Saturday, September 5, 2009

Gas Stations and Taxi's


Ponder the fate of the mid-century metal-wrapped building. Perhaps the classic American diner is the best example of this phenomenon of combining sanitary surfaces with streamlined eye lines. Metal-wrapped buildings are all but gone from today's contemporary commercial landscape. Lost are the days when one could pull into a nice brightly lit Midwestern gas station and be greeted by a crisply starched uniformed attendant who cheerfully would top off your tank, wash your windshield, and check your oil.

By the mid 1980's many of these wonderful edifices to American can-do mercantilism were either abandoned or re-purposed such as the taxi cab depot pictured here. Somehow in its decrepitude there is still a faint allusion to the ordered harmony of what was once a bustling, trim , and efficient petro-chemical transaction. We pause and tip our hat to the clash and harmony of the random color tones of this scene, and find nothing out of place, while the photographer pauses in entropy.

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