You know how you never really notice something until it happens to you? That’s how I first started noticing the thing with the gas stations.
There used to be two gas stations near my house in the University District. The Chevron (cleaner and newer) was my top choice. The 76 was only to be used when the Chevron was crowded—or after the Chevron was mysteriously shuttered one day, devastatingly, surrounded by a chain-link fence and do not enter signs.
I didn’t think much of it. After all, I still had the 76. Having two gas stations so close was the height of luxury. But we all need to be taken down a peg at some point. As a car owner in Seattle, I was already contributing to an out-of-hand problem. According to the Seattle Times, there are 435,000 cars in a city of slightly more than 700,000 people (or 637 cars per 1,000 humans). I could take this hit, I thought.
