The art of palm
El Mocambo’s famed neon marquee is being entirely rebuilt
CAMBRIDGE— On a humid morning this week, Bismarck Coca, a veteran neon bender for Pride Signs in Cambridge, gingerly suspended a glass tube over the blue gas flames shooting out of a ribbon torch.
After a few moments, it glowed red and began to yield to his expert rolling motions. In a brisk, practiced gesture, Coca put the hot, pliable object onto a paper pattern and shaped it into the form of a letter.
He then attached electrodes to either end, zapped all the impurities with a massive jolt of power and filled the resulting vacuum tube with a mix of neon gas and mercury. Once hooked up to a power supply, the shape he had formed came vivaciously to life, casting a sexy green glow across his workbench.
“That there,” said Pride’s 59-yearold president Brad Hillis as he watched the production, “is the E-L.”
The syllable should be instantly recognizable to Toronto music fans. Pride, a180-employee firm that engineers giant commercial signs, is in the final stages of reconstructing the El Mocambo’s famed marquee. Since 1948, the familiar sign has adorned the landmark venue where acts ranging from local indie bands to the Rolling Stones have performed “under the neon palms,” as the club’s famous slogan had it.
Elsewhere in the 80,000-squarefoot facility, the stamped components of the new version — palm fronds, coconut clusters and that looming, slightly arched trunk — were waiting to be sent into the paint shop for a coat of pale green primer and automotive-grade finishing.
Overhead, an illuminated billboard declares “Pride Signs welcomes El Mocambo,” hinting at just how hot the cool factor has been with this gig.
The finished version will be installed on the building’s restored facade in the fall in anticipation of a relaunch of the club next March, in time for its 70th anniversary.
“The sign will be a gateway to an iconic Toronto music venue and rock and roll museum,” said investor and former Dragon’s Den star Michael Wekerle, who bought the Spadina Ave. club for $4 million in early 2015and is investing another $10 million or so to refurbish it from top to bottom.
The reconstructed marquee has been a year in the making with a price tag of about $43,000.
Over a year in the making, the El- mo’s rebuilt commercial calling card will be intensely scrutinized in a city where the preservation of vintage illuminated signs, such as ones that adorned Sam’s and Honest Ed’s, has become a cause célèbre.
After buying the club, Werkele initially planned to salvage the palms, which at one point had been put up for sale on eBay for just $6,000. But after Pride’s crews removed the 2,300-kilogram steel structure in early 2016, they discovered its innards were far too corroded to safely restore and then suspend over a busy sidewalk.
“When we looked inside,” Pride’s vice-president of engineering Mark Hawley said, “there was so much rust we couldn’t have welded or screwed in (bolts).” He added that it’s unlikely building officials would have allowed it to be reinstalled.
Wekerle describes the decision to halt plans for a restoration as “very emotional.”
The old sign now sits in two pieces in a corner of Pride’s factory. It contains seven decades of detritus, included piles of rusted steel, tangles of corroding wire and several birds’ nests tucked between the fronds. According to Kelly Pullen, Wekerle’s spokesperson, it will be cleaned up and, if all goes according to plan, installed in two halves on either side of the refurbished second-floor stage.
In terms of size and layout, its successor is an identical replica. Instead of steel, the new version is being built from lighter, rust-proof aluminum components that can be disassembled for easy maintenance. “It will last forever,” Hillis said.
In place of the old sign’s handpainted detailing, such as the bark on the trunk and the grass around its base, the new one will sport a heavyduty vinyl background made with a digital printer.
And rather than incandescent bulbs, Pride is installing LEDs, which have become standard issue on commercial signs since the latest iteration of the technology has allowed for warmer light and more precise colours.
However, the new neon elements — for the lettering, the coconuts and the quarter-moon that shines down on the whole vista — will be the real thing, the handiwork of one of the few remaining neon benders in Ontario.
While neon signs once represented a booming business for Pride, Hillis said the market has almost completely dried up in recent years. They’re difficult and dangerous to make, draw huge amounts of power and are prone to catching fire. The latest LED products can produce an almost identical effect, visually, at far less cost and specialized labour.
Yet all the public interest in vintage signs has rekindled demand for oldschool neon; among Pride’s next projects is the marquee for the Paradise Theatre on Bloor. The company says its signs typically take about four to six weeks to build.
“It’s turning into an ongoing trend,” said Matt Auclair, a Pride account manager. Added Hillis: “I knew neon would cycle back at some point.”
Once reinstalled, the lighting on the whole marquee will also be able to cascade, as it did back in the 1940s and 1950s, when the El Mocambo was well known as a ballroom dance club featuring Latin and swing bands.
While some critics have taken to social media to fret about a faux version of the original, company officials predicted Torontonians, even purists, will be pleased with the result. Said Auclair: “You’ll be able to see it all the way down Spadina.”