'MO - July 2008 - (Page 10)

community ‘MO BIZ Gay-owned Business Proﬁle City Lights Sign Company: Turning Heads for More than Two Decades By Bryan Ochalla Martha Davis has been grabbing the attention of Seattlites for more than 20 years. Well, not Davis herself (that’s not to say she’s not a looker)—it’s the signs she and her staff at City Lights Sign Company have made since 1987 that have turned so many heads. A few examples: The ginormous rainbow sign that greets people as they walk up to Seattle Counseling Service on Capitol Hill. The animated saxophone and antique marquee sign that points jazz hounds to Egan’s Ballard Jam House. The slickly sophisticated chromeand-neon sign that marks the entrance to the elegant eatery, Ten Mercer, on Queen Anne. Oh, and there’s the exposed cold-cathode lighting that encompasses the lobby of the Space Needle. The latter isn’t really a sign, of course—Davis deﬁnes it as architectural lighting—but regardless of what it’s called, it’s a perfect example of the wonders Davis and her small staff at City Lights Sign Company have been able to achieve in the last two decades. Their accomplishments are all the more amazing when you learn that before she became a “tube bender” (industry slang for someone skilled in creating neon signs), Davis managed a tennis facility in the Midwest. That all changed when a writer friend began working on an article about the resurgence of neon. “I went with her when she interviewed people,” recalls Davis, who was intrigued by the impromptu meetings with a few industry veterans. “I decided to learn how to become a tube bender and see what happened next,” she says. Luckily for her, Kansas City, where Davis was living at the time, was home to one of the few schools in the country that taught what she wanted to learn. After she ﬁnished school and cut her teeth at a few local companies, Davis decided to fulﬁll a lifelong dream and move to the Paciﬁc Northwest. “My dad’s side of the family is from Ashland, Oregon, so this part of the country has always felt like home,” she says. Davis settled on Seattle after her girlfriend at the time was offered a job in the erstwhile Emerald City. Before they moved, the pair came to the city to check out the job opportunities for Davis. They were about to leave empty-handed when their return ﬂight to Kansas City was canceled, and they found themselves with ﬁve hours to waste at the airport. “Someone handed me a Sunday paper as they were getting on a plane, and I decided to look at the classiﬁeds,” Davis says. “One ad mentioned that someone was looking for a partner in a neon business. I thought, ‘This must be fate! I have to pursue it.’” She did, and soon after she was one of three partners in charge of what is now known as City Lights Sign Company. One of the partners left the company shortly after Davis joined, while the other—a construction expert—left nine years later. “He decided to move on and I bought him out,” Davis says. “I’ve had the business ever since.” She hasn’t done it all on her own, though. Almost all of Davis’ employees have worked for her for a decade or more, and their combined expertise is what has made all of the above-mentioned accomplishments possible. “We truly work as a team,” says Davis, who spends some of her free time working with the Greater Seattle Business Association and the Capitol Hill LeTip, as well as a number of other organizations. “Everyone has a speciﬁc task they focus on, but we overlap quite a bit too.” “Most of the service work we do is done on other peoples’ signs, since the majority of our signs last seven years without needing any service work,” Davis says. “A lot of companies out there want their signs to break down in two or three years because they want to service them. We believe in putting out quality products.” That’s evident as you look over the list of signs Davis’ and her crew have created over the years. It’s also evident as you talk to Davis about them. “One of the things I like most about showing my portfolio to people is that I get to hear them say, ‘Oh, I know that one!’” Bryan Ochalla lives in Ballard with his husband of nearly four years, David. 10 celebrating seattle’s gay community http://www.bowman4law.com http://www.smith-law.net

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of 'MO - July 2008

'MO - July 2008 Contents Letter From The Editor Series 2008 Needs Volunteers Voices 'mo-BIZ: City Lights Sign Company HIV Is Still a Big Deal, The Online Video Series Instant Activist Pet Project: Wiener Takes All Charlene Strong on the Rights Fight Form & Function: Molding Your Middle Will the Economy Ruin LGBT Funding? Toronto is a Great Place to Meet Feature Film Review: American Teen Live Event Preview: Sitting In Circles with Rich White Girls Book Review: In the Eye of the Storm by Gene Robinson Capitol Hill Guide Three Dollar Bill Cinema Presents: Features from the Black Lagoon Raising Spirits: Tini Bigs Offers Five New Martinis SceneOut: People@Places

'MO - July 2008

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