Macleod Trail rocket here to stay

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Macleod Trail rocket here to stay

Postby newsposter » Fri Mar 31, 2006 12:59 pm

No need to get in a lather; famed car wash sign stays

Johnny Rocket's Car Wash is being converted into a Bubbles Car Wash by new owners Andrew and Tracey Bitcon, seen here in front of the landmark. However, the famous Johnny Rocket's sign, erected in 1958, will remain. (Story below)

Image
Photograph by : Dean Bicknell, Calgary Herald

Valerie Fortney, Calgary Herald
Published: Friday, March 31, 2006

Goodbye Johnny and hello Bubbles. Call it whatever you like, just don't mess with the Rocket. If you're thinking "Rocket, what rocket?," it's a good chance you're among the thousands of newcomers our city has welcomed over the past couple of years. For those of us oldtimers, though, just say the Rocket and we know exactly what you're talking about.

It's a fact that longtime Calgarians Andrew and Tracey Bitcon were well aware of when they recently bought the car wash soon to be known as Bubbles -- part of a western Canadian chain of the same name -- on the bustling corner of Macleod Trail and 58th Avenue S.

"When we told people we were taking over," says Andrew, who broke the news earlier this week to Herald business columnist David Parker, "the first question many asked was, 'You're going to keep the sign, aren't you?' "

The sign in question is a 27-metre rocket, a nod to the Sputnik era, which sits atop the building housing one of the city's oldest car washes.

For you youngsters out there, the Sputnik was the first artificial satellite, launched into space by the Russians in 1957 much to the chagrin of the United States. That historic event was credited for launching the decades-long space race.

So when the first of a handful of owners opened Rocket Car Wash in 1958, the rocket icon wasn't a sentimental paean to a bygone era, a specimen of retro-chic.

No, it was up-to-the-minute, current, a sign of the times.

And that's why people such as Harry Sanders are more than pleased to hear the new owners plan not only to put a bit of spit and polish on the ole rocket, but to also restore the neon lights that made it a suburban beacon all those years ago.

But it's not easy to get the usually articulate local historian to explain just why.

"It speaks to a period, I can't any get more specific than a feeling," says Sanders. "It just appeals, as a period piece."

Once he gets started, though, Sanders does a better job justifying his passion.

"It's a delightful reminder that this is an old road, and there are things left there from a previous time," he says. "It speaks of that particular period in time."

Chito Pabustan is just as effusive in his praise for keeping the sign. Such landmarks, he says, are "iconographic, a landmark that therefore needs to be preserved."

He says even commercial signs such as the Rocket -- or the Telstar Drug sign on Kensington Road, soon to find a new home in the Glenbow Museum (see related article at http://www.calgaryheritage.org/CHIForum/viewtopic.php?t=56) -- are as important to a culture as the centuries-old monuments you see in the great European cities.

"They're part of the fabric of a city," says Pabustan, a partner at the award-winning Sturgess Architecture. "Here in North America, we're ready to obliterate these landmarks because we want something new all the time."

Still, he's not so sure about replacing the words "Johnny Rockets" atop the rocket with "Bubbles."

"Are you serious? They're going to call it Bubbles? That's ridiculous."

The decision to maintain the Rocket status quo also got Lorne Simpson in quite a lather, albeit a happy one, when he heard the news Thursday. The conservation architect, who has spent the better part of a quarter century working to preserve heritage buildings around the province, thinks the new owners would have been out of their minds if they thought it was OK to get rid of the sign.

"Poll the average Calgarian, and say we're going to rip this thing down," he says. "There would be a lynch mob out there right away.

"We take these landmarks for granted," he adds, "but they become very important the moment someone talks of tearing them down."

Simpson says signs are just as important to preserve as buildings.

"They're part of the collective memory of our city, of a time that was relevant and continues to be relevant. Even if there wasn't a car wash there anymore, we'd still want the sign."

Luckily, the new owners share those sentiments.

"My wife and I grew up in Vancouver, and when we go back we can't recognize anything -- because all the landmarks of our youth have been torn down," says Andrew Bitcon, who is working toward an early May opening.

"We want to see the Rocket live on, restored to its original splendour."

vfortney@theherald.canwest.com

© The Calgary Herald 2006
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