Photo images of the day...

... and an essay thrown in for good measure.



It's summer time and with that it means the La Mesa car show is back in session every Thursday night. What better excuse to kick off the weekend a day early?


Alas, P.J. O'Rourke bemoans the end of our love affair with our cars.

The car ceased to be object of desire and equipment for adventure and turned into office, rec room, communications hub, breakfast nook and recycling bin—a motorized cup holder. Americans, the richest people on Earth, were stuck in the confines of their crossover SUVs, squeezed into less space than tech-support call-center employees in a Mumbai cubicle farm. Never mind the six-bedroom, eight-bath, pseudo-Tudor with cathedral-ceilinged great room and 1,000-bottle controlled-climate wine cellar. That was a day’s walk away.

We became sick and tired of our cars and even angry at them. Pointy-headed busybodies of the environmentalist, new urbanist, utopian communitarian ilk blamed the victim. They claimed the car had forced us to live in widely scattered settlements in the great wasteland of big-box stores and the Olive Garden. If we would all just get on our Schwinns or hop a trolley, they said, America could become an archipelago of cozy gulags on the Portland, Ore., model with everyone nestled together in the most sustainably carbon-neutral, diverse and ecologically unimpactful way,

But cars didn’t shape our existence; cars let us escape with our lives. We’re way the heck out here in Valley Bottom Heights and Trout Antler Estates because we were at war with the cities. We fought rotten public schools, idiot municipal bureaucracies, corrupt political machines, rampant criminality and the pointy-headed busybodies. Cars gave us our dragoons and hussars, lent us speed and mobility, let us scout the terrain and probe the enemy’s lines. And thanks to our cars, when we lost the cities we weren’t forced to surrender, we were able to retreat.

But our poor cars paid the price. They were flashing swords beaten into dull plowshares. Cars became appliances. Or worse. Nobody’s ticked off at the dryer or the dishwasher, much less the fridge. We recognize these as labor-saving devices. The car, on the other hand, seems to create labor. We hold the car responsible for all the dreary errands to which it needs to be steered. Hell, a golf cart’s more fun. You can ride around in a golf cart with a six-pack, safe from breathalyzers, chasing Canada geese on the fairways and taking swings at gophers with a mashie

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Don't tell any of this to the folks milling up and down La Mesa Boulevard but a tell may be that you don't see anything made past the early 70s parked there or driving up and down the drag looking to be admired.

That train don't stop here

*



We hate public transportation. There, we said it. And, yes, we probably are drowners of little baby kittens and enemies of Gaia to boot but we cannot shake that innate feeling that whenever we step onto a bus or a trolley it is, to us, a demoralizing, demeaning and dehumanizing experience.

Of course, we're somewhat products of our environment in this respect as we have spent all but 4 years on this planet living in Southern California, the hands-down capital of car culture in America and the world. As such, instead of familiarity it is indeed unfamiliarity that breeds our contempt.

Having to comply with someone else's schedule when we deal with that enough as it is... fear of hopping onto the wrong train or bus... fear of missing our stop... being mildly claustrophobic... just not getting there freaking fast enough... have you ever been able to double-back on a bus when you see a pretty girl walking down the street? (in our youth... in our youth)... no choice in the matter of traveling companions... not being able to figure out the token machines... having ZERO control over the radio


... the list goes on.

In short, public tranportation is the antithesis of freedom. Your individual desires and wants are secondary to that of the collective and central planning which is why it such an anathema to us.

Well, you'd be singing a different tune if you lived in a densely populated metropolis, champ?


Would we?

Click on over to our blog-buddy Harrison's place, here, and listen to his tale of woe being car-less in that statist paradise of San Francisco.





Related: On the way home from work yesterday, our beloved hoopdie ('99 Toyota Tacoma) rolled over.

Look at her. Our freedom rider. 200 large and only a clutch and timing belt replacement to show for it. Could you ever love a bus in that way?

* That's the view entering Monument Valley from the south out of Kayenta, Arizona.

Link of the day

Loyal reader and commenter, Sarah B., passed this along to us.


The American Festival on Saturday down on the Embarcadero here in San Diego from 10 A.M. to 8:30 P.M.

Beers from Ballast Point, Green Flash and Coronado Brewing Co., live music and classic cars. We think that about covers it.

What a great idea. Right, Left or completely indifferent, we think that sometimes the most important thing gets overlooked and that is the fact that as Americans we're free to speak our mind and to assemble peacefully to enjoy some of the stuff that a free and vibrant society produces as opposed to what the government produces as per our Vice President.

We're definitely going to be there for at least a portion of it and we hope you can make it as well. See ya down there.

Saturday at the auto show

Saturday we spun on down to the San Diego Auto Show which was being held at the convention center. With the opportunity to check out some cool wheels we were also very interested to see how our tax dollars were being spent, particularly at the General Motors displays.

Long story short, heavy on the Camaro, Corvette and their SUVs.

Here’s a nice look at the Camaro at one of GM’s central displays.




And here’s the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid.

You know, for $54,000, we better be getting more that 22 highway and 21 city.
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It gets better.

For a mere $59,000, you can roll off the lot in an ethanol-burning Tahoe getting 21 highway and 15 in the city.


And while we’re on a green theme, here’s the Fisker, available in the fall of this year. Fisker you will recall is an automotive company backed by Al Gore which received a $529 million U.S. government loan to manufacture in Finland this little hybrid gem upon which you are affixing your gaze.

Copy price: $89,000.

Hey, no one said going green was going to be cheap. Or ethical. Or sensical.






Jeep had a cool little obstacle course set up.





The man on the left is off-road legend and El Cajon native, Ivan “Iron Man” Stewart. The guy just emanates a rugged, western dudesmanship. People young and old alike were coming up to Stewart, chatting, taking pictures with him and getting his autograph.

And now for something a little different...

In celebration of... Earth weekend? Iowahawk has his readers’ collection of four-wheel, two wheel and no-wheel carbon contributors, here.