John is overwhelmed by the lights and neon signs illuminating the nightly city. People are reduced to mere shadows against the shop windows. Whose silhouette does John see here?
Neon signs, or their more energy-efficient modern counterparts, are a trademark of metropolitan scenery. But what did the first neon sign spell when the new method of illumination was still reverently referred to as “liquid fire”? Surprisingly, the first neon message was quite mundane: it was “Palais Coiffeur”, the name of a hairdresser’s shop in Paris.