Posted by 
Recreating a space that could be featured on American Pickers or Hoarders
The Gay Parita Sinclair Gas Station in Ash Grove, Missouri is representative of so many places along the Mother Road. It started as a gas station, and expanded to a mechanic shop, and eventually contained cabins to meet the needs of the travelers along the Mother Road. The original gas station burnt down, and the slightly smaller version of the structure was eventually rebuilt. It no longer offers lodging, mechanic services, or even gas, but it is filled with memorabilia some of it original to the Gay Parita and some of it collected from other parts of the Route 66. The current owner took genuine delight in sharing the space with us, and showing us his favorite cars and signs, including two that were original to the space.
The Gay Parita never would have been on our decorating list if we had just experienced it through pictures. The online pictures focus on the rebuilt gas station, and maybe show some larger outside shots. These pictures really made it look like almost any other Route 66 collector’s (or hoarder’s) gas station. When it comes to gas stations, there are plenty of more interesting ones to recreate. Even once we had been there, we didn’t jump up and down and go, “This has to be on the party decorating list”, but it did definitely leave an impression. It wasn’t until we started discussing what we wanted to do in the dining room that the vision for the Gay Parita really came about.
Our dining room is not very big. In fact 2 leaves in the table pretty much fills up the entire room. At an 8 person dinner party the person at the back of the room (usually me) can feel pretty trapped. This size definitely played a part in our decision making. We could have tried to fit a couple of “stations” or “stops” in it. We’ve done that before with the book party, where we featured both the Awakening and Master and Commander in the room, but that can feel rather cramped. Generally, when we’ve used it as one holistic space like the float for Cesarzfest or the Funeral Home for Death and Vodka it’s worked better. With that in mind, we decided to work with it as one singular space. Gay Parita became the perfect place to recreate. However, we weren’t interested in the gas station, we wanted to play off the inside of the original garage that was on the property. This is where most of the “collecting” takes place and is home to the original signs that Gary was so proud of. Focusing on the garage would also allow us to pay homage to many of the other collectors of signs and license plates and other memorabilia that decorate Route 66.
The Garage of the Gay Parita is “bricked” with unpatterned stones on the outside, and inside probably has darked planked walls. It’s actually very difficult to see the walls because they are dripping with stuff. Before I go any further, I have to mention that one thing that we had to keep reminding ourselves of during the design and decorating process was that we were creating homages to the stops, not exact replicas. This is a really important point for me because I can get really wrapped up in exacting details, and for a hot minute I was dead set on finding a Sinclair dinosaur. Keeping that in mind, we set out to turn our pretty generic dining room into a dark cluttered space that was still clean enough that you would want to go into and eat some appetizers and drink a cocktail or two after we were finished.
We had a small start because, despite my periodic insistence that we take down the faux bookcase/secret door from the Death and Vodka Party, it was still there. This would give us a space to create the workbench or tools space, and provide some three dimensional elements. Next we needed to bring out that dark, older look and give the walls in the room some depth. I thought this would also be a good way to bring the “outside” look of the shop into the room. We did that by bringing back the temporary peel and stick brick wallpaper that had worked so well for the Death and Vodka party. I did find some rock work paper, but even I can make budget decisions and the dark brown brick was a better budget choice. I also think its color just lended itself better to the feel we were aiming for. My original plan had been to just wallpaper the one large wall with brick and decorate the rest of the room with signs and license plates, but once we got the first wall up I decided we needed a little bit more and bricked the other side of the room as well.
The next layer we wanted to add was old license plates. They seem to be everywhere on Route 66. I almost feel like they do give a place credit for being a legitimate attraction unless they have at least 5 license plates hanging from the walls. My first stop to find license plates was to just start searching online. I found plenty. I also found that they were a little more expensive than I was thinking, especially given the number that I would need to actually have any impact in the room. I put out a call to friends and was lucky enough to have a few that actually had a small collection. I used the licence plates to largely cover the back wall of the room. They were also helpful in covering up small places that were missing brick on the main wall. I hung everything up using clear thumb tacks. You could probably use some command adhesive strips to hang them as well. (Don’t tell Alex, but he never did put up his Sik Boy license plate.)
To be considered legit on Route 66 you also have to have signs! SIGNS, SIGNS, SIGNS! We knew for sure we were going to recreate the “ No Tools to Let Sign” that was put in the garage by the original owner, and I wanted to recreate the original Cabins sign as well. We also need to add the more generic advertising signs that were prevalent at the Gay Paria and other places. We copied actual signs that were around the building including a couple of Sinclair signs, as well as Good Year, Dunlop Tires and Pennzoil. While most of the actual signage on the Mother Road is metal or plastic, we made all of ours out of masonite. Masonite really was the savior of this party. It’s cheap, light weight, and relatively easy to cut and paint. We painted the base color of all of the signs with acrylic paint. We did the actual design either using vinyl and cutting them with the Silhouette, or creating a transparency from the sign’s image and using an overhead projector and tracing it. An overhead projector may seem a bit “old school” in today’s world, but ours is a godsend.
I know I said that we were focused on generally conveying the feeling of each place, and had set about not stressing that everything was exact. That is true, except for three signs in the Gay Parita. We wanted to make sure the two original signs were as close as we could possibly get. We created those using the overhead and playing around with blending acrylic paint. We also really wanted to make sure we got the outside Gay Parita sign correct. We created that graphic out of vinyl using the Silhouette. I mention this mainly to give Alex a shout out for painstakingly weeding the “Root Beer” writing.
We featured the “No Tools to Let” sign and the Cabins sign on the faux bookcase, and scattered with the license plates and along the wall. We also were sure to add the milage sign for the Jack Rabbit Trading post, that was at the Gay Paria. Finally, we hung the Gay Parita sign from the ceiling outside the room.
Once we had the walls and signs up it, it was time to give the Gay Parita that more “garagey” feeling. As the Gay Parita was more of a warehouse for Route 66 Collectors items including street lights and old toys than a garage these days, we needed get our inspiration from elsewhere. I started thinking of my granddad’s various garages and tool sheds. While he had plenty of toolboxes he also had plenty of coffee cans filled with assortments of nuts & bolts and nails and screws. It turns out we have some friends that do the exact same thing! The faux bookcase won’t hold full sized books much less coffee cans. So, we built it out with various different bean and vegetable cans. We added some glass jars and filled them with nails and screws for some additional texture. Once those were in place we added additional items like beer bottles and pencils to give the idea that things were simply being left and to provide some additional color. Because this bookcase is really a sliding door I hot glued everything in place just in case someone decided to close, or even if someone bumped into it. Finally, we added some actual tools including to make it pop and make it feel a little more real. Again, we were careful to secure everything because screwdrivers hitting people on the head is a real buzz kill for a party.
Next , we needed to give the room that “there is a lot of stuff in here” feel. The key here was to add stuff into corners of the room that wouldn’t impede people’s ability to move around but added to the feeling of clutter. We tucked the dining room table into the back corner of the room, and tossed some random baskets in behind it. We also stacked a disheveled group of coffee cans below it. During the process of decorating the party we acquired a tennis net (in case we want to have a tennis themed party… yes, Love- 15 is coming up for someone next August), we kept that rolled up and tossed in a corner. We also stained a couple of crates from last year’s party to keep with the darker look, and tossed them next to the server.
We played with the lighting by changing out the regular dining room light bulbs with yellow lights. This isn’t particularly flattering lightening, but it gives everything a darker feel and still allows you to see.
In the final details, we used coffee cans to help provide different serving levels. The food levels provide more visual interest to your food service, and keeps people from having to reach across other food platters. We added extra cans and jars to the server and table, as well as additional tools scattered about the room. Finally, we added a high top table to the middle of the room to give people a place to congregate and put their drinks while enjoying the Gay Parita (this also had the added advantage of keeping people from hitting their head on the dining room light).
Thank you to our dear friends who loaned us your license plates and coffee cans! Thank you to to the folks at the Gay Parita for such a wonderful experience.
