The Story Behind the Sai Woo Sign | Montecristo Magazine

Troy Hibbs oversees his shop, TDH Experiential Fabricators, where his brother Andrew is a neon bender: an abstract vocation by today’s standards, but not so uncommon in the 1950s. For a decade, Vancouver saw 19,000 signs cast their glow across the city, the wet downtown streets reflecting colourful fluorescent lights. Some thought the effect diminished Vancouver’s natural beauty, which prompted an anti-neon crusade in the late 1960s. In the years to come, signs were systematically dismantled and storefronts were darkened.

Among those lost was the Sai Woo rooster, with its broad chest and open wings, that greeted patrons outside the popular Chinatown restaurant. The chop suey house is mentioned in the infamous murder trial of the Hughes Gang as the place where the four boys went to drink a bottle of rum after killing Yoshi Uno in 1942.

Sai Woo's neon rooster sign crows over Chinatown once again. | Vancouver Sun

For the first time in almost 60 years, the distinctive green-and-yellow neon rooster once again reigns over Sai Woo in Vancouver’s Chinatown. 

The only image restaurant owner Salli Pateman had of the original sign that used to grace the original Sai Woo on 158 East Pender St. was a brief clip on a YouTube video that her friend sent her of a Chinatown parade in 1958.

The resurrection of Sai Woo’s rooster | Metro Vancouver

After a months-long search for a 1920s-era piece of Vancouver Chinatown history, the owner of the neighbourhood’s historic Sai Woo restaurant had to give up on her dream of surfacing a giant neon rooster sign that once adorned the building.

At least until 1959, when the iconic signage was last spotted in a mere one-second of film reel about Chinatown. That wasn’t much to go on, but the 158 East Pender St. restaurant’s current owner, Salli Pateman, cast her net far and wide for tips — offering a $500 reward.

Sai Woo’s neon bird comes back to roost in Chinatown | Vancouver Courier

Salli Pateman had to navigate an impossible web of stress, asbestos and decay for close to five years before seeing the proverbial light.

As owner of the Sai Woo restaurant on Pender Street, Pateman got her moment in the sun Saturday, July 29, when the Chinatown mainstay installed a re-imagined neon sign that harkens back 60 years.