FOLLOW THAT SATELLITE!
(Glasgow Taxis advert by Trongate: Glasgow, Scotland)
This advert has been emblazoned on this railway bridge for certainly as long as I have lived in Glasgow and it serves to make me chuckle each time I see it. You’ll notice I respond well to photographing things that amuse me, but I think many people don’t notice it, but it’s ridiculous. When it was first placed there, someone must have stood back from it, nodded and thought to themselves, “yep, that’s a fantastic ad.” I think it’s a lovely advert, but I certainly don’t think it’s good, except that it is at least to the point. The telephone number is there too, just out of shot. I have several points to make about this ad that make it so fun for me:
- Scotland is that giant land mass on the globe that you can see the taxi pointed towards. It looks to be the size of Russia.
- The sky is bright yellow for some reason, perhaps the result of car fumes?
- The patch of road simply stops abruptly and the taxi is perched on it, straddling the centre lines of the road.
- In what way (aside from on the simplistic illustration) are these taxis ‘out of this world.’? They are neither capable of space flight, nor remarkable in any way. I’m sure any driver would be ejecting a passenger for asking to go to Edinburgh, let alone the moon.
- The taxi is remarkably three dimensional and the rest of the ad looks decidedly flat and lacklustre.
- The fact that it is displayed across the road is obviously a great tactic for motorists and passers by seeing it, but it also reminds me (by being on a railway bridge) that rail is cheaper and more reliable. Just about.
What it communicates to me is that the advertisers or the management of the taxi company are taking a degree of hallucinogens. But saying all that, it fits with the general nature of this part of town; there is something vaguely magic and dilapidated about the place. By walking this way, one enters a domain of makeshift antiquity and a kind of improvised shanty situation. It remains one of my favourite parts of town for it’s unpretentious honesty and it’s brazen slumminess, despite some faded, yet still stunning architecture.
– Today Rosie is handing in another submission to the famous Amelia and seeing her Gran in Glasgow, Scotland –
