Hillcrest

This guide to Hillcrest in San Diego traces its neon sign from 1940, when a group of local women shopkeepers calling themselves the Hillcrest Women's Association paid for it themselves, through its postwar decline into a burned-out, unfunded eyesore by the early 1980s. It follows the volunteer effort that rebuilt it and the relighting ceremony on August 16, 1984, that drew an unplanned crowd and grew into the CityFest street fair still held here today. The guide also touches on a second, quieter failure the sign suffered decades later. Look up at the shape overhead and consider how little beneath the paint is original.