from nowhere to nowhere

there is no denying jim potts is a bit nutty. his site, gassigns.org, is an indexed collection of hundreds, if not thousands of photographs of gas station signs, many predating the internet. while initally this seems just the sort of pointless crap that the intarweb is made of (which there's no denying), to the persistent user who is willing to scratch below the surface, an insightful and poignant narrative of contemporary history emerges.

this virtual museum of automotive ephemera presents a world shifting and changing in the rear-view mirror. in the face of urban alienation and existential angst, many a wayfarer finds themselves adrift and travelling. in the modern american landscape, in which one place closely resembles the next, as surely as one 7-11 will be just like the last, the little things that remain are these names and logos that serve as signposts on an endless journey from nowhere to nowhere.

many of the photographs are distant and motion-blurred, as if the prize after a long and perilous pursuit. some are accompanied by comments about how rare a certain brand of gas-station is, or how the company has since merged, been taken over, changed its name or gone out of business. thank heavens jim potts and his cohorts were there to record the fragments as they slipped by..

beyond this moving tale, there is amusement to be found in the names of the chains and stores themselves. stare in wide-eyed awe as we see a potted history of the western world since ww2, in the transition from "joy america" to "gas war". chortle like a red-cheeked schoolboy at the site of signs publicly naming this place "kum and go" and "mr. lubrication". and scratch your head in wonder that the word "quick" can be spelled so many other ways: like 'quik', 'kwik', 'kwick' and even 'qwik'.