{"id":398671,"date":"2026-07-15T00:53:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T00:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/398671\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T00:53:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T00:53:41","slug":"golden-star-radios-iconic-sign-gets-restoration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/398671\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Star Radio&#8217;s iconic sign gets restoration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Golden Star Radio went live in 1939 from the basement of May and Tommy Tong&#8217;s home. The radio station ran a news and entertainment program called, The Chinese Hour \u2014 North America\u2019s first ever Chinese-language broadcast. By the 1950\u2019S they had a listenership of more than 25,000 and were interviewing politicians like San Francisco&#8217;s 33rd mayor, Elmer Robinson.<\/p>\n<p>The show ran for 40 years until Golden Star Radio went off air in 1979. In the decades to follow, the neon sign\u2013still bolted to the building\u2013fell into disrepair.<\/p>\n<p>A campaign to restore the sign was sponsored by the California Historical Radio Society. Sign painter Manny Fabregas and the studio of Neon Works completed the project in May of this year.<\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"The Tong family poses for a photo along with San Francisco Dist. 3 Supervisor, Danny Sauter, to celebrate the lighting of the Golden Star Radio neon sign. In 1939 May and Tommy Tong started Golden Star Radio as the first Chinese-language broadcast in North America.\"  width=\"880\" height=\"1173\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784076821_595_.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Office of Danny Sauter, San Francisco Dist. 3 Supervisor<\/p>\n<p>        The Tong family poses for a photo along with San Francisco Dist. 3 Supervisor, Danny Sauter, to celebrate the lighting of the Golden Star Radio neon sign. In 1939 May and Tommy Tong started Golden Star Radio as the first Chinese-language broadcast in North America. <\/p>\n<p>So last Friday, descendants of the Tong family came together again. There was a pause in Chinatown\u2019s bustling monthly night market as they counted down in Cantonese and pulled the switch that would make the gold star flicker once again.<\/p>\n<p>You can visit this piece of Chinese-American history in its original location at 846 Clay St.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Golden Star Radio went live in 1939 from the basement of May and Tommy Tong&#8217;s home. The radio&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-398671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}