CHRS Launches Golden Star Radio Sign Restoration

An anonymous donor’s $60,000 gift brings the restoration of this historic Chinatown neon sign within reach.

The California Historical Radio Society is undertaking a major new preservation project: restoring the historic Golden Star Radio neon sign in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

The sign is one of the last visible reminders of Golden Star Radio and pioneering broadcasters Tommy Tong and May Chin Tong, who began broadcasting Cantonese programming to San Francisco’s Chinese community in 1939. Their broadcasts continued for 40 years, until 1979. The Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame recognized Tommy and May as pioneer broadcasters in 2025.

For decades, the Golden Star Radio sign has hung three stories above Clay Street at Spofford Alley. Although much of its original neon tubing has survived, the sign itself has deteriorated considerably. It stopped working years ago, rust has taken hold, and most of its original paint has faded or disappeared.

CHRS believes this important piece of broadcasting and Chinatown history deserves to shine again.

The restoration will include work on the sign itself and its neon, along with new AC electrical service. CHRS also plans to establish funding for the sign’s future operation and maintenance. After restoration, CHRS hopes to pursue official historic recognition for the sign.

CHRS established a goal of more than $65,000 to restore the sign, install new electrical service, and help establish a fund for its future operation and maintenance.

Then an anonymous CHRS donor stepped forward with an extraordinary $60,000 contribution toward the project.

Thanks to this remarkable gift and additional contributions, the fund has reached approximately $61,000. CHRS is seeking an additional $5,000 to $9,000 to help cover the new electrical service and build the operating and maintenance fund.

CHRS has contracted with Jim Rizzo of Neon Works to perform the restoration. Rizzo and his Oakland shop specialize in neon and maintain some of San Francisco’s best-known signs, including the Castro Theatre sign.

Restoring Golden Star will require extensive work, but it will also preserve something increasingly rare: an original neon sign closely connected to both San Francisco’s Chinatown and the history of Bay Area broadcasting.

The Golden Star Radio sign has long attracted the attention of people documenting San Francisco’s surviving neon. It appears on page 35 of Al Barna and Randall Ann Homan’s 2015 book, San Francisco Neon: Survivors and Lost Icons.

Now, with the support of an extraordinary anonymous donor, the Tong family, CHRS members and friends, and a team of skilled restoration specialists, this piece of San Francisco history has a chance to glow again.

Help us finish the job and provide for the sign’s future care.