 When I'm at the shop and I'm working by myself and people don't see the craft and the time and the labor that goes into bending neon tubes and Then a few weeks later. It's up on a giant building burning for everyone to see. It's beautiful This is a interesting place to work you turn left. You've got fires you turn right. You've got high voltage There's breaking glass. There's shards of glass shooting into your hand. It's not for the timid My name is Ryan Eastlin and I work at brimley neon And I'm also a partner with my father-in-law Dave brimley and my wife Emily Ryan makes it look so easy. My dad makes it look so easy, you know watching them It just seems like oh, this is something that you know you could do It's a fluid thing in nature And it's like you turn it and and it wants to droop and it wants to go everywhere But where you want it to go so that's where how you learn how to control the soft glass This is by hands-on experience It's been trial by fire literally to learn the craft and at this point in the years that he's been bending with me for 15 years or so. I think he's one of the best benders if not the best in the country So we're dealing with molten glass all the time and it looks the same when it's hot or when it's cool After heating it up to the point where it's molten we can manipulate the glass and bend it into different shapes We have a pattern on a table. I have a crossfire and a ribbon fire. So a thousand degree flame We don't use anything to manipulate the glass except for just our eyes and the way that the glass will lay on the table. I Will use my sense ability to actually see what the glass is doing More often than what the pattern is doing. I can see that it's not right if the pattern is crooked So I will adjust it accordingly It can be a signature. It can be lettering. It's really amazing how much you can do with it when you have molten glass And you're trying to bend it you need to inflate that, you know That's the first question people ask is why is there a tube in your mouth if the neon collapses on itself? It's garbage and you have to start over and it's one bend at a time That's the most amazing part about neon and then we inject a very tiny amount of neon or argon gas Inside the tube and then when you put a high voltage transformer to both ends of it The gas just gets so excited that it starts to light up. It's that simple it's an honor to carry the brimley tradition on it's been passed down through the family and You need a good teacher. That's the key to being a glass bender Actually the way we met was kind of funny because he and his brother hit on my both my daughters For my birthday at a bar and they bought dad the tequila, you know That's how you get in with the daughters Just started talking and it was an instant connection as our relationship continued She said you have to see my dad's neon shop my grandfather and his brother started our neon sign business back in 1930 My grandfather drove to Chicago and he purchased a set of neon equipment My grandfather taught my father how to bend neon and my father taught me and so after school Every day I'd come down here and watch Dave bend glass for hours on end and it mystified me I it's absolutely blew my mind the things he was doing in the shapes. He was creating Effortlessly took him a little while to learn but his learning curve was probably one of the shortest in neon history But he's taught me a lot over the years more than I ever learned in school You know, I've always been the kid who was just you know Obviously not paying attention to the teacher and just drawing all over everything on the table And I took a couple years of graphic design up at the University of Utah I am somebody who spends a good amount of time Creating things by myself and when I'm at the shop, I am Constantly either listening to music or writing music on downtime when he's here at the shop He'll just sit down and start playing something that he can do to kind of take his mind off for you know bending I can't say that I would be a songwriter if I didn't have all this time to Imagine where a song will go when I'm bending glass it feels very connected to me It's a physical thing that he does, you know, it touches it. He feels it. It's the same with music, you know So my buddy Braxton Brandenburg is a local barber. He's also my bass player So when Braxton said he needed to sign I say well geez I'm gonna make this beautiful sign It's gonna be in a ruby red 10 mil You know, I always had a dream of having my own shop and I figured a sign is the most important thing For a business want to be able to see it from the street and have something bright and something that catches an eye So it was even before I had my own shop. I was probably in barber school and I had him build it for me. I Love glass. I love neon. I love the culture of the 50s and it's important for people to have that Heritage and things that mean something to them continue in their lives When I look at a neon sign that's decaying on a pole I see the craftsmanship that went into that I see the designer these people that designed signs back in the day. They were more like folk artists to me It's always been a representation of a good time If there's a club or if there's a casino if there's you know, anything going on It really catches people's eyes if you drive down any old street route 66 anywhere you see all these beautiful old signs that are rusting away and It's unfortunate We've fought really hard to stay in business for as long as we have, you know over 80 years We took a tumble as far as an industry About eight years ago when the EPA took the decided to take the lead out of all of our glass There's just not a lot of people that could keep up with the learning curve of Making me on with a different type of glass if people don't respect the craftsmanship behind the neon signs It will absolutely disappear if I don't teach someone else how to do this. I believe it could be completely lost It has to be passed on to someone else the future of the neon craft does depend on those who are learning it now I Often think about that when I'm gone how long will these signs last? If it disappears for good people are gonna, you know, it's one of those historic things that why did we let that go? Why did that die? It's not very often that you see a family intertwined and passing down a craft for Three generations then passing it on to a son-in-law and if my son or daughter decides to do it You know, that's five generations of people keeping this glass-spending tradition in the family Nowadays it's starting to come back to where people appreciate old things old trades I think having a business with the neon sign kind of stands out neon's America. I mean, it's Americana and it's finest There's a real sense of pride when you first turn it on and it's important It's a part of our heritage, you know It was a sign of prosperity and business and when folks are proud enough to sell a product and they believe in what they have You know a neon sign tells everybody they're open and ready for business I'll do my best to keep the tradition going as long as I can