Nate Sheaffer runs Big Sexy Neon, a shop in Metairie that's become the Crescent City's headquarters for neon preservation and creation. Since opening in 2020, he's worked to save historic signs while crafting new electric glass originals. His workspace, filled floor to ceiling with eye-popping pieces, uses argon, krypton, mercury, and enough voltage to be dangerous—he's been electrocuted badly enough to dislocate his shoulder.

His most visible project was restoring Tujague's enormous neon sign, saved from a restaurant relocation by furious preservationists and now burning inside the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. Sheaffer emphasizes that neon is totally sustainable—he reuses everything from old signs, and well-maintained signs last over a century. By contrast, LED is cheaper but becomes "just garbage when it breaks." The craft itself requires a decade to learn, which explains why so few pursue it.

New Orleans once had more neon than Las Vegas in the 1950s—Canal Street held six hundred signs within a few blocks. Sheaffer, who learned the trade from professor Jerry Noe at UNC-Chapel Hill after switching from physics, now handles commissions and creates his own art combining found ephemera with neon accents. The work involves heating, blowing, and bending glass tubing, then using mercury drops to achieve specific colors. He's keeping a dying art form alive in a city where neon remains the visual heartbeat.