Penguin Car Wash

At the extreme western edge of Inglewood, backing on the Elbow River, beside the tracks, and in the shadow of downtown, stands the old Penguin Car Wash. The building has been empty for a good half dozen years, give or take, a shell of a place open to the elements the only things left behind, bits in each bay that once held vacuums. It’s quiet, creepy, office and condo towers to the west brightening up what would be an otherwise dim lifeless scene. A train noisily passes.

The site here was also at one time home to a service station of the same name. We found records of it going back to at least the 1940s. Back then, and into recent times, there used to be a large person sized penguin statue plopped out front. No idea what happened to this kitschy throwback. Hope someone saved it.

The Penguin Car Wash property may be due for redeveloped soon, a condo tower (naturally) being planned for the spot. Another gentrification nail in Inglewood’s coffin?

We’ve been practicing night photography a lot lately, a genre that’s always dogged us. Never get the results we want. Still, we’re getting better and this one seems to have come out pretty good. So we’ll keep playing. Our camera can do it, we know the drill, understand the concepts, just need to apply it better. Here, we shot through the open bays which gave a good result.

In the area…
Interesting Inglewood.

Short Subjects: reports that for any number of reasons are brief in nature. They might be updates to older articles, previews of posts planned or not yet published, brief snippets of things that don’t fit in anywhere else or subjects that are so obscure that information on them can’t be found. Or sometimes we just ramble on about Lord knows what.

If you need any more information on what we talked about here, by all means contact us!

Date of adventure: November, 2017.
Location: Calgary, AB.

At the old Penguin Car Wash in Inglewood.