Remember that car ad (maybe it was a truck ad) where they showed the “life cycle” of a gas station? It ran from the vintage sepia-toned early days, though the 1950s, to a hyper-modern one today, with changing styles and renovations all the way through, as vehicles from the various eras pulled up and fueled up?
Then, the kicker at the end was they they tore it down, and replaced the meadow that was there, because future-cars run on lawn fumes or something.
Yeah, well, I hope you’re not surprised if I tell you that they don’t actually do that.
When gas stations close, they just leave ‘em there, to decay. (That’s called a brownfield, in case you’re interested.)
Here’s a gallery of 26 such abandoned gas stations — and Eric Tabuchi has actually found an additional 26, so if you wanted a whole deck of cards, you could kind of go for it.
There’s one of these right by my office, and another one a little further down the street. They’re pretty depressing, I gotta be honest, because you know that no one’s ever going to turn them into a cool restaurant or art gallery or anything. I’ll bet they’ll smell like gasoline forever.
But every time I pass them, a part of my brain remembers being in a Movies & More, gazing with pre-adolescent boy longing at the VHS cover of The Last Chase, which I totally was not allowed to rent, and I knew better than to even ask.
