It's because of the way he glows.

The iconic neon Hofbrau sign in front of the Hofbrau restaurant at the corner of Broadway and Grand Avenue in Oakland will be preserved by the L.A. Museum of Neon Art and is already on exhibition.

The sign was picked up March 19 with the help of Oakland-based Neon Works and the museum.

"One of our members has close ties to Oakland and visited it and said it was a wonderful sign and noticed the business had closed up," said Kim Koga, museum director. "We knew at that moment the future of the sign was in danger."

Hofbrau, which is German for beer garden, was a restaurant that closed more than a year ago. Although the age of the sign is unclear, the restaurant was created by Dave Leon and two partners in 1951 and sold in 1985 to another owner.

Rick Mitchell, the general manager of the Lucas Tap Room and Lounge, which will take up the space formerly used by the Hofbrau, said he wanted to preserve the sign somewhere inside the building, but it was too big.

He was approached by the museum and thought it was a great idea for the institution to keep it.

The sign, which unlighted features a bartender pouring beer from a spigot, will shine even brighter once it is renovated by the museum.

"It's a piece of history," said Jim Rizzo, the owner of Neon Works, a five-person company that creates neon signs for commercial and creative purposes. "I've been here for 13 years and I've never seen it lighted. I've never seen it working."

Rizzo and his crew used a 40-foot crane to take down the sign.

"If it sat there for any time longer than it had, chances are the glass would have been broken," Koga said. "It would have been impossible to see what those tubes did unless there were photographs of it."

She said most of the glass from the sign is intact even though some of the tubes don't light up. She said the Hofbrau sign has a "real complex design" for its animation and layers of neon tubing on top of each other.

"What we think happens is he pulls the spigot, fills up the cup, his hand lets go of that, he faces the people and there's a grin," Koga said.

She said they're unsure if the bartender winks or if the beer is animated. Despite claims to fame as a novelty lamp for casinos and 1980s pop culture, neon signs in the United States have their origins in the Bay Area.

Earl Anthony, who owned three Packard car dealerships in Oakland, Los Angeles and San Francisco, purchased what is considered to be the first neon signs from a French company in 1923. The signs, spelling "PACKARD" in neon, were displayed at dealerships in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

MONA, founded in 1981, memorializes the tradition of neon art by preserving, collecting and documenting the vintage signs.

The founder was inspired to create the museum after seeing old signs from L.A. theaters being taken down. Because many of the signs are very large, photographs are often taken as documents.

The Hofbrau sign will be fixed and running by the end of the year. For more information about MONA, visit neonmona.org or call (213) 489-9918.

The Oakland Tribune: Cityside
Leanne McLaughlin, Managing Editor
(510) 208-6447
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