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Old gas stations

2jakes

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,680
Location
Alamo Heights ☀️ Texas
Terminator_gives_the_smile_a_chance_in_T2.jpg

It's sooner than you think! :(
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LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,750
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea

The big fellow there is a repainted Texaco Big Friend, a relic of the horrifying "Your Car's Big Friend" campaign of the 1960s.

texaco-cropped-small.png


This campaign was a problem as soon as it got started, with the figures requring a heavy and secure anchoring system to keep them from fracturing or blowing down during bad weather, and Texaco dealers did not consider them Big Friends at all. The campaign flopped, and most of the figures that were manufactured were never put on display. Most were sold off piecemeal to various independent operations that repainted them in their own colors or otherwise modified and disfigured them to suit their needs. Some were even used in terrifying Cold War-era interspecies genetic modification experiments designed to breed an army of savage rabbit-human hybrid soldiers. Note that the uniform includes an ascot, signifying the poor creature's betrayal of its own class identity in favor of self-identification with the very bourgeois masters who were responsible for its physical mutilation.

pomo_0716_harvey_the_rabbit_aloha_pyuowg.jpg




A standard Texaco sign pole was fifteen feet high, so you can see that a Big Friend was well over twenty feet of quivering fiberglass muscle. About 300 Big Friends were made by the International Fiberglass Company, the same firm that manufactured Dino for Sinclair and the Tiger for Esso.

big-friends-wating-for-delivery.jpg


Rare photo of the registration line at the 1967 Petroleum Marketing Mascots Association convention in Passaic, New Jersey. Note that there's already a pair of shoes in the lost and found. You know how it is at conferences.

We never participated in the campaign at our station -- Maine weather was extremely inhospitable for such creatures. Which is a good thing, because I have no doubt that I would have been traumatized for life if I'd come around the corner one day and had seen such a monstrosity grinning down at me.
 

2jakes

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,680
Location
Alamo Heights ☀️ Texas
Where did you find that wonderful photograph of Lemko Hall?

My paternal grandfather, Simion, was the founding President of the Lemko association, which he headed for thirty years. He found the building (the location of a failed bank), and raised the funds to purchase it as the club headquarters and social hall.

When I read or watch a movie and I find something interesting
place or location, I go on the "search engine" to learn more.
Google search:
Google.jpg

Also with Google Map, I can go to the locations to see the current status.
Almost like taking a drive around town!
Screen Shot 2017-12-23 at 2.56.15 PM.png
 
Last edited:

vitanola

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,254
Location
Gopher Prairie, MI
When I read or watch a movie and I find something interesting
place or location, I go on the "search engine" to learn more.
Google search:
View attachment 99415
Also with Google Map, I can go to the locations to see the current status.
Almost like taking a drive around town!
View attachment 99422

How very droll.

Let's try this again.

What led you to search for a picture of Lemko Hall? Was it that moving picture, or did you come across it whilst searching for something else?
 

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