Fill her up in style

In the world of gas/ petrol stations, corporate blandness rules. If it weren’t for the scenery, just looking at the building and the forecourt doesn’t really tell you whether you’re at a petrol station next to, say, the M3 in the UK heading towards Southampton, the A2 between Utrecht and Amsterdam or even I-70 through the Rocky mountains. Back in the thirties, there was still something glamorous about owning a car and it showed in the architecture. The stylish gas station built by Marcus Paul (ER0L) looks like a work of art.

Shell Art Deco Gas Station

I know ER0L mainly from the cars he builds, but even though I prefer my own minifig scale cars to be a bit smaller, his vintage truck doesn’t look out of place.

Shell Art Deco Gas Station - Front

The proportions, clever build techniques and all the small details really appeal to me. The building also has an interior and I encourage you to take it all in by looking at the other photographs.

3 comments on “Fill her up in style

  1. Angeli

    This is not a fact, just my opinion: in last month or more, last 10 or more posts, the quality of the builds has gone so much below the usual “line”. I do not know what this is, or is TBB is taking some other philosophy, comparing to “we post only the best of the best builds”, but the sad fact is, 6 months ago, everything you post was a subject of admiration, now, I just scroll trough the post searching for something worth looking into (for me, of course)

    Am I the only one thinking that your standards have gone so low that this is just one of the blogs, not the “ultimate to be blogged by”?

    Sorry if this offends you, this is just my subjective opinion.

  2. Ralph Post author

    All opinion is subjective.

    To some extent I understand where you’re coming from. I was a long time reader of TBB before I became a contributor and for a while (not just the last month or so, but perhaps the last year or two) I became less interested myself. I think I know why. It had nothing to do with the quality of the MOCs or of the contributors. There were a couple of other factors at play.

    I’ve seen hundreds of awesome models, which means it takes something more and more spectacular to still impress me and since most people are still doing pretty much the same stuff they were doing a year ago, less of their stuff is interesting. I suspect that it’s similar for you. I’m not so much into mecha, so any mecha posted here, no matter how good, doesn’t do much for me. I strongly suspect that you are not into buildings and vehicles.

    Whether something is blogworthy or not is subjective too. This particular MOC isn’t enormous or spectacular, but IMO it is very well done and it is original. That made it blogworthy in my book. Show me a nicer gas station if you can find it.

  3. Andrew

    @Angeli: I don’t think anybody at TBB has ever said, “we post only the best of the best builds.” I’ve certainly never said that, and I’m the Editor-in-Chief. The editorial philosophy I’ve shared has been, rather, “We post what we like” (with no apologies). We recruit contributors like Ralph who have a great eye, and we do have some basic standards for presentation quality, but it’s ultimately up to each contributor what they happen to like on any given day.

    Like Ralph, I don’t like everything that all the other contributors post, either — even some of the stuff that’s clearly very popular and gets a lot of “Likes” on Facebook or faves on Flickr. I’m not into everything, and after eight years of doing this, I admit to having become a bit jaded. (This is why we bring new contributors on board from time to time, to keep things fresh.)

    But in this case, I happen to think that you’ve picked a really odd MOC to criticize for being under par. The overall design aesthetic, original subject matter, detailing, and construction techniques (look at the SNOT on those pillars!) all add up to an excellent model.

    Unless you have something truly substantive to share, let’s keep things positive; if you don’t like something, you can always scroll on. ;-)

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