One of the first things anybody would have to have noticed about the first generation of cellphone towers is that they were incomparably ugly. Sure, after a while you just sort of edit them out of your visual awareness and the problem goes away. While acknowledging that they were quite ugly, I never really saw them as a big issue. Lots of tech is ugly.
Clearly not everybody agreed.
I can’t say when I first noticed the cell towers seemed to be going away, because I didn’t really notice at all. But I distinctly remember the first time I saw one disguised as a tree.
It struck me as one of the most bizarre things I’d ever seen. I didn’t know, then or even soon, that they were actually quite common. It’s kind of a fun idea, once I got used to it. Seems unnecessary, but still…
God’s own bottle brush!
Looks a helluva lot better than many power poles I see, but yeah – a bit funny looking. I wonder if some people get excited and think a Sequoia somehow got transplanted to that location.
I never much worried about the towers. Possibly because much of my work has been on and around the towers. I think the tree towers are kinda cool. But the whole camo cell tower concept can get pretty surreal:
http://mlkshk.com/r/2M2V
Yes, that is a cell tower. Disguised as a lamp post. [face palm]
Now, if they’d included a rope and politician…
Considering that make believe, magical thinking and every kind of silliness is part of the everyday world now, this really doesn’t even stand out much. But yes, I remember when a particularly tall, unbelievably ugly fake tower “tree” was constructed behind a building along the road I had to drive daily, back and forth to work. I remember noticing it often, and thinking how incredibly stupid and phony it was – years after it was built. It just never got any easier to look at… and if I got stuck at the light there, it was easy to dwell on it as a symbol of all the rest that was stupid and phony with the world. sigh
But yes indeed, Bear… a few politicians strung up as ornaments would have improved things considerably. 🙂