"During the high point of the [Streamlined Moderne Age], they put Ming the Merciless in charge of designing California gas stations. Favoring the architecture of his native Mongo, he cruised up and down the coast erecting raygun emplacements in white stucco. Lots of them featured superfluous central towers ringed with those strange radiator flanges that were a signature motif of the style, and made them look as though they might generate potent bursts of raw technological enthusiasm, if you could only find the switch that turned them on. I shot one in San Jose an hour before the bulldozers arrived and drove right through the structural truth of plaster and lathing and cheap concrete."
- William Gibson, "The Gernsback Continuum"
I've always been fascinated by Raygun Gothic, and I've been collecting images of those examples of this gaudy, goofy style for about ten years now. I thought I'd share some of my favorites... [I'll post more
tomorrow.]
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San Jose, CA theatre
1197 East Santa Clara Street [See more pix] |
(Photographs by Andrew Wood and Jenny Wood)
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