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Wax Off: 12 More Abandoned & Closed Car Washes

01 Dec

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Abandoned car washes are oddly abundant – you’d think they invented the self-cleaning car! Here are 12 more car-less washes left high, dry and brushed-off.

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This opening quartet of images depict a VERY dry-looking abandoned car wash located on Hempstead Rd. – that’s all Flickr user Edna J Sandoval is stating and that’s fine with us. Why give vandals, graffiti-artists and possibly even arsonists (more on that later) a gift-wrapped invitation to destroy somebody else’s property? Sandoval snapped a dozen choice views of the unnamed car wash on May 9th of 2011.

Wash Out

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Flickr user Wayne Wilkinson (wayne’s eye view) applied some freaky faux-lomography processing to this photo of an lonely abandoned car wash taken in June of 2012. While many photos of abandoned buildings and businesses stand on their own when it comes to evoking a certain atmosphere, skillful image processing can enhance the emotional content to near-palpable levels.

Yet Another BP Disaster

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At least no wildlife was made to suffer when operators of a Mobil/BP petrol station near the Bramham Crossroads, North Yorkshire, UK decided to close and abandon its Wesumat Soft Wash W86.1 car wash system. Credit Flickr user AquaValet with this pair of strikingly gloomy yet inexplicably beautiful images of the car wash as it looked on October 1st of 2009. “The petrol station is in a fairly rural location and not fenced off at all,” explains AquaValet. “Inside the actual wash bay I had to be careful not to fall down the sludge pit, which was full of nasty fluids.” BP… bringing you nasty fluids since 1908.

Home For The Homeless

Lone Star Auto on Broadway St. in San Antonio, TX has been abandoned since December of 2009 according to The Sample Spoon. In the above image taken in mid-April of 2012, it can be seen that some life does stir amid the stilled brushes and congealed wax at the ex-business’s car wash as local homeless folks have taken advantage of the structure’s protective overhang and plentiful hooks and shelves.

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Wax Off 12 More Abandoned Closed Car Washes

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Brushed Off: 12 Dried Out & Abandoned Car Washes

21 Apr

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

Hold the hot wax and spare the soap, these abandoned car washes have blow-dried their last vehicle and will no longer thank you for coming again.

Scentless In San Mateo

abandoned Hillsdale car wash San Mateo (images via: phillipalden/abandonedplaces/LiVEJOURNAL)

Hillsdale may not be what it used to be but this little slice of suburbia in San Mateo, California still boasts the 120-store Hillsdale Shopping Center and the convenient Hillsdale Caltrain Station. Perhaps the popularity of the latter has caused a drop in private auto ownership, thereby reducing business at the former Hillsdale Car Wash to an unsustainable level.

abandoned Hillsdale car wash San Mateo (image via: phillipalden/abandonedplaces/LiVEJOURNAL)

As photo-documented by Phillip T. Alden, the Hillsdale Car Wash appears to have been relatively recently abandoned and most of its machinery and signage is intact, if a little worse for wear. OK, maybe more than a little. One imagines the car-owners of Hillsdale will now have to search far and wide for a car wash that offers custom interior fragrances such as Summer Breeze, New Car, Baby Powder, and Jasmine.

Dry Down Under

abandoned car wash Adelaide Australia (images via: Ryan Smith)

That’s not a car wash, THIS is a car wash and if any place NEEDS a car wash it’s Australia, what with all that red dust flying about. Flickr user Ryan Smith (RS 1990) captured this long-abandoned 1988 Kleindienst Euro-Combi car wash in Salisbury, a northern suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. As might be expected in one of the more arid areas of OZ, the car wash is more dusty than rusty. Sorry Mad Max, you’ll have to take your filthy Falcon XB Pursuit Special somewhere else.

Abandon All Soap

abandoned Detroit car wash church (image via: Detroit Liger)

Praise the Lord and pass the hot wax! Credit Flickr user Detroit Liger (Robert Monaghan) with this hauntingly beautiful image of a former Detroit car wash reborn (no pun intended) as a community church, then abandoned once more.

abandoned Detroit car wash church (images via: Detroit Liger and Houses Of God)

Located on on Mack Avenue two blocks east of Detroit’s historic Indian Village neighborhood, the “Gospel Hands Car Wash” has been shuttered so long it’s not certain whether it functioned first as a car wash and then as a church, or operated as a curious combination of both. Pimp my ride? No thanks, but how ’bout baptizing my Buick?

Cubs Club

abandoned car wash parking Chicago (image via: I Hate Clark Street!)

It isn’t easy being a Cubs fan, and living within shouting distance of Wrigley Field ain’t no bowl of cherries neither. A few privileged car-owners have found a sheltered oasis just off Clark Street, however, as this long-abandoned Chicago car wash now provides a precious few parking spaces conveniently close to The Friendly Confines.

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Posts Tagged ‘Washes’