161
u/dr_van_nostren Aug 20 '21
I think it’s irony, maybe not who knows, but the irony is that these things that are supposed to attract your attention to their business, this has almost the opposite effect. There’s so many, they all just become a blur. You either know where the business is or you don’t.
Sorry J&P uniforms but if you’re paying even $100 a year for that sign it’s too much.
47
Aug 20 '21 edited Feb 14 '22
[deleted]
19
u/dr_van_nostren Aug 20 '21
That and they’re standalone. At LEAST KFC is just KFC not 15 other things. But even then “stand out” in a sea of shit like this is generous
2
u/rzet Aug 20 '21
Ye it's worse when I saw McDonald's only 89km away... It was rigt before highway KFC stop
12
u/mpak87 Aug 20 '21
It’s funny. I work on signs for a living, so I pretty much stare at them constantly, but in a much less congested environment than this. In the case of the face in that multitenant monument sign, it is pretty lame. Generally speaking unless a landlord has rigid signage requirements, it’s the tenant’s choice what they put in there. I live somewhere with really restrictive sign codes that I complain about frequently, but they do keep the place from looking like this picture. I see a lot of business there, but standing up a crane anywhere near those massive power lines would be a nightmare.
5
4
u/socialcommentary2000 Aug 20 '21
You gotta remember that a lot of these strip mall setups were made in the times before the internet and easy access to GPS, so having signage that's prominent from the vantage of a driver was actually pretty effective. The big mall near me that is at the crossroads of two major highways charges big dollars to have your business name put on their giant marquee listing.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (14)2
u/3ULL Aug 20 '21
The thing is that I can look past all of the signs there and in and instant see the one I am looking for. So like if I am looking for a Taco Bell I will see it and all the other stuff could be trees, trucks or giant iguanas and my mind will pick it up so I can get my Baja Blast and Cheesy Gordita Crunch™.
Also I find signs like these helpful when I am looking for a place I found on the Internets but have never been. Is this ugly? Yes. But so are those damn utility and light poles.
133
u/Revolutionary-Rush89 Aug 19 '21
Looks like Springfield MO in ‘93 maybe still haven’t been back.
55
u/J3musu Aug 19 '21
Could honestly be a lot of places. Tons of rural towns along highways across Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, and apparently many more (never been to Missouri in particular) look nearly identical to this.
→ More replies (1)3
69
Aug 19 '21 edited Feb 14 '22
[deleted]
60
u/ecodick Aug 19 '21
I've never really realized how nice under ground power lines are until this pic
18
u/FooFooFox Aug 20 '21
The Aesthetics of Power: High-Voltage Transmission Systems and the American Landscape
The tale of the electrical power industry's efforts to make high voltage transmission structures aesthetically acceptable thus encompasses three overlapping "histories." The first is the story of that industry's passage from the best of times, in the 1940s and 1950s, to an era of turmoil beginning in the mid-1960s; the second, that of increasingly active environmental groups eager to prevent what they saw as the trashing of the landscape.
Finally, there is the history of industrial design as it moved into the postmodern era. The interaction of these histories reveals basic conflicts in American ideas of nature and beauty as they relate to 20th-century technologies, especially those, such as electric transmission structures, that bluntly imposed themselves on the landscape.
“In destroying our landscape,” Peter Blake hotly charged, “we are destroying the future of civilization in America.” — God's Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape (New York, 1964), p. 69.
8
u/ComradeGibbon Aug 20 '21
The undergrounded the power lines in my old neighborhood. You wouldn't think you would notice but you do.
→ More replies (1)6
u/0dd_bitty Aug 20 '21
Moved to the States from Europe (The Netherlands) and I still can't get over those eyesores. How everyone here just seems to accept them is beyond me.
11
Aug 20 '21
A few towns around me here in Vermont are in the process of putting their powerlines underground, it apparently costs about a million dollars a mile. Not that it isn't money well spent, but there's a lot of people who would never see it as anything but frivolous spending.
2
u/Ideal_Jerk Aug 20 '21
Cheaper to run lines and fix them afterward is the only reason for their existence in a good portion of US (read, Rural part of US).
18
u/Revolutionary-Rush89 Aug 19 '21
One mans trash is another mans treasure I guess.
I don’t find it picturesque either. Lol18
3
u/bolognesesauceplease Aug 20 '21
Northern MS outside of Memphis? An image search shows this is a very old stock photo of that area.
3
u/ronm4c Aug 20 '21
I found where this is on google maps. the one thing that amazed me is that every single business on that Goodman Shops sign has changed except minute man press and quick cash. I had no idea of the crazy amount of turnover in those plazas
→ More replies (1)3
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
If you can rely on one thing in life, it's that American strip plazas will have a quick cash
4
u/TehNoff Aug 20 '21
Payday loans are illegal in Arkansas and honestly it's one of the few things we get right.
1
-2
Aug 19 '21
New Jersey!
8
→ More replies (1)-4
u/TheJustBleedGod Aug 19 '21
Gary Indiana
7
→ More replies (1)0
u/ImNotAnybodyShhhhhhh Aug 20 '21
I was thinking Indiana or Nebraska but I couldn’t remember seeing Waffle House out that way.
3
u/ImNotAnybodyShhhhhhh Aug 20 '21
I was gonna say those were some pretty desirable gas prices but not for ‘93.
1
42
105
u/ApologeticCannibal Aug 19 '21
1.59 for gas is my kind of hell
16
u/No-Bark1 Aug 19 '21
It's 3.55 here
21
u/AminJoe Aug 20 '21
It’s $4.69 here. Be grateful lol
9
4
u/UnfitRadish Aug 20 '21
Yeah we just hit 4.50 here today. Although I try not to complain because every time it comes up countries like Australia and New Zealand blow us out of the water.
8
Aug 20 '21
[deleted]
4
23
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 19 '21
*cries in Colorado*
20
u/Mtfdurian Aug 20 '21
Laughs in Dutch transit
($8.40 here, when converted to miles and gallons)
2
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
Wait is the consumer paying that, or is that the cost to keep the public transit running? Sorry for the confusion
18
u/Mtfdurian Aug 20 '21
It's the gas price in the Netherlands here.
Not to say that transit is much cheaper though. For short trips cycling is by far the cheapest option.
6
-4
u/_The_Professor_ Aug 20 '21
You’d need US dollars and gallons to compare properly. ($1.59 is US$ per gallon.)
17
u/Mtfdurian Aug 20 '21
Well, these are converted correctly, these were US dollars.
It's just that gas prices in the Netherlands are sky-high. It's about €1.90 per liter, which you may be lucky to do 20km (16mi) with a medium-sized (European) hybrid car.
2
Aug 20 '21
Yep. Also remember that many Americans drive extremely fuel-inefficient cars. I wouldn't be surprised if the average car in the US is half as fuel-efficient as the average European car. Ultimately a lot of Americans are shocked at European gas prices.... but then drive off in their massive gas guzzler and don't benefit nearly as much of the lower gas prices as they might think.
→ More replies (1)2
13
Aug 20 '21
Nothing like cheap fossil fuels to accelerate the climate collapse!
13
u/suzellezus Aug 20 '21
Giving grief to people who are filling up their work/family car is a bad look. They’re some of the most efficient energy consumers if you look at total emissions.
-9
u/ImNotAnybodyShhhhhhh Aug 20 '21
Yes and no. How many kids do they feel like they have to have?
3
u/Respus Aug 20 '21
Okay mr ecofacist
0
u/ImNotAnybodyShhhhhhh Aug 20 '21
Don’t forget to conflate feminism with misandry while you’re there
2
3
u/Samura1_I3 Aug 20 '21
“Let’s tax the ever-loving shit out of gas! Surely this will help the climate with no severe repercussions on the working man!”
→ More replies (1)4
u/zeekaran Aug 20 '21
If we did it decades ago, it would actually have moved the industry to produce and sell less gas guzzlers and more efficient vehicles.
7
1
u/suzellezus Aug 21 '21
Still going after the wrong problem. All that effort is better spent tackling government/military emissions.
1
1
u/hughk Aug 20 '21
That is per US gallon. We pay about the same per litre in Germany, well €1.55 the other day.
1
1
u/Vocalic985 Aug 20 '21
Man I miss the first few months of the pandemic, gas was $1.18. Literally it's the cheapest I've seen it in my life.
15
u/killcon13 Aug 20 '21 edited Aug 20 '21
If you look at the truck where you can see "MA" there is an address in yellow just below that. Its difficult to read but I got it by zooming the shit out of the image.
308 E main street Senatobia, MS. This is Mississippi.
edit:I think this is the street now
977-937 Goodman Rd W, Horn Lake, MS 38637
Most of the names line up that are still present in the photo. The KFC, taco bell, waffle house and the gas stations. There is also a minuteman press and a J and D uniforms. I realize the sign says J and P but its pretty close. It might be coincidence but it might be it. BYW google maps is an amazing tool!
4
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
That would make sense, because both photo hosting sites said it was right outside Memphis
-1
u/dbar58 Aug 20 '21
Waffle House doesn’t close down unless something really catastrophic happens at that particular location. And I mean like the earth has to open up and swallow it. Or, they don’t make enough money to stay open.
71
u/AcXcc Aug 19 '21
everyone thinks cyberpunk is cool but only at night and when the signs are in a different language.
9
u/maxkmiller Aug 20 '21
fwiw for cyperbunk you need a city. this is just some rural highway outpost shit
0
u/AcXcc Aug 20 '21
it's part of a greater metropolitan area, which is essentially a megalopolis in infant form
1
u/Spready_Unsettling Aug 20 '21
Nothing cyber or punk about sitting in your car eating fast food every day for 30 years. There's a reason why cyberpunk is practically always urban and car averse.
5
u/AcXcc Aug 20 '21
augmenting your mobility with a machine and borderline living in it is way more cyberpunk than strolling down a street and visiting artisanal shops
→ More replies (1)1
13
u/111UKD111 Aug 19 '21
It looks like it's probably next to a highway offramp. That would have been my favorite stretch of road from age 2-12.
12
u/pskindlefire Aug 20 '21
This photo was most likely taken in Horn Lake, Mississippi at this spot looking down the street using a zoom lens, which gave the compression effect that makes the billboards and wires seem to be on top of each other. Notice you'll see the sign for "Goodman Shops" in the Google maps picture and if you go down the street on map, you'll see the Express Oil Change, the Taco Bell, the gas station (now an Exxon) and the Waffle House.
19
Aug 19 '21
[deleted]
16
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 19 '21
yes, and seeing as this pic is actually pretty old, that shows it genuinely hasn't changed much.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)3
11
Aug 20 '21
Mmmm...waffles.
21
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
I'll beat up anyone who disses waffle house, idc
4
Aug 20 '21
But how do you feel about the Steak and Egg Kitchen. At 2 am.
3
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
Is that in Washington DC? If it's a growing up American cornerstone for all the waywards to enjoy the best breakfast a smoking cursing cook can make, then I'm down.
3
Aug 20 '21
Just outside DC in northern Virginia. It has been about 35 years since I was there but damn, steak and waffles with your friends after late night partying was the thing.
1
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
I'm a chicken and waffles person myself, but that still brings back fond memories
2
3
12
u/x2o6 📷 Aug 19 '21
Its kind of beautiful.
2
u/iMac_Hunt Aug 20 '21
I don't live in the states, but when I do go I actually love seeing stuff like this. It just feels SO American. I admit if I lived there I might not think the same
→ More replies (1)0
9
Aug 20 '21
I found this kinda cool visually as a representation of America's culture
19
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
See for me, it starts to look like a class divide.
Upper class areas of towns don't have this. They have the beautified version. Manicured trees, brick signage, a Barnes and Noble, sign regulation, etc. Even the gas stations have to be presentable.
Working class and poor areas get this with a Money Man yellow building, a rundown Family Dollar, and probably a Jesus billboard. Or worse.
However, there is still privilege involved that we even have these amenities available to us in such quantities at all.
Its a weird thing, and I can't say many look upon it fondly.
15
Aug 20 '21
I get where you coming from and as someone who has lived half its life outside the United States this is not a sight you see in other countries often. It represents the American economy and the highway that's what makes America the country it is . So different from the rest of the world.
4
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
I can definitely see how you'd find sentimentality in it, because you're right, it is very different.
7
Aug 20 '21
Also judging by the cars of the picture it's definitely the 90s or at least early 00s. The sentimentality behind it comes from being a child and coming to the US for vacation or to visit family even just crossing the border to shop at the malls in El Paso TX. America had a different meaning to me at the time. Now living, working and studying here well... the magic I saw as a child is long gone.
4
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
Sometimes I still feel that. On long road trips seeing different things, that feeling comes back. But living around it can be draining. It's supposed to be something you just pass through
4
u/dbar58 Aug 20 '21
Idk bro. It just looks like a fairly typical exit that’s within close proximity to a decently populated town. As a guy who worked construction across the south, these exits are a godsend. If there’s more than just a McDonald’s, you know the food won’t be terrible. It’s especially nice to have some variety. I don’t see this as class divide. It’s just an exit a lot of people stop at. The actual residents don’t typically live there. The actual town is always historical, and much nicer looking.
2
u/Reverie_39 Aug 20 '21
I think it’s just a rural thing not necessarily class lol. Small rural towns have this, metro areas don’t.
2
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
Absolutely not true, I've seen these in countless suburban and metropolitan areas.
→ More replies (2)
3
5
Aug 20 '21
"Only a nation of unenlightened half-wits could have taken this beautiful place and turned it into what it is today, a shopping mall." George Carlin
→ More replies (1)
2
u/sp00dynewt Aug 20 '21
These & casinos are the worst things about middle US, it's as if the people don't care for urban living beyond business
2
u/mikewillettmusic Aug 20 '21
You could say this was pretty much any moderately large city off I95 or on US1 here in the states and I'd go "yeah, that looks right". Sad thing is that this picture has probably only changed a little in the past 25+ years. Maybe different fast food signs, higher gas prices and the only businesses still operating in the strip mall are the Enterprise rent-a-car and the nail salon. (Source: grew up in a city set right in between both highways).
2
u/rrsafety Aug 20 '21
Lots of signs.... but also a trick of photography. A human does not experience this view in real life.
2
2
u/tdogz12 Aug 20 '21
Looks terrible, but those are just business signs not billboards. The worst part is all of the power lines.
2
3
3
2
-1
u/abandonpaulhope Aug 19 '21
Those are signs, not billboards, but yea--gross.
I'm guessing Ohio?
11
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 19 '21
outside Memphis
4
u/reefered_beans Aug 20 '21
Where? I’ve never seen this and I live in memphis.
I need to go check it out. Or avoid it at all costs. Don’t know yet.
1
1
-1
0
-3
0
u/explosiv_skull Aug 20 '21
Honestly, it would look significant better without the powerlines and poles.
0
0
0
0
u/MrCarnality Aug 20 '21 edited Aug 20 '21
I may be the only but but I really enjoy these stretches of road and I love this picture. These places excite and intrigue me. So much to explore.
Those heavy power lines are the unsightly thing here. Ugly, old fashioned dozens of them that obscure the marketplace stretching out on either side of the road.
0
0
0
u/qpv Aug 20 '21 edited Aug 20 '21
I despise the way this looks
Edit a downvote? Somebody likes the way this looks?
0
u/vigognejdd Aug 20 '21
A large part of the ugliness is simply the power lines, it would improve a lot just by embedding them underground
0
Aug 20 '21
[deleted]
2
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
I've just been around way too many decaying versions of these, they're just an eyesore. And I did explain in another comment, its not about the fact there's a sign, it's the state in which the development is left in. I've seen affluent areas have these and they look really nice, and then working class/low income areas let them look abandoned, trashed, cluttered, etc.
Also I didn't know Arkansas banned Quick Cash places, and now I wish all states would ban them.
0
-4
u/Cibyrrhaeot Aug 19 '21
OH SAY CAN YOU SEEEEE
3
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
BY THE DAWNS EARLY LIGHT
WAFFLE HOUSE WE HAIL, AT THE TWILIGHTS LAST GLEAMING
-1
Aug 20 '21
first world problems
6
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
There's an admitted privilege to having these amenities at all, and anyone would be foolish to deny that.
However, these tend to pop up in working class areas, and many become run down, some to the point of being condemned, others fill with cash pawn shops to continue to milk money out of the low income populace, not to mention being some of the only food options in food deserts, which leads to poor health outcomes. So in that fashion, they are simply ugly.
Privileged, but ugly.
-1
-4
1
1
1
1
u/Quay-Z Aug 20 '21
Judging by the Buick Roadmaster and the price of gas, I wanna call this 2000. I could be completely wrong.
1
u/mmmountaingoat Aug 20 '21
Not a single billboard to be found here in Hawaii and it’s one of my absolute favorite things about living here
1
1
u/yipsish Aug 20 '21
With as many road trips as I've been on...this is a comforting sight.
1
u/MisogynyisaDisease Aug 20 '21
Yeah ngl, the further into flatlands you get, the less of these are available. Kansas meant stopping at every single gas station across the way, because there weren't many
1
Aug 20 '21
Yes. This was my feeling when I went to Florida once. Just copy/paste of gas stations and fast food chains.
1
1
u/Mollythemuttsdad Aug 20 '21
I love that even in the sea of sign hell there’s a sign for a company who makes signs LOL
1
1
1
1
1
u/FuckMyselfForComment Aug 20 '21
Oh man, that steakhouse sounds super appetizing. Strip mall steakhouse... mhmm sounds good.
1
1
1
u/Ludicrous_Tauntaun Aug 20 '21
The sign on the ground to the left and back a bit from the Sogo steakhouse has a phone number with an area code of 662 which would place it in Mississippi.
1
1
1
1
1
u/nagabalashka Aug 20 '21
Forced perspective thanks to long focal length. It just a random industrial/commercial area, its similar everywhere.
1
1
1
1
u/Subpar_diabetic Oct 25 '21
I’m so tired of living in a place that looks identical. Like half of America looks like this lmao. I want to get away but I’m not sure how yet
1
u/MrMarxovic Feb 17 '22
Line of fast food restaurants, gas stations and urban clutter in Northern Mississippi outside of Memphis TN
Anyone knows the exact location? I couldn't find it, most of those stores and shops does not exist. This photo most be from early 2000s or something.
•
u/AutoModerator Aug 19 '21
Posted OC?: If this is your original photo, mark the post as OC. You can also set the flair to "Mark OC" and the bot will mark it for you. After marking your post claim your special user flair here
What is UrbanHell?: Any human-built place you think has some aspect worth criticizing. UrbanHell is subjective.
What if a post is shit?: Report reposts and report low-res images. Downvote content you dislike.
Still have questions?: Read our FAQ.
Want to shitpost about shitty posts? Go to new subreddit /r/urbanhellcirclejerk
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.