This is a video I've wanted to edit for more than 20 years. Really. For even longer than that, I've had a love affair with retro-futurism. Things to Come. Metropolis. Streamlined moderne architecture. Teardrop-shaped cars... For as long as I can remember, I've been entranced by the wind tunnel efficiency and earnest optimism of yesterday's tomorrows. William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum" reminded me also of the totalitarian underside to these fantasies, particularly those arising from the Great Depression. But I am drawn to their plucky can-do spirit all the same. So when I found myself in the middle of this semester's crush of projects, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the minutia of these days' obligations, I dug up hours of source material and cut this video. The song is by Donald Fagen. The scenes range from 1927 to 1968, the year I was born. The future, of course, is where it has always been: Just beyond today's fears.
Source Material
American Telephone and Telegraph (1961) Seeing the Digital Future
David Butler [Dir.] (1930) Just Imagine
Fritz Lang [Dir.] (1927) Metropolis
General Motors (1940) To New Horizons
General Motors (1956) Design for Dreaming
General Motors (1956) Keys to the Future
Peter Bogdanovich [Dir.] (1968) Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women
Philco-Ford Corporation (1967) Year 1999 A.D.
Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (1956) Man and the Moon
Westinghouse Electric Company (1939) The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair
William Cameron Menzies [Dir.] (1936) Things to Come
Panorama composed of nine separate images by Andrew F. Wood
During my recent trip to D.C. (attending the National Communication Association's annual conference), I was drawn to this artwork that dominates the north lobby of the AFL-CIO headquarters: Lumen Martin Winter's Labor Omnia Vincit ("Work Conquers All"). The 15-by-71-foot mosaic mural offers a vivid sense of what the future looked like (at least to some folks) in 1973.
Following up on this week's posting of Raygun Gothic photos, I couldn't wait to check out the current status of San Jose's Mexico Theatre [opened in 1949 as The Mayfair]. I thought it'd been demolished. But it's still there, waiting to come back to life.
"Los Angeles was a bad idea, and I spent two weeks there. It was prime [Raygun] country; too much of the Dream there, and too many fragments of the Dream waiting to snare me. I nearly wrecked the car on a stretch of overpass near Disneyland, when the road fanned out like an origami trick and left me swerving through a dozen minilanes of whizzing chrome teardrops with shark fins. [Hollywood was] even worse."
- William Gibson, "The Gernsback Continuum"
Here's my final (for now!) collection of Raygun Gothic photos [don't forget to check out Part 1 and Part 2]. Naturally we have to conclude our tour in L.A.!
Cole and Santa Monica, West Hollywood
Cole and Santa Monica, West Hollywood (another view)
"The designers were populists, you see; they were trying to give the public what it wanted. What the public wanted was the future."
- William Gibson, "The Gernsback Continuum"
Following up on yesterday's post, I'm sharing more images from my Raygun Gothic photo collection. These buildings reflect an early- to mid-twentieth century fascination with the moderne, a stylized version of "the future" where the buildings seem to be copied from Flash Gorden comics and Amazing Stories pulp magazines [Learn more]. Here's part two!
"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.]
San Jose, CA theatre
1197 East Santa Clara Street [See more pix]
I'm presenting an Honors Humanities lecture on the U.S. Constitution tomorrow and, for no particular reason, I've committed to memorizing the Preamble. As most of my pals know, memory is one of my weakest public speaking skills. Indeed, I spent a couple hours on a recent evening working through various mnemonic techniques - just to wrap my brain around that danged Fifth Amendment [so many "nors"!]. So far, the classic approach seems to work best for me: storing bits of information in "places" that form a logical narrative. Still, for those folks who are more musically inclined, there is at least one other way to learn that danged Preamble…
Over the next few weeks I'll be posting collections of images and video from our 2011 European Grand Tour (catch the original video here). While we savored our share of famous artwork and cultural sites, I also spent time exploring the seedier stuff along the way - keeping an especially keen eye for spray-art and cheesy neon signs. Here's an example from Boulevard de Clichy in the Pigalle district of Paris.
Our last day. We'd been planning this trip for years. Saving for it that long too. Seriously, we've had fights that seemed vicious enough to inspire divorce peter out after one of us would mention the Europe trip. How could we split when we had this trip in our future! We'd spent the last year in serious prep-mode, arranging and rearranging details in the hopes of producing this thing. We envisioned that decades from now we'd recall our European Grand Tour and share memories… climbing the acropolis, sailing among Greek islands, strolling along the Seine. We'd done it, and it was all wonderful. And now it was almost over.
So we launched ourselves into the day, taking the metro to Notre Dame Cathedral and anticipating a nightmare to get in. Actually, though lines began forming early in the morning, we had no problem finding our way inside. As usual, folks ignored the no photography signs and lit the place up with flashes (I had to take a couple shots too; sue me). Strangely enough, a wedding rehearsal was underway, which meant that our tour was augmented by celebratory music and priestly intonations. I hope the bride and groom enjoyed the extra attention.
Walking back across the Seine I searched out pieces of spray art, glad to finally find some of the stuff in Paris. We had no formal plans until our evening's encounter with the Moulin Rouge, allowing us to follow instinct from place to place. Gradually I noticed that the concentrations of graffiti and other street art had begun to thicken. Before long I realized that we were near Centre Pompidou and its world-renowned collection of modern and contemporary art. Ever the kind soul, Jenny consented to adding a stop and we used our Paris Pass to score free tickets. Riding the escalators up the facade of that crazily postmodern edifice that resembled a factory turned inside out by a malfunctioning transporter, we noticed clanking, crunching sounds augmented by droning chants. Later we'd learn that the auditory assault was a piece by Mickey Hart called "Soundwalk."
The displays were predictably mind-bending, conveying a sense that anything can be art -- even the guards who sat forlornly in their street clothes. A tangled mess of metal strewn about a floor: Art? Definitely. A cluster of people staring at a canvas of Yves Klein's IKB: Art? Surely. An empty wall, devoid of installation or explanation: Art? Maybe. Jenny was less thrilled with stuff that seemed defined more by various "artist's statements" and critical responses than recognizable aesthetic pleasure. I was pretty impressed, though. Lots of Kandinsky and a respectable array of Picasso, along with the requisite Andy Warhol. Even one of Duchamp's urinals. We even spotted a photograph of the UK Pavilion from the 2010 World's Fair. Even after seeing this thing personally I only now recognized a human face in the interior design. Amazing.
We followed a random course among the monuments, playing hide and seek with a black cat that had crossed our path, and then we headed back to the hotel. Just one last item on the itinerary to go. This one was, I suppose, mostly for Jenny. Yet I was the one who insisted that we pay the crazy-expensive price for tickets. The Moulin Rouge is pretty much the most famous cabaret in the world, though it offers almost nothing to remind you of Toulouse-Lautrec or that movie that Jenny loves so much. Instead you get dudes in tuxes offering obsequious welcomes, get-to-know-your-neighbor tight seating, and vigilant checks against anyone who'd dare to use a camera inside.
You also get one hell of a show after dinner. I couldn't begin to tell you what actually happened in the performance. But I remember lots of glimpses. There was a nearly naked babe thrashing about in a water tank filled with snakes. There were topless cancan dancers. There was a talking dog (really). It was obnoxiously entertaining. Relentlessly tacky. Exhaustingly fun. And when a tiny wisp of feather floating down from one of the dancer's outfits, I caught it for Jenny. I knew she'd want it.
We stumbled out of the theater (well, I stumbled, actually, after drinking the full bottle of champagne that came with our meals - and finishing the bottle inexplicably left by one of our neighbors) and entered the metro for one last ride. Three weeks of airplanes, trains, boats, cars, and an ATV had led to this: a final trip to our hotel where we would pack our bags and head home. We had an insanely early airport shuttle scheduled the next morning, yet we insisted on watching the Eiffel Tower from our room at 1 a.m. On schedule, those glittering lights fluttered with kinetic exuberance. I sought some sort of descriptive language but could only think of fireflies in an invisible jar. Five minutes or so clicked by as we celebrated that last moment together, embracing each other and Paris too. The time passed and then, as we knew it would, the Tower blinked off for the night.
As part of our recent Wood Family visit to Bryce Canyon we scheduled a stopover in Las Vegas. Since I've done some academic writing about this place, I wanted to check out the current state of Sin City's omnitopian phantasmagoria. That meant a pricy but pleasant stay in New York-New York. Talk about a totalizing environment! When we drove into the parking garage, a poster-version of "Vinny" (The NYNY spokes-guido) reminded us to say "Yo" to the guy at the gate. Inside, "Vinny" was constantly offering tips on where to get "unfreakingbelievable" deals in a place that's like New York, but "without the potholes." We wandered around a fake Greenwich Village, we strolled across a miniature Brooklyn Bridge, and, of course, we gazed upon an ersatz Lady Liberty statue holding her own against the nearby Luxor Pyramid and "Paris" Eiffel tower. As always, Vegas entertains exhaustively.
After settling in we tackled a late-afternoon hike along the Strip from our hotel to "Paris" in search of Le Village Buffet. Sure, you'll spot dozens of I-15 billboards touting cheap eats ("Steak and Lobster, $3.95!") but most sure things in Vegas cost a premium. So we aimed relatively high. Foodies will scoff, but we found the Paris buffet to be a pretty decent meal for the price. The buffet is organized around various interpretations of French provinces, so you can try roast beef in "Burgundy," crepes in "Brittany," or pasta in "Provence," and, depending on the crowd, you might even find yourself in a cheery seating area complete with a "fireplace." Jenny was initially wary at the exorbitant cost, but our seats - right next to the dessert station - convinced her that we made the right call.
Returning to our hotel, we found ourselves caught in a surprisingly persistent summer shower. One benefit, at least, was the quick drop in temperature from its earlier shoe-melting 100+ degree high. After the rain cleared Jenny and I headed out once more to jostle our way down the Strip, wading through neon street puddles in search of night photography opportunities.
Ah, the Strip: overdressed kids stumbling on high heels while shrieking "Vegas, Baby!" at random intervals and photographing themselves for posterity, middle-aged aloha-wearing dudes sipping from yard-long booze-tubes hanging from their necks, and scruffy-looking "snappers" hustling to plant "Sexy Girls in Your Hotel Room!" business cards into the sweaty hands of the desperate and the stupid [As you can see from the photo above, Jenny wasn't buying that particular pitch]. The highlight of our walk was a Caesars Palace fireworks show that joined the Bellagio Fountains to produce an Independence Day spectacle. Sure, it wasn't technically the Fourth of July yet. But Vegas doesn't seem too stressed about verisimilitude. Thanks, Vinny. We loved the show.
Recently I came across a video I'd been seeking for years: the BBC adaptation of William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum." A short production - barely 11 minutes - "Tomorrow Calling" is an earnest if somewhat cheesy depiction of Gibson's sublime short story. It is also, as you'd imagine, a British retelling, abandoning the story's references to L.A. and Tucson (and San Jose!).
"The Gernsback Continuum" makes a regular appearance in my COMM 149 classes - sometimes to the consternation of my students who struggle to wrangle with the author's rat-a-tat pop culture references and full-tilt plunge into weirdness.
Never read the story? I recommend that you start there. Afterward you might check out the BBC's version. Doing it the other way around - or, God forbid, limiting your exposure to the video - would be like dismissing the need to read The Great Gatsby because the movie is available at Blockbuster [Ooops, I'm dating myself. I mean Netflix].
And, no, Gibson's short story isn't "great literature," but it's certainly worth a read. Then a look.
Thinking ahead to next summer's European adventure, a grand tour we've been planning for years, I anticipate the kinds of photos we'll take. Yes, there will be towers, both Eiffel and Leaning (helpfully held up by our own hands, thanks to the trickery of forced perspective). You bet there will be Roman ruins and English pubs. Oh, and castles in Scotland? We'll see one or two.
Part of the fun for any trip is taking pictures. Part of the obligation, too. Susan Sontag once compared the ritual of tourist photography to the Puritan Work Ethic, in which leisure becomes an extension of labor. We "shoot" to capture, to fix, to consume, of course. Sometimes we shoot to mock, to violate, to hurt, too. But mostly we take pictures to make sure that we've "gotten it right." It's our duty to get that shot of Chartres, that frame of the Parthenon, that composition of Stonehenge. Photography is proof of life. One needn't trip into psychoanalysis to understand that, for me, snapping the shutter is an obsession (nearly so, at least).
So I look forward to a journey arranged so that we can look back on the trip. I know it's silly and skewed to think that way. As much as possible I'll try to be present in this place I've yearned to visit since the late eighties, when we lived in Europe but hardly saw any of it. I'll try to look through my own eyes more than through the camera lens. There are conversations to be had and paths to be explored. There's a continent of experience that cannot be sussed out through even the most clever Photoshop simulacra. I want to see it all - for real.
And what if the camera were to break, or get lost or stolen? Wouldn't Europe still be worth visiting?
I'm attempting an experiment in word recovery: I'm bringing back the word "swell."
You remember "swell," don't you? You certainly heard it in Pleasantville as a stand-in for staid, bland 50s culture. Indeed, from the 1920s through the 1950s, swell grew from being a mildly rebellious adjective, an affront to Victorian discipline, to become an all-purpose affirmation of that which is good.
However, in an essay published in American Speech, Robert L. Moore identifies the mid-1960s as a turning point, the time when swell became, well, uncool. Swell became associated with cocktails when the kids were turning onto pot. Swell was World War II while Vietnam raged in the jungles and on television. No longer trapped as a beatnik affectation with its suggestions of funky jazz authenticity, cool marked the baby boomers' time to come of age.
I grew up in the world of cool. It was like air; I breathed it unconsciously. But by the mid-70s, cool had lost its own cachet as faint defiance and had settled into comfortable middle age. I'm pretty sure the first time I heard something being called cool was something my mom said. By now, cool is pretty much anything that doesn't suck.
That said, I never thought much about the meaning of cool until a faculty colleague asked me with disarming directness just what the word means. I stammered out an answer, something about social acceptability. I suppose I made sense, but as my students know, I'm the last person to say that I'm cool, or that I have some insight into its meaning.
Maybe that's why I want to bring back the word "swell." But there's more to it than that. Let's consider the two words more closely.
Cool signifies a degree of detachment, a kind of social distance. When I was a kid, those fellows who leaned against a wall, steadied by one cocked knee, were cool. The ones who didn't seem to need the affirmation of others were cool. Cool is a performance of knowing the right pose, knowing the right attitude, knowing the right fashion.
The problem is that while a pair of blue jeans was once cool, today's hip threads (even jeans) come much more dearly. Cool demands a complex economy, which can get pretty expensive, and one's dues are never fully paid to join this club. Flip through any issue of Esquire or Cosmo and you'll know what I mean.
Swell seems so much more appropriate for our era of economic uncertainty than cool. Swell suggests an almost libertine pleasure, a glandular expansion that mocks deprivation. In a previous incarnation, swell referred to high social status. Often it was used as a noun: "He's a real swell." But I refer to the more recent popular usage, a cheerful optimism that comes with little cost. Cocktails were once swell; now they're cool. Malts have always been swell (though anything can be cool if you're willing to pay enough).
Cool is confidence that masks alienation. Swell is confidence, plain and simple. And it's much more fun to say.
So join the club. Trying weaving "swell" into your everyday speech. Sprinkle it among your positive adjectives for fun, for kitsch, for old time's sake. Let's start a swell revolution!
Learn More: Moore, R.L. (2004). We're cool, mom and dad are swell: Basic slang and generational shifts in values. American Speech, 79(1), 59-86 -- also, here's a news article written by Moore to summarize the academic article.
We just returned from Portland, Oregon, where we visited Reed College (unofficial motto: Communism, Atheism, Free Love) a second time. Vienna has been accepted there, but she's still deciding between Reed and UC Santa Cruz. Thus we made another trip, this time to hang out with Reedies, attend some Q&As, and drop Vienna off to stay overnight in a dorm. That latter part left Jenny and I with some free time, so we toured a couple of Portland's famed tiki haunts, one venerable and one relatively new.
Pointy puffer fish glowed red and orange and green and imposing idols lured us from the city into a fantasy of 50s and 60s-era American kitsch. We ordered some pu pus, including a carafe of cashews (though macadamia nuts were available, too), and I settled into an artfully mixed Mai-Tai: fruit-garnished, frothy, amber-colored, semi-tart with just a hint of sweetness under the parasol. Perfect. I followed that libation with something called an Aviatrix, which is a staff member's interpretation of an 1850s-cocktail. Having no point of comparison, I happily sipped the complex drink, offered by a dude who assured me that he was the best bartender I would ever have. Things got blurry right about then and I knew quickly that there'd be no third drink for me. I will return, though. Thatch is a great tiki bar. All the more reason for me to hope that our daughter will choose Portland!
We have returned from two weeks of sumptuous BBQ and goofy adventures throughout the Deep South.
The 2007 Wood Family Southern Routes BBQ Tour included a visit to New Orleans and the Gulf States region, hang gliding lessons in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and even a night in a Mississippi shotgun shack. Along the way, we discovered the best brisket and ribs we've ever eaten.
If you'd like to retrace our steps over 4,500 miles, 15 days, and 21 BBQ stops, point your browser to:
Here's part three of a growing list of essential road trip experiences. I might work on this project over the next few weeks and perhaps even create a glossy poster once I reach 100.
So, here are the next five...
While driving any road called Highway 11 play John Mellencamp's "Minutes to Memories."
Drive cross-country from east to west, reading the nation's topography as a story.
Organize a road trip by theme. We've had luck with trips dedicated to BBQ joints, presidential sites, and noted numbered highways.
Visit Darwin, Minnesota, and its famed "Biggest Ball of Twine." Listen to Weird Al Yankovic's song of the same name at least ten times before you arrive.
Find an empty highway with a straight and level grade. Play Judas Priest's "Turbo Lover." Got your foot on the pedal? Find the metal.
My daughter, Vienna, is planning to take her first road trip after her eighteenth birthday, less than five months away, and she's asked me to construct a list of essential road trip experiences. However, I've been a bit nervous about fulfilling that request. To me, any effort to define the perfect road trip experience will only reveal my ignorance, the places I haven't yet seen. My inclination is to wait another two or three decades until I'm sure I've traveled enough of the country. But as the philosophers say, I ought not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So, here are five essential road trip experiences. Later on, I'll add more. In no particular order…
Drive a dusty stretch of Route 66, preferably west of Oklahoma City, while the trains roll alongside; listen to Nat King Cole's "Laura."
Visit a tacky tourist trap. Count the billboards on your way to Wall Drug in South Dakota.
Eat some genuinely sublime barbeque. Set your course for Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and gorge at Dreamland.
Drive through the southern Utah desert along the red rocks in the rain; listen to The Doors' "Riders on the Storm."
Stay at a classic Mom-and-Pop motel like the Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, New Mexico. In the twilight, find a metal chair and watch the cars roll by.
For some reason a local affiliate station airs 50s-era black and white episodes of Dragnet every once in a while, usually sometime after midnight. Commercial breaks are stitched into the episode with the precision and grace of a blind taxidermist working from mismatched body parts, and the film quality is pretty wretched, but I don't care. I set my DVR to catch every episode. Dragnet is my number one guilty pleasure.
If you've seen one episode you've got the whole idea. In its radio and television iterations, whether in black and white or in color, Dragnet never really changed -- at least not too much. For over two decades since his 1949 radio debut Detective Joe Friday and his partners caught a variety of cases, working in robbery, homicide, juvenile, and even the "bunco squad." As a procedural, the show followed the course of their investigations from initial canvassing to "just desserts," when the crook would face the harsh but fair wages of sin. The plot advanced according to the complexity of the case. One radio episode followed the real-time efforts of cops to catch a bomber. Some episodes took place over a number of weeks. While movies such as LA Confidential mocked Dragnet's fakery and hypocrisy, the show was originally praised for its no-nonsense realism. Many listeners and viewers had never heard of an APP or R & I or MO until Dragnet. Cops generally loved the show for its attempt to depict the gritty and sometimes mundane truth about their jobs.
For me, Dragnet began as an exercise in kitsch. Starting with re-runs on Nick-at-Nite and TV Land I loved watching Joe Friday and his partner Bill Gannon, two black and white characters in a Technicolor world, facing down potheads, hippies, and other assorted riffraff floating about late-sixties Los Angeles. Every episode would begin with a tour of local schools, churches, and happenings, all wrapped up into one synecdochal line: "This is the city." I'd wait for favorite moments: Joe and Bill exchanging a knowing head nod, people employing some goofy pantomime to illustrate something being said, the way cops always walked with such clinched authority.
I also love the speaking patterns of Dragnet, particularly Joe Friday's delivery, which is alternately staccato-clipped and deadpan laconic. Friday's creator, Jack Webb, insisted that his cop should be low-key and professional, a patient and methodical detective, mirroring the LAPD cops he idolized. Studying his real-life counterparts, Webb produced a show built mainly around questions. Even a statement of fact would be turned into a question with the aid of an invitational tag such as, "You say you live alone, is that right?" In a 1958 Film Quarterly essay, Paul A. Jorgensen cites research stating that 60 percent of the show's dialogue consists of questions. Beyond those procedural interrogations and some light banter between Friday and his colleagues, the show is stripped of any ornament. I suppose that's what I love most about Dragnet: its promise of simplicity and consistency.
Webb's production company, Mark VII, created Dragnet and plenty of related shows such as Adam-12, Emergency!, and Project Blue Book. I loved each of these shows (even carrying an Adam 12 lunch box as a kid), yet I had no idea that one man produced them all. Thus I feel warm appreciation for Jack Webb who, even as a young man, was a notorious workaholic. A 1954 Time Magazinecover story paints a vivid picture:
Unlike his creature, Sergeant Friday, Webb can roar with laughter and talk with vast intensity and enthusiasm. He attracts all sorts of people. But he has few friends, almost no social life and is seldom seen in Hollywood nightspots. Nothing but an ailing script can keep him from sleeping nine hours a night, and he is hard at work every morning at 8 o'clock. In his spare time he stares at motion pictures, often "stopping them and backing them up" to engage in rapt inspection of every last optical effect and lap dissolve. In five years, he has read only one book (The Caine Mutiny), but few films, good, bad or indifferent, have escaped his coldly appraising eye.
Aficionados all know that the hard drinking, jazz loving, chain smoking perfectionist died young at the age of 62. He's interred at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills, a gravesite I plan to visit one day. I will make that pilgrimage out of respect for an actor and LAPD advocate who never seemed to fit into his times exactly. And along the way I'll listen to Dragnet radio episodes, remembering the craft of a true professional.
Jorgensen, P.A. (1958). The permanence of Dragnet. Film Quarterly, 12(1), 35-40.
Roborant, Dragnet Radio Show: "Dragnet has to be one of the most famous radio programs of all time. The dum-de-dum-dum theme by Walter Schumann is known to people who have never heard the radio shows or seen the television series and the phrase "just the facts, Ma'am" is part of our culture. Dragnet was probably the first "reality-based" program of any kind. At its height, it was one of the top-rated shows on the radio."
Staff writer. (1954, March 15). Jack, be nimble!Time Magazine, np.
As we prepare for the Wood Family Southern Routes BBQ Tour later this summer, I look back on my first road trips, and I remember how much I hated long drives as a kid.
Back then, the only vacations we took were our yearly drives from Dunedin to Tallahassee along US 19. The trip wound through congested towns that slowly gave way to rural west coast Florida in a northwestern arc that led us to where my aunt and uncle lived. Some years we joined them for Thanksgiving, others we visited for Christmas. And while I loved seeing my family I just couldn't stand being cooped up in a car for five hours. My mom tried to help me endure those trips, weighing me down with newly purchased books that would occupy my time. I tried to lose myself in the Encyclopedia Brown mystery books she'd buy. And yet the seemingly endless miles of boredom drove me nuts.
I do remember one highlight, though: the giant dinosaur at Spring Hill, near Weeki Wachee. A 1969 postcard from my collection offers useful description: "The only Dinosaur Station of its kind in the world. Overall Length 110 feet; Main body 34 feet High; Head 48 feet high." I loved that highway dinosaur (as well as a smaller one nearby). Once I saw it, I forgot my boredom and simply marveled at the huge beast.
Today the station remains open, though as an independent auto repair garage. And these days my family will often drive five hours before lunch on some of our road trips. I am delighted that my daughter has survived her early years as a passenger, because I remember vividly how much she dreaded those trips. Now every once in a while she'll express a yearning to hit the pavement and see how far we can go. One day we'll return to Spring Hill and photograph a roadside icon that, for me, started it all.
Learn More
November 10, 2003, St. Petersburg Times, Real Florida: Monster Garage: "Used to be that U.S. 19 in Hernando County was dark, dark as midnight in the country. Even on U.S. 19, a guy could lean up against a gas pump, look up and see the Milky Way if there were no car headlights heading his way. And if a fellow wanted, he could look back at the dinosaur. Its eyes glowed in the dark."
May 3, 2007, St. Petersburg Times, Kitschy, Maybe, but Sights Say Home: "For those tooling north on U.S. 19, the big concrete dinosaur that now houses Harold's Auto Center meant that Weeki Wachee Springs was coming up soon. 'We knew we were almost to the mermaids when we saw the dinosaur,' said 52-year-old Roberta Reese of Brooksville. 'We lived in Largo, and my grandparents used to take us to see them all the time. I got really excited when I saw that dinosaur.'"
