Wednesday, November 14, 2007

If You Have To Ask...

...you can't afford it. These merchants take advantage of very self-indulgent customers. This makes me think of an R. Crumb comic book in which a rumpled agitator is running around screaming, "Come the revolution, ain't gonna be no more Cadillacs!"

This dealership is way out in the suburbs. I dislike newer, sprawling American suburbs, with their cultural sterility,
lawn care fetishes and utter dependence on automobiles. Now I must confess that I don't live in the City of St. Louis proper, which has 350,000 people in a metropolitan area of 2.6 million (although I have worked or gone to school in it for 40 years). St. Louis had more than 900,000 people in 1950 but was bled by suburban development. My town, Webster Groves, is a suburb, but it is just outside the city limits, old by local standards and has city streets rather than subdivisions. It is racially and economically mixed. My family left the core city when the public schools became intolerable. I've been poking around the nether 'burbs on some recent weekends looking for things to shoot and I'm finding little of interest, mostly heaps of blandness. It's like the way Gertrude Stein described Oakland, California: there is no there there.

TOMORROW: Thursday Arch Series

5 comments:

  1. je trouve le logo très beau, les ailes de la liberté

    I find the logo beautiful, the wings of freedom

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  2. Geez, you've all but nailed my town, almost. It was organized in 1859 on the Mississippi River. Now with growth from Minneapolis, it is considered a suburb. Old section is city like, new section is subdivided...and complete with, arrgggh, a couple chain restaurants and strip malls. Depressing, ain't it? But in the steile 'burbs we reside....no Maserati dealers here. ;)

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  3. Opposite from you, I love suburb with all their parks, malls and empty street. Well I guess am too long live in downtown with its concrete forest. Viewing of green and nature are something craving to see at the end of the day. Anyway, too bad we don't have those fancy dealer for Maserati in my town, so while I was in Los Angeles, that was one attraction for me. And your picture just remind me of those trip to this fancy dealer car. Cool shot!

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  4. Thank you all for your comments. My attitude on this is personal. Other people have their own preferences. Sally from Sydney once told me that if my header advertises "the occasional rant" I really should have some.

    I grew up in New York City and I prefer urban density. We have plenty of green space in the city of St. Louis: it has more parks that the suburbs and Forest Park is the largest urban park in the US, bigger than Central or Golden Gate. Anyway, I have some personal objections to the use of resources on hundred thousand dollar cars and to suburban sprawl's social and environmental costs. No problem with rural areas. It's what is in between that turns me off.

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  5. Masarati sports cars of yore were beautiful to behold!

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