I was filling the Buzzmobile last night, and noticed that the hyperventilating gas prices have calmed down a bit. Still over three bucks, but only by a penny. We’ll relax when it dips to $2.99. According to my sources in the gas-station industry – i.e,, my dad – you can expect tight supplies and higher prices for a while. Nobody’s happy about it, but in the words of Tony Soprano: whaddya gonna do.
At least today’s gas stations are more useful; in the old days you could get a comb and a soda, nothing more. Maybe the plague, if you used the restroom. But the modern stations lack pizzazz. With a few exceptions they’re bland utilitarian structures smothered with ads for lotteries and smokes. The fifties and sixties saw the finest gas station architecture – and much of it is still around. Here’s the next Buzz Photo Challenge: old gas stations. Of course most will be restored and reused. Shoot what you like and post them this week and next, while I’m on semi-hiatus.
To get you started: the hut above is an old Clark station, I believe. It was somewhere in Northeast Minneapolis – the shot’s a few years old. They had a distinctive small office – no service bays, round reddish-orange sign. You can’t get Clark gas anymore. The company’s still around, but I’ll be switched if I know what they do.
There's a Clark Station on
There's a Clark Station on Rice St. in St. Paul. Lots of Clark's still out east.
As for cool-looking service stations, I hope someone offers up Cloquet's famous Frank Lloyd Wright station. Which is currently a pretty sad looking place if you ask me. Of course, Wright's vision of the gas station as the community hubs of tomorrow was a little daffy.