Shore Drive landmark 'shell' disappears from gas station curbside

By Duane Bourne
The Virginian-Pilot
© February 18, 2009

VIRGINIA BEACH

A curbside landmark at the corner of Shore Drive and West Great Neck Road has gone missing.

A sculpture of a shell, accented with a jewel-like mosaic of blue and green colored art glass, disappeared sometime this week from the Shell service station.

Station owner Mark Anderton said he believes that someone, perhaps a prankster, made off with the roughly 5-feet-by-5-feet shell molded out of cement, pumice and Fiberglass.

“It is really disappointing,” said Anderton, the station owner, who discovered that the shell was gone when he opened the station just after 8 a.m.on Monday.

The sculpture had been there for two years, he said. Michael Combs, the artist who made the sculpture, planned one day to auction off the sculpture for charity.

“It’s a little hard to figure out why someone would take it. I can only suspect that someone came by and threw it in the back of their pickup,” said Anderton, who reported the incident to police. “What are you going to do with a 200-pound piece of concrete?”

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Theft

Submitted by mmactor on Wed, 02/18/2009 at 8:15 pm.

Unfortunately, people will steal anything these days just because. Most likely the perp will boast and brag about it to his/her friends and then do something really stupid like put it up for sale on Ebay and/or boast and brag about it on their facebook or myspace page. I agree, what would someone want with a 200 pound shell made of concrete? Go figure. I would be watching facebook, myspace, youtube and ebay carefully.