Continuing the theme from yesterday’s post of the Igloo ice cream store, today we have a gas station fashioned to resemble an iceberg. I get the igloo-iceberg-ice cream connection, but why you would build a gas station to look like an iceberg is beyond me. Unless, of course, it was purely to be eye-catching to passing motorists, which is all you need to do, really. I have no idea when this place was around or where; the caption merely read “Los Angeles, California.” But it is something I wouldn’t be at all surprised to come across if I were driving around LA in the 1920s or 1930s.
Another building that’s new to me! I tried making a spread sheet listing each mimetic building in “California Crazy & Beyond,” then added stuff that wasn’t in the book. Since some of these were chains and franchises, the list got to be pretty long. And in some cases, like the Chili Bowls, no one seems to know exactly how many there were. 18? 23? Likewise for the Betsy Ann Ice Cream stands, Giant Oranges, etc. I’m pretty well convinced that, at its peak, there were hundreds of these buildings scattered all over Los Angeles county. Which means to me that if you were driving around at that time, you would have encountered them everywhere. That must have been an incredible experience.
LA back in the day provided so much amusement to a country that was in need of amusement. Wish we had people today that would provide us with that same type of fun. We need it more now than ever.