Suburban Photo Essay

Strip mall suburbia is like a car accident on the roadside. You don't actually want to look at it, but you can't not. So you slow down, roll down the window, and take a long, deep look and what God hath wrought. So here are a few pictures which capture, I think, the essence of Anywhere, U.S.A:

This is a Tex-Mex place called "On The Border," which is an awesome name. Just walking around the parking lot, I felt like I was actually on the U.S.-Mexican border. I can only imagine that, inside, the finest foodstuffs from the Southwestern region are made available to the consumer at prices too reasonable to ignore. Actually, I heard they have good margaritas here. I wouldn't know, though. I would rather have an Afghani flagpole shoved into my right eye than eat at a place like this. When I walked around back, this older white lady in a kitchen smock was trying to get her car started by jimmying a coathanger into her engine. I asked her if she worked at On The Border and she said "unfortunately."

I took this photo because it reminded me of the time I spent doing commercial landscaping in Boulder, Colorado. I worked for a company that had these fairly huge accounts with corporate, technological monoliths that all had ridiculous compound names like Qualcomm, Digitech, and Servcorps. I hated that job. One of the things I had to do was walk around GIGANTIC parking lots and spray herbicide on the little weeds poking up through the mulch in the islands (which is what they call the little landscaped strips in parking lots all over this fine land). To do that, you have to wear a few gallons of herbicide in a tank on your back. It's uncomfortable as shit, and oh yeah, it kills living things, so I assume it's toxic to humans even though my boss once assured me that I could drink a pint of it and it wouldn't hurt me at all. "It's species-specific" he said, trying to sound all scientific, when I'm sure he was just quoting some PR shit he read and saved in his mental list of quotes for whenever an employee expressed concern about their safety. Most of the guys I worked with were from south of the border and were just happy to be making some real money for once. Nobody complained.

I don't know why I took this picture. I just thought it looked kinda creepy, I think. It sorta reminded me of that scene in Mulholland Drive, when the two guys are at the diner (Winkie's) and the hirsute creature is lurking out back by the dumpsters. That scene terrifies me every time I watch it. This is behind On The Border. I wasn't about to photograph and therefore further exploit the poor lady trying to start her car, so I took this photo instead. The dumpster reeked...as dumpsters will often do.

At that same job I worked in Boulder, I also had to use a weed-eater to mow down the tall weeds that would grow in the islands. This was difficult, because you were always in danger of bumping into or scratching some executive's Lexus or Range Rover. It was also difficult, because after about 7 hours of weedeating, your arms get pretty tired. And slowly making your way across a sprawling complex of parking lots, breezeways, and sidewalks takes its toll on the psyche as well. On my first day on the job, we were working at Qualcomm when my gas powered weed-eater kicked a rock into the back window of a shiny, new, yello X-Terra just like the one pictured above. It fucking shattered into a million pieces. When I told my boss, he was cool about it. He said they had insurance to cover things like that. I didn't lose my job or anything. And though I felt like a loser for doing that on my first day of work, I was secretly pleased to have caused damage to what, in my mind, is one of the ugliest vehicles available for consumption. That shit looks like a Gobot.

I never had to weed-eat at an Old Navy parking lot. But at that same landscaping job, one day we were having our lunch break and listening to Classic Rock on the radio when a newscast interrupted saying that some teenage girl was just stabbed to death in the checkout of the Old Navy just down the street. Apparently some maniac just leapt on top of her with a knife and killed her right then and there. It later came out that the girl was murdered for revenge because of some star-crossed lovers situation or something convoluted like that. Anyway, I passed by that Old Navy on my way home from work that evening and saw that the whole parking lot was roped off with yellow crime scene tape. The whole event gave me nightmares and intrusive thoughts for a while. The girl's loved ones had a vigil out in front of the store. They also built an altar with flowers and photographs and candles. One day, to get closure, I went and paid my respects, even though I never knew her and they had already dismantled the altar. At any rate, I can't see an Old Navy without remembering that time in my life.