continuity of parks

Endangered: the ball and its creator at Grand Canyon N.P., sometime in the hallowed past

The balls were coming down. LA true-crime-bloggers-turned-aesthetic-activists Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak were beyond concerned. They were, it seemed, hurt, offended, pissed-off. But did they sit on their asses and whine about it? Sort of. They started a new blog, posted an online petition, issued a press release, even called for a boycott: "ConocoPhillips is removing the iconic 76 Balls and replacing them with boring rectangular signs that aren't even orange! Our petition and boycott asks that they STOP THIS and leave the remaining 76 Balls on their poles, where they belong."

The outrage spread. "I used to buy from a 76 station only 2 blocks from my house," wrote petition signer Guy Kudlemyer. "The day ConocoPhillips changed it to red and blue, I stopped patronizing it." "It's like McDonald's dumping the arches," wrote Sean Russ. "Just wrong!"

"Please stop destroying American history," begged Steve Tepperman.

By 9:50 AM on 21 February the story had been picked up by the BBC and the petition had garnered 544 signatures.

One anonymous commenter from the UK wrote in measured fashion of the "decline of the empire": "What kills me is how we are deliberately destroying or dismantling everything that is or was ever creative about our society. What the hell is going on? We're using the same damned space shuttle that was developed in the 1970s; the Routemaster bus is being replaced with bland boxes; the world-renown red phone boxes were replaced with horrid plexiglas receptacles. It's almost as if we don't invent anything anymore, and want to destroy anything unique that was created and replace it with something more lazy and boring. The only thing we have left is Apple. Bring back the ball, build a spaceship to Mars, build a better Concorde (because we can and because there are ways to make it profitable)... LIVE a worthwhile life, damn it ...and use gigantic fiberglas emblems or mascots for simple eating establishments once again."

Meanwhile, a bomb had been exploded in a Baghdad market, killing 21 and wounding 27; 65 workers were trapped underground in a coal mine in Coahuila, Mexico; and crude oil futures had once again climbed above the $60/barrel mark.

UnocalChevronConocoPhillipsEtc., "the fourth largest publicly traded energy company in the world in terms of oil and gas production" (according to a 2005 merger approval statement by Unocal stockholders), offered no online comment on the subject of the "iconic" orange ball. There was no mention of it in the official online History of Unocal.