2.2.2013OLD VIEWS - I grew up looking out my bedroom window, across the parking lot, at this SHELL. Towering over the comparatively diminutive gas station lot the SHELL sign feels like alien space ship. A typographic fugitive from the planet Las Vegas that somehow bullied its way past the provincial, conservative and impossibly boring Bostonians. Crude, loud and unapologetic garish, there is something wonderful about this sign. Described by the city of Cambridge as our version of the CITGO sign, the SHELL has become a fixture on opposite side of the Charles. Like the CITGO sign it is loved by Cantabrigians as a landmark, an eventful moment along the highway-like Memorial Drive. However macerating as feelings of nostalgia, our attachment to this sign is something more. Somewhere deep down it describes a fundamental longing for a less inhibited world. We love the SHELL, because it does not try to be discrete, elegant or tasteful. It claims loyalty only to itself. It resonates with a little piece inside all of us that wishes to escape the rigidity of our carefully considered world and live rogue, just as we are, by the side of the river.
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