s a a little different version. I hope you have a great week and tune in next Sunday for more life along the street car.