Gazing at Gas Stations

Somewhere in a distant past, in some other galaxy, flying saucers actually resemble flying saucers. Robots are not human knockoffs, but glass-headed, track driven heaps of metal. Space stations have odd peaks and upswept roofs. And cars fly around in all their tailfin-bestowed glory. Ah yes, this distant past was the late fifties. And the galaxy was Beverly Hills.

Or rather, this was the imaginary galaxy I felt transported to in 2003, when I first visited Beverly Hills. It was not the über-shoppers on Rodeo Drive or the majestic presence of the that captivated me so much that I had to move here later. It was not the lush, green, immaculately kept front lawns or the nice collection of supercars roaming the city streets. It was a gas station. It was station on Crescent.

Coming from Europe, and particularly Scandinavia, design is not trivial to me. How we design our products and buildings says something about what we are thinking at this very moment in time. Looking at old architecture is like peering into the minds of the people who were here before us. What they wanted to achieve. How they felt about the world. And so, when I first visited Beverly Hills in 2003, I was awestruck when I first laid eyes on that 76 station.

The roof structure, originally part of Paul Williams’ design for parts of LAX, looks like it can’t stand being on the ground. Its corners reach upward, as if trying to reach out for the stars, while being tethered at the center by the repressive normality of dull, suburban life. It wants to go explore the universe, it wants to fly, but forces beyond its control is holding it back.

Hold on, are we still talking about a gas station here?

Yes and no. It’s really just a gas station designed in the late fifties, in the style of Googie architecture. Just like Norm’s on La Cienega or Mel’s on Sunset in neighboring Weho. But to me, it was more than that. To me, it was everything my life in Scandinavia in 2003 was not. It was bold, courageous, and it looked like the very essence of the weird galaxy called Southern California that I grew up observing from afar—through movies, TV, magazines and comic books.

Of course, after looking like a complete idiot for about ten minutes, just gazing at the structure like a drunk bum, I started seeing all the decay. How the optimism and boldness of the late fifties had given way to the wear and tear of the decades gone by. In a symbolic, but also in a very literal sense. It hadn’t gotten a lot better when I moved into an apartment on Crescent a few years later, just steps away from that 76 station.

I had pulled up every root I had, and had moved to California from my native, over-safe, over-normal and murderously unambitious Denmark, fueled by the can-do nature of people here. Even though the optimism of the late fifties and sixties was crushed by the wars and fuel crises of the 70s, that 76 station was still standing there, showing its age. There was still an unbeatable optimism and an insistence on living the good life here in Beverly Hills. Nothing symbolized it more to me than Jack Colker’s 76.

This blog is dedicated to those perspectives. How an outsider, who chose to live in this area over anywhere else in the world, views the city. The other side of Beverly Hills.

Jack Colker’s 76 also has stellar gas prices, probably the highest in the nation. How people can afford not to drive the few blocks down to the hyper-modern Arco on Robertson and Olympic instead is beyond me.

But that’s a whole different story.