{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "neon-chicken",
 "type": "art",
 "names": {
  "name": "Neon chicken",
  "aliases": [
   "neon bird",
   "neon chicken sign"
  ],
  "sort": "neon chicken"
 },
 "region": [
  "us"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "kind": "neon"
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "A chicken drawn in bent glass tube, filled with gas, and run off a transformer over a bar, a drive-in or a wing counter. The bird is usually animated in the cheap way neon animates: two or three sets of tubes switched in sequence so a wing flaps, steam rises, or an arrow chases. Neon signs are made by hand, by a bender working a ribbon burner, which is why a town's neon looks like the shops of the two or three benders who worked there. They are expensive to build, expensive to repair, and the first thing an owner replaces when a tube goes, which is why the surviving ones are mostly in cities that decided to protect them."
 },
 "sections": [
  {
   "h": "How the bird is made",
   "text": "*Tradition holds —* a neon sign starts as a full-size drawing on fireproof paper. The bender heats soft glass tube over a ribbon burner and works it against the pattern, bend by bend, blowing gently to keep the bore open. Electrodes go on the ends; the tube is pumped down, bombarded to drive out impurities, and filled — neon for red and orange, argon with a drop of mercury for blue, and coloured or phosphor-coated glass for everything else. A transformer supplies the high voltage.\n\nA chicken is a hard shape for it. Curves in tube have a minimum radius, so a bird's beak, comb and tail feathers get simplified until they read at fifty feet — which is the reason neon birds look like each other. The medium does the stylising."
  },
  {
   "h": "Why a bird, and why lit",
   "text": "Neon belongs to the hours a wing counter works. It is legible from a road after dark, it needs no separate illumination, and it holds colour in rain in a way a painted panel does not.\n\n*Inference —* the bird is the same bird as on the painted signs, and for the same reason: the shop is selling a category before it sells a name. Lighting it changes the register rather than the message. A lit chicken over a door reads as open, which a painted one never can."
  },
  {
   "h": "Animation, done cheaply",
   "text": "*Tradition holds —* neon animates by switching rather than by moving. Two wing positions on separate circuits, flashed alternately, make a bird flap. Three arrows lit in sequence pull the eye toward a door. Steam is three curls that light bottom to top. The controller is a rotating drum or, later, a solid-state flasher, and the whole vocabulary is about a dozen tricks long.\n\nIt is the animation that dates a sign more precisely than the lettering does, because a flasher is a component with a period."
  },
  {
   "h": "Where they hang",
   "text": "Over the door of a corner bar, in the window beside the beer signs, on a pylon at a drive-in, and along a commercial strip where the sign has to compete with the sign next door. The wing counter's neon is usually small and in the window — OPEN, WINGS, the bird — rather than a pole sign, because the shop rents a storefront and cannot put anything on the roof."
  },
  {
   "h": "Loss, and what is left",
   "text": "Neon dies by degrees. A cracked tube goes dark and gets left dark; the electrode fails and the section stays out; the transformer hums and gets unplugged. A bender has to come, which costs more than a printed banner over the whole thing.\n\n*Inference —* that economics, more than taste, is why neon retreated. LED channel letters and flexible LED tube do a passable imitation for a fraction of the maintenance, and most of what reads as neon on a wing counter in 2026 is LED.\n\nThe public photographic record is thinner than the painted-sign record. Carol M. Highsmith photographed a neon sign at a Lucy's Fried Chicken on Burnet Road in Austin, Texas in April 2014, and the image is public domain through the Library of Congress; museum neon exhibits and civic sign parks account for much of the rest on Wikimedia Commons."
  },
  {
   "h": "The sign as an asset",
   "text": "*Tradition holds —* an old neon sign outlives the business under it more often than not. It gets sold with the building, adopted by the next tenant, bought by a collector, or taken into a museum. A chicken that once advertised a fry counter can end up over a bar that serves no chicken at all, which is how a sign becomes a piece of furniture."
  }
 ],
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "chicken-shack-signs",
   "as": "The unlit half of the same trade: same bird, paint instead of glass.",
   "rel": "art"
  },
  {
   "to": "rooster-weathervanes",
   "as": "The same bird as a mark, three centuries earlier and driven by wind instead of current.",
   "rel": "art"
  },
  {
   "to": "hot-sauce-labels",
   "as": "Shares the flame-and-glow vocabulary, shrunk to a bottle.",
   "rel": "art"
  },
  {
   "to": "buffalo-murals",
   "as": "What replaced the big sign in cities that stopped permitting them.",
   "rel": "art"
  },
  {
   "to": "elmos-bar-and-restaurant",
   "as": "A Buffalo-area bar of the type whose window neon is the whole of its street presence.",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "nine-eleven-tavern",
   "as": "A corner tavern whose door sign does the work a pole sign does elsewhere.",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "jr-cricketts",
   "as": "An Atlanta wing counter working the same after-dark hours neon was built for.",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "wing-night",
   "as": "The night the lit sign is selling; neon and the midweek special keep the same hours.",
   "rel": "term"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:web-commons-search",
  "s:web-commons-licensing"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "tradition"
  },
  "fields": {
   "sections[1].text": {
    "tier": "inference"
   },
   "sections[4].text": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:web-commons-search",
    "note": "the Highsmith file, its date and its public-domain status read off the file's extmetadata through the Commons API on 16 September 2026; the paragraph on LED replacement is this project's inference"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [
  {
   "file": "neon-chicken/neon-chicken-chicken-in-the-rough-route-66-oklahoma.jpg",
   "source": "commons",
   "title": "File:Chicken in the Rough, Route 66, Oklahoma.jpg",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Chicken_in_the_Rough%2C_Route_66%2C_Oklahoma.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AChicken_in_the_Rough%2C_Route_66%2C_Oklahoma.jpg",
   "license": "CC BY 2.0",
   "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/",
   "author": "Jerry Huddleston",
   "credit": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/huddleston/18655793630/",
   "alt": "The History Museum at the Castle's exhibit, Neon: Darkness Electrified, features 30 vintage neon signs from the collection of Jed Schleisner.  The signs span five decades of restaurants, beer labels, ",
   "date": "2015-06-12 13:15:39",
   "primary": true,
   "sha256": "3ad950ad25ab6e72a1bdc61647b2da82c81c5d5aa30d64a142ad044aff63ea72"
  },
  {
   "file": "neon-chicken/neon-chicken-neon-exhibit-green-bay-wi-flickr-michaelsteeber-7.jpg",
   "source": "commons",
   "title": "File:Neon Exhibit- Green Bay, WI - Flickr - MichaelSteeber (7).jpg",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Neon_Exhibit-_Green_Bay%2C_WI_-_Flickr_-_MichaelSteeber_%287%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANeon_Exhibit-_Green_Bay%2C_WI_-_Flickr_-_MichaelSteeber_%287%29.jpg",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 2.0",
   "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/",
   "author": "Michael Steeber from USA",
   "credit": "Neon Exhibit- Green Bay, WI",
   "alt": "A neon exhibit at the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, WI.",
   "date": "2017-08-02 10:35",
   "primary": false,
   "sha256": "6991e6890d4789c7df9555d591e8d8de661d545b49f835991b22b8861b40ffa9"
  },
  {
   "file": "neon-chicken/neon-chicken-provocative-neon-sign-at-a-lucy-s-fried-chicken-loca-450923b.jpg",
   "source": "commons",
   "title": "File:Provocative neon sign at a Lucy's Fried Chicken location on Burnet Road in Austin, Texas LCCN2014632324.tif",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Provocative_neon_sign_at_a_Lucy%27s_Fried_Chicken_location_on_Burnet_Road_in_Austin%2C_Texas_LCCN2014632324.tif?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AProvocative_neon_sign_at_a_Lucy%27s_Fried_Chicken_location_on_Burnet_Road_in_Austin%2C_Texas_LCCN2014632324.tif",
   "license": "Public domain",
   "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain",
   "author": "Carol M. Highsmith",
   "credit": "Library of Congress\n\nCatalog: http://lccn.loc.gov/2014632324\nImage download: https://cdn.loc.gov/master/pnp/highsm/28100/28124a.tif\nOriginal url: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/highsm.28124",
   "alt": "Title: Provocative neon sign at a Lucy's Fried Chicken location on Burnet Road in Austin, Texas\nPhysical description: 1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color.\n\nNotes: Title, date, and keywords based ",
   "date": "Taken on 19 April 2014, 10:03 (according",
   "primary": false,
   "sha256": "66a12e84bcaec35fc62ca0261642481e2aa57dfcf2661b11e3d8a2c935161155"
  },
  {
   "file": "neon-chicken/neon-chicken-welcome-and-chicken-neon-sign-illuminates-kennedy-sq-cc51c7f.jpg",
   "source": "commons",
   "title": "File:Welcome and Chicken Neon Sign Illuminates Kennedy Square in Markham, Ontario.jpg",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Welcome_and_Chicken_Neon_Sign_Illuminates_Kennedy_Square_in_Markham%2C_Ontario.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWelcome_and_Chicken_Neon_Sign_Illuminates_Kennedy_Square_in_Markham%2C_Ontario.jpg",
   "license": "CC0 1.0",
   "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/",
   "author": "Williamf1006",
   "credit": "Own work",
   "alt": "Under the glow of a 'Welcome' and chicken neon sign, New Kennedy Square in Markham, Ontario, comes alive, captured on the evening of March 23, 2025",
   "date": "2024-03-23 20:55:36",
   "primary": false,
   "sha256": "aec18ec103966d134954a6d384185f8d45a9002a88cb25188b9a16d7c6a843cc"
  }
 ],
 "confidence": "medium",
 "needs_verification": true,
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "A chicken drawn in bent glass tube, filled with gas, and run off a transformer over a bar, a drive-in or a wing counter.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "us",
   "name": "The United States",
   "state": null,
   "note": "use when a node belongs to the whole country"
  }
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "chicken-shack-signs",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "Chicken shack signs",
   "as": "The unlit half of the same trade: same bird, paint instead of glass.",
   "rel": "art"
  },
  {
   "to": "rooster-weathervanes",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "Rooster weathervanes",
   "as": "The same bird as a mark, three centuries earlier and driven by wind instead of current.",
   "rel": "art"
  },
  {
   "to": "hot-sauce-labels",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "Hot sauce labels",
   "as": "Shares the flame-and-glow vocabulary, shrunk to a bottle.",
   "rel": "art"
  },
  {
   "to": "buffalo-murals",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "Buffalo murals",
   "as": "What replaced the big sign in cities that stopped permitting them.",
   "rel": "art"
  },
  {
   "to": "elmos-bar-and-restaurant",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Elmo's Bar & Restaurant",
   "as": "A Buffalo-area bar of the type whose window neon is the whole of its street presence.",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "nine-eleven-tavern",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Nine-Eleven Tavern",
   "as": "A corner tavern whose door sign does the work a pole sign does elsewhere.",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "jr-cricketts",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "J.R. Crickets",
   "as": "An Atlanta wing counter working the same after-dark hours neon was built for.",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "wing-night",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "wing night",
   "as": "The night the lit sign is selling; neon and the midweek special keep the same hours.",
   "rel": "term"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:web-commons-search",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Wikimedia Commons file search (MediaWiki API, action=query&list=search, namespace 6)",
   "publisher": "Wikimedia Commons",
   "url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "used to find candidate file titles and to read each file's licence, author and date from extmetadata"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:web-commons-licensing",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Commons:Licensing",
   "publisher": "Wikimedia Commons",
   "url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "tradition"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": {
  "file": "neon-chicken/neon-chicken-chicken-in-the-rough-route-66-oklahoma.jpg",
  "source": "commons",
  "title": "File:Chicken in the Rough, Route 66, Oklahoma.jpg",
  "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Chicken_in_the_Rough%2C_Route_66%2C_Oklahoma.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
  "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AChicken_in_the_Rough%2C_Route_66%2C_Oklahoma.jpg",
  "license": "CC BY 2.0",
  "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/",
  "author": "Jerry Huddleston",
  "credit": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/huddleston/18655793630/",
  "alt": "The History Museum at the Castle's exhibit, Neon: Darkness Electrified, features 30 vintage neon signs from the collection of Jed Schleisner.  The signs span five decades of restaurants, beer labels, ",
  "date": "2015-06-12 13:15:39",
  "primary": true,
  "sha256": "3ad950ad25ab6e72a1bdc61647b2da82c81c5d5aa30d64a142ad044aff63ea72"
 },
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "chicken-shack-signs",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "Chicken shack signs",
   "as": "The lit version of the same bird, in glass tube instead of paint.",
   "rel": "art"
  },
  {
   "from": "hot-sauce-labels",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "Hot sauce labels",
   "as": "Shares the flame vocabulary, lit instead of printed.",
   "rel": "art"
  },
  {
   "from": "rooster-weathervanes",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "Rooster weathervanes",
   "as": "The same bird lit and hung at street level rather than balanced on a roof.",
   "rel": "art"
  }
 ]
}