The Gloucester Clam

Today’s guest post is from Adam Kuhlmann who explores the Gloucester businessscape if it were freed from the shackles of context.

Tony Tally’s Petroleum World 27 Maplewood Avenue

What it is:

A full-service gas and vehicle inspection station, consisting of four pumps and a repair bay, owned by the patriarch of the Taliadoros family

What it sounds like: 

A garish amusement park, endorsed by a NASCAR champion and underwritten by the Saudi royal family, celebrating the wonders of gasoline and related hydrocarbons.  Visitors can seek thrills on a variety of attractions, including Frack Mountain and The Kerosene River, as long as they adhere to the park’s strict no-smoking policy.

Nails Club 50 Maplewood Avenue

 What it is:

A beauty salon staffed by brisk, efficient technicians offering little conversation and a basic pedi for just $26.00.

What it sounds like:

A Berlin discotheque, specializing in a genre of trance music punctuated by the sounds of a construction site.

The Mexican Touch 185 Washington Street

 What it is:

 A take-out restaurant whose frugal menu includes burritos, empanadas, quesadillas, and—claro que sí—Black Forest cake

What it sounds like:

 A storefront in Tijuana that you hustled your kids past, after a fellow in rhinestone chaps tried to lure them inside to take a peek at his burro.

G33K 130 Main Street

 What it is:

A retailer of every type of game and game accessory, including costumes of Xbox characters immediately recognizable by the palest 1% of the population

What it sounds like: 

An internet start-up that, in an ill-conceived attempt to summon disruptive innovation, you enlisted your 16-month-old niece to brand.  Clutching your tablet computer in her sticky hands, she swatted at these four characters.

Raf’s Bait Wagon Transient

What it is:

A gentleman with a handlebar mustache who has modified his weather-beaten van so that he can cut, store, sell, and advertise fresh herring

What it sounds like:

See above.

Once again, the Clamticians have implored me to delve into the viscera of my creative faculties to expose an aspect of reality best explored via the unshackled mode of the visual arts. Today I am departing from my usual format and medium in an effort to expand modalities while at the same time embracing the lure of the literal.

Evidently, Clamedia International LTD is receiving an unprecedented number of angry and/or perplexed demands for an explanation as to why we have chosen a member of genus Capra (see below)

as opposed to Crassostrea (or phylum mollusca for that matter) to represent our corporate identity.

To be honest, we are all at a loss for words. We had an excessively heated and disastrously long argument about how best to ‘explain’ to our dedicated readers the significance of our choice. We came to blows, but then, we always do at corporate functions.

After a shit-ton of Jello™ shots and a few peyote buttons, I managed to ‘phase out’ long enough to pen this missive. In an effort to dispel any misinterpretations, I will approach the solution to this complex mystery with a straightforward answer.

Ever since Kline’s voyeuristic prequel to Warhol’s ongoing and self-proclaimed sham, the art world has mourned the death of the avant-garde. Serious, exuberant discourse has given way to the absurd and to a complete loss of cultural identity. Like the universe’s first milliseconds, we are in an age where matter(the object) and energy(critical thought) are interchangeable and unfocused. There have been repeated attempts to coalesce this dark matter into something bold and philosophically evolved, but the results thus far have only been a series of commodifiable, and predictably inscestuous hacks. The art world exists for its own sake alone.

Now, the deterministic nature of the image is counteracted by the mind’s inability to filter the synaptic misfirings we equate with the miasma of non-linear and inchoate, pre-determinate metaphors. It is a fugue state from which we can never recover. The Image is continuously replaced by facsimiles of itself, branching fractally through iterations of the real only to be undone by it’s own interconnectedness with space-time. In effect, the object becomes that which it is not by revealing its underlying false self, only to be reborn again as infinitely variable simulacra.

Cultural indifference to or complete unawareness of humor has it’s roots in fascism. The right has usurped the left by implementing the chauvinistic mechanisms of design and appropriating ontological realms hither-to associated with anarchic ideologies. Humor has the potential to disrupt our concept of what is true while simultaneously exposing reality subversively, operating on the audience’s preconceptions to [de]construct a new, accepted norm. The sheep, or goats as it were, are in wolves’ clothing, ideology is dead, and humor must prevail.

We’re down the the Final Four here in our Gloucester Clam Tournament of Shitty Parking Lots. This is where the shit gets real, folks. We’re so close to crowning the winner that I can almost taste it. “It” being the paint scraped from my bumper. Let’s get down to business and nominate our finalists!

7/11 Bass Ave vs. Our Lady of Good Voyage Church

7/11 Bass Ave beat out St. Peter’s Square. Let that just sink in for a moment. We here at the Clam honestly thought St. Peter’s could have gone all the way and won the whole thing, what with its drunken weekend revelers, confusing entrance/exit strategies, and demand exceeding capacity. However, apparently 7/11 Bass Ave is even worse to our intrepid voters. That’s a fair assessment. The less-heroin-infested 7/11 a fucking awful shitshow not only for the poor drivers waiting fortnights to back out into at-speed traffic, but also for those heading back downtown on Bass Ave. As a cyclist who rides the backshore and heads home, I flinch instinctively when I ride past this lot. Undoubtedly, there’s always some huge truck with a throaty exhaust that just backs up at top speed without actually checking to see if there’s traffic in the road. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT RIGHT OF WAY MEANS, BUT CHECK OUT MY 40 INCH TIRES! VRUMMM!” Thanks, dickbag. Next time I’ll just pre-dial “9-1” on my phone before I drive by to save time.

Our Lady of Good Voyage Church advanced to the next round as well, beating out Gloucester Crossing. We sense a trend here – the parking lots that are bad not only to park in, but also to drive by, have been able to pull out wins in this round. And by God, trying to drive by lower Prospect when there’s church in session is pure madness. Why do we not ticket or tow the cars that ENTIRELY BLOCK THE WAY both on the sidewalk and on one of the busiest roads in town? Probably because everyone here is pretty much related by blood or marriage, and everyone’s been doing it for decades. I’m sure also that towing old ladies while they’re at church will probably get you run out of town by an angry mob with torches and fishing gear. We don’t deal well with change here, so maybe when my children’s children have grown, it will no longer be acceptable to just pull halfway up on the curb and leave your car there for an hour and a half instead of going a tenth of a mile to find a safe, legal spot. But probably not, this is Gloucester.

[polldaddy poll=8185410]

Destino’s vs Dogbar

Another surprising winner, Destinos took out the East Gloucester School last round. I guess the animalistic need for a cheesesteak and haddock chowder runs deeper in our veins than an animalistic need to pick up our kids on time at all costs. Destino’s and our other finalist, Good Voyage, work together hand in hand to fuck up that entire stretch of Prospect Street, which honestly even without those external factors is fucked up enough in its own right. I shall refer to that area as a “fucktastrophe.” The Destino’s lot, however, tricks you, like a cruel minister of Satan. You can pull in, absolutely sure there’s an open spot, only to realize a blue-haired old lady has parked directly in the middle of two spots and now you’re stuck trying to back out onto Prospect, but church is in session (is it ever not in session) so you have to do a hail-mary backup at warp speed. Pray. Pray hard.

Dogbar’s public lot, our last finalist, beat out the pothole and Keno-laden Tedeschi’s parking lot to enter the Final Four. Each was undoubtedly equal in the number of completely shithammered people stumbling through at diagonal angles, but Dogbar only has one tiny entrance/exit, so if you enter naively thinking there might be a space and someone else makes the same horrific miscalculation, there’s a cascade effect of people stuck, beeping, backing up onto Rogers where people aren’t pitying you for your mistakes, scraped trailer hitches, and swearing. I vote that instead of Jaws as the last movie playing at our new outdoor theatre at I4-C2, we just roll surveillance footage highlights of this lot. It’s probably equally scary. We’re gonna need a bigger lot.

[polldaddy poll=8185418]