John Margolies' photographs of roadside America

Posted by duck 5 days ago

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Comments

Comment by profsummergig 1 day ago

I love this. We need more whimsy. Unfortunately, refinement culture is taking over. Even the new McDonald's design is "private equity" refined.

Comment by paulaq 20 hours ago

Yes, and this is also a unique aesthetic of a place. I see this and I know it's the US. Refinement culture makes every place of the world look the same.

Comment by nephihaha 19 hours ago

"I know it's the US"

It could be Australia or Canada. They have similar.

Comment by mc32 1 day ago

He's probably photographed it, but one of the biggest and the pinnacle of this idea, I think, is the Longaberger building in Ohio. If he did photograph it, I think it should have been among the ones listed in the article. Of course it's not as "folksy" as the others but it's in the same vein though greater in scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Longaberger_Company

Comment by Animats 1 day ago

The Longaberger Building, the giant picnic basket, is for sale, and currently abandoned.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F6n_xlckNE

Comment by ericmay 1 day ago

Blame the suburbs and communism - those are the two driving factors there.

Suburbs: everything has to be standardized and made efficient for global supply chains. Private equity is just the mechanism to achieve that. Want better food and produce? Stop going to McDonald’s, Costco, and Starbucks in your Jeep Gladiator. Also need to stop wasting so much taxpayer dollars on these useless, endless highways that destroy local economies and entrepreneurship and spread us out so we are reliant on cars.

Communism: everything must be “modern”, bland, and sterile. Andy Warhol. Banksy. Tape a banana to the wall and stare at it in your all black jumpsuit. All bright, white fluorescent. Nothing out of the ordinary or quirky, no individuality, all chains, all the same style.

Comment by monksy 1 day ago

You can still have consumerism with a divergence of style. You just can't have large concentration of wealth in select businesses and high cost of entry.

This kind of style comes out when there is high compeition and an economy that can support experimentation.

Comment by apefulsin 16 hours ago

I didn't realise that McDonald's owned Andy Warhol. I always assumed Campbell's Soup did.

Comment by sdcfgy 18 hours ago

Communism? Have you ever been to a (former) communist/socialist country and seen the huge amount of art everywhere? I expect not. Great example https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haus_des_Lehrers

What we are seeing is Americanism which is reduction of everything into value extraction. And that means getting rid of art.

Comment by apefulsin 16 hours ago

Haven't you heard? Capitalism is now communism.

Comment by helsinkiandrew 16 hours ago

> Communism: everything must be “modern”, bland, and sterile

Have you ever seen the Moscow Metro?

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/oct/31...

Comment by morkalork 1 day ago

Is the communism in the room with us now?

Comment by mnkyokyfrnd 23 hours ago

Banksy is an intelligence project. Related is Jackson Pollock.

Comment by cynicalsecurity 1 day ago

Do you mean modernism? You most likely mean modernism. Yes, it sucks.

Comment by ericmay 15 hours ago

I strongly dislike modernism. I view it as related to, or perhaps even the artistic instrument of communist ideology.

Comment by wewxjfq 23 hours ago

You're so wrong that you're right again. The US funded and promoted modern art as a counterpoint to communism. There was even a submission about it a few weeks ago on here. [0]

> Nothing out of the ordinary or quirky, no individuality, all chains, all the same style.

One could say the same about capitalism/consumerism. In fact, many creatives have done so over the years. Bland and bleak life in the suburbs is a common theme. "Broad lawns and narrow minds" as Hemingway might have called it. So is the forlornness of a nondescript white-collar cubicle job. Even recently, the Backrooms taps into this.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49428080

Comment by ericmay 16 hours ago

The key difference is that communism converges on certain artistic styles as part of the ideology whereas market economies freely experiment. That’s why in communist societies you saw the suppression of artists and any deviation from the norm.

Consumerism, in my view, is also bad, but it’s not bad in the way that it affects art but bad in the way that demand for cheap goods forces fragile supply chains. It’s sort of lumped in with the suburbs critique. This poor building pattern arose because of demand for efficiency and cheap goods at all costs results in bland construction patterns. It just so happens that the blandness is a hallmark of communist styles of art and ideology.

The artist critiques you’re mentioning are criticizing the right thing (suburbia) for the wrong reason (capitalism and markets). In my view.

Capitalism of course has worthy critiques, but I think at least some if not much of the negative effects we see today are the result of massive nation states which are un-democratic.

Comment by AnimalMuppet 1 day ago

Banksy is part of "communism"? Consider me skeptical.

Comment by ericmay 1 day ago

It’s ideologically related and, unfortunately with our McDonald’s level standards of art and culture it passes for something akin to artwork.

You’ll find Flower Thrower at your local IKEA or hung in the bathroom of Chipotle. They wouldn’t be caught dead hanging actual art from, say, Renoir though. The focus is to destroy originality, destroy individuality, destroy religion, and promote sterilization (not of people, though of course in some cases authoritarian ideologies like this do promote such insanity) and mass production.

It’s all the same communist ethos. Not everyone agrees, and you’re certainly free to disagree of course, it’s just my opinion.

Comment by arrrg 22 hours ago

Your rant seems confused from an art history point of view.

I think we should talk about the Bauhaus and where they were coming from. Industrial mass production allowed for cheaply mass produced ornaments during Historicism. To me it is easily understandable why the Bauhaus wanted to find a different approach to how to deal with industrialization and how to incorporate it into architecture, going away from mere imitation and copying. I think it’s extremely fascinating that those ideas took root in the Soviet Union (creating utilitarian living spaces on a mass scale) and the USA (office buildings).

Many contemporary artists, however, have very little or nothing to do with Bauhaus and its ideas at all. There is just no link connecting them … and while the Soviet Union did employ industrialized mass production to build living spaces without ornaments its art was more often than not Socialist Realism, which is a different beast altogether.

But I do recommend you read Asylum for the Homeless by Adorno because I think you might like it: “Actually one can no longer dwell any longer. The traditional dwellings, in which we grew up, have taken on the aspect of something unbearable: every mark of comfort therein is paid for with the betrayal of cognition; every trace of security, with the stuffy community of interest of the family. The newly functionalized ones, constructed as a tabula rasa, are cases made by technical experts for philistines, or factory sites which have strayed into the sphere of consumption, without any relation to the dweller: they slap the longing for an independent existence, which anyway no longer exists, in the face.”

Comment by nephihaha 19 hours ago

You criticise the previous poster for seeing Communism everywhere and then recommend them a book by Adorno, a dyed in the wool red. That will confuse 'em.

https://iep.utm.edu/adorno/

Comment by arrrg 10 hours ago

Why? I wanted to point out the significant overlap in the views of Adorno and the ones expressed by the poster.

Also, that essay is a real banger.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by AnimalMuppet 15 hours ago

Your second paragraph sounds like you're using IKEA and Chipotle as the measure of whether something is communist. You're putting corporatism on the same side as communism. At a minimum, that's not a historically accurate standard.

I've seen the difference between communist art and non-communist (or at least post-communist) art, at a Russian Impressionism art gallery in Park City, Utah. There were all these paintings of the steppes - brown and green grass blowing in the wind. But the difference was, in the paintings from after 1990, you'd see these tiny bright bits of red. They were painting the same steppes, but after the fall of communism, they also painted the flowers, not just the grass.

Comment by ericmay 15 hours ago

> Your second paragraph sounds like you're using IKEA and Chipotle as the measure of whether something is communist. You're putting corporatism on the same side as communism. At a minimum, that's not a historically accurate standard.

Apologies if that was your interpretation of my comment as that wasn't my intention, and certainly not my belief. It's a bit like trying to figure out if Bitcoin is money or a store of value or something else. The art styles, well lack of them, and the blandness of the buildings is less about corporatism (which is more appropriately captured in Suburbia - fragile supply chains, government grid planning) and more about how communism and similar ideologies suppress individuality.

The reason it's a bit hard to parse is because corporate America is the instrument in which some of these ideologies are expressed. It's not the source of them which is easy to confuse. To a large extent corporations just give the people what they want at a profit. In my view.

> They were painting the same steppes, but after the fall of communism, they also painted the flowers, not just the grass.

I think that's a really good way insight (I've never seen the paintings just going off of your comment). You can see how communism suppressed artistic vision and creativity because, as you are aware, with authoritarian ideologies you have to suppress expression since it's dangerous to the established regime.

Comment by cucumber3732842 16 hours ago

Eh, you're gonna piss off a lot of jerks with the bit about communism and while you're not directly right, you're absolutely correct to be barking up the tree of central planning.

Everything looks the same these days because everything has to comply with local implementations of state implementations of the same federal regulations because that's how we do things in the US.

Feds take all the money. Feds doll it back out to the state in the form of grants with strings (drinking age is probably the most famous). States implement said strings which really means tell the locals to do it for the most part. And the states and locals are happy to enforce whatever if it means that the feds pick up 50% of the tab of that new traffic light they need that's 49% more expensive because it's built to federal standards, or whatever. Maybe it's a school thing or a sewer upgrade or whatever.

So then you get this stupid paradigm where even stuff that isn't McDicks or some other national chain with a brand they want to be consistent still gets built to look the same because it's complying with the same guidelines about turn radiuses and stormwater planters and interior/exterior light levels, etc, etc, etc and at any given point in time there's only one or a few cheapest ways to do all that. Any deviation is purely surface level, a custom color on a tile or panel. Chili's gets a brass chili for the door pull. The weed dispensary across the street gets a blunt. But it's still the same goddamn vestibule entrance built to the same dimensions that the same calculation spits out.

Comment by Ar-Curunir 15 hours ago

"Capitalist central planning is actually communism".

If you're going to use wrong words, then be prepared for people to be pissed off at your wrong usage.

Comment by ericmay 15 hours ago

What is capitalist central planning? That seems like an oxymoron to me.

Comment by Ar-Curunir 9 hours ago

Have you heard of, e.g., Walmart? How do you think their logistics works? Or, similarly, any modern capitalist economy? Do you think it's entirely decentralized planning with independent actors?

Comment by ericmay 8 hours ago

No, never heard of Wal-Mart. What's that?

Anyway...

Can you explain what capitalist central planning is?

Comment by morkalork 5 hours ago

Just taking the argument to extremes, what really is the material difference between "centrally planned communist economy decrees that X shall be produced for consumers" and "capitalist Walmart who has stranglehold on <market> decrees to suppliers X shall be produced for consumers". At the end of the day, you the consumer has been given the choice of X or nothing.

Comment by imgabe 17 hours ago

These are really cool. I made a map of them a few years ago: https://roadside.photography

Comment by NDlurker 1 day ago

Haha I knew Bob's Java Jive was going to be on there. Wasn't expecting the buffalo from Jamestown, ND.

Here's a good one from my hometown https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tommy-the-turtle

And then drive about 20 miles east and you hit this guy https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/w-eel-turtle

And then drive 30 miles north and you hit the original https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tommy-the-turtle-boissev...

Comment by FireBeyond 1 day ago

I'm pretty sure the Java Jive is still around. Or at least it was, 10 years ago.

Comment by NDlurker 15 hours ago

It is. I was there in July. Never went the whole time I lived in Tacoma, so had to make a stop when I was on vacation. It's a cool little bar

Comment by ofalkaed 22 hours ago

The Octopus Carwash is one of my early memories from trips to the twin cities, probably the first time I have seen it or thought about it in 40 years. Kind of weird to stumble on that after all these years, I opened the link curious if there would be anything from my Minnesota childhood but did not expect that.

Comment by js2 1 day ago

The LOC has a nice presentation of the complete collection two clicks away from the submitted link:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e31fca375f7a471a9a2e2cd...

via https://guides.loc.gov/roadside-america-photographs?loclr=fl...

via submitted link.

I was certain the collection had to have Lucy the Elephant and indeed it does:

https://www.loc.gov/item/2017712086/

https://lucytheelephant.org/

Comment by dfxm12 1 day ago

https://www.loc.gov/item/2017712086/

Full moon over Margate.

Comment by TwoFerMaggie 15 hours ago

https://bsky.app/profile/roadside.xor.blue

Been following this bot for a while. Didn't know it's all from this source. Neat!

Comment by bloaf 1 day ago

To anyone who loves these, add this to your playlist:

Otis Gibbs - Great American Roadside

Comment by ourmandave 18 hours ago

I'd add a google maps street view link to each photo so you could see what is there now.

Comment by kstenerud 18 hours ago

Ah good. I was about to say "What? No Wall Drug sign?"

But it's in there!

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by FireBeyond 1 day ago

One of the ideas put forward in Neil Gaiman's American Gods is that roadside attractions, "Biggest X", collections of whimsy happened where they happened because they were ancient places of power, and people felt inexplicably drawn to them and to set up somewhere people would explore and worship, if not literally, with their attention and energy. Gods could recharge there.

Comment by decimalenough 1 day ago

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Comment by runtime_lens 23 hours ago

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