what's up?

mirror, mirror

very shiny riviera, from before covid (bc?). it’s an older model than the one my mom used to drive, and waaaay nicer.

i like how reflective the hood was, even on an overcast day. that’s better than a spit shine; it’s elbow grease.

————-

last day in arizona. upper nineties today. i hear it only made it to the sixties back home…i’ll be there as soon as i can…

learned a lot on this trip, my brain so full of new ideas, it might ‘splode. looking back through the copius notes i took, pretty sure i won’t understand my own handwriting next week. every class had online handouts, and was videotaped, so i can go back and translate later.

also remembered that it is better to not gaze into the concave magnifying mirror in the hotel bathroom. the reflection isn’t what it used to be, and the attention to detail leaves my camera in the dust. glasses off made no difference. every pore, hair and wrinkle…like the lunar surface through a high-power telescope. ick.

already went out for dinner. thought about a big restaurant meal, but decided i really wasn’t hungry enough, so just did fast food at a truck stop on the other side of the freeway. really disappointing, about what i expected, but it was interesting to wander around the store.

skipped the casino; didn’t feel like breathing cigarettes and whiskey fumes, if it’s anything like vegas used to be.

i’m all packed, so hot bath and tv for me. i can sleep in a while in the morning, before i have to pedal back to the airport. don’t even need to top off the tank, i didn’t really go very far.

better half says he’s feeling better, but hasn’t really left the house all week. almost out of food, except for a bit of guacamole i made before i left. says it’s mostly sticking to the avocado pits i left in the bowl. i told him he should put those balls in his mouth and suck it. it’s ok to spit the seeds out. enjoy.

i hope he still picks me up at the airport tomorrow.

giving you the bird

been a busy few weeks/weekends.

to san diego three times: to take my brother home from a visit with mom; then the following weekend just because; then the next week, for chicano park, followed by a week vacation and visiting with my brother and bringing him back home with us. probably enough of sd for a while.
spent this past friday and yesterday in riverside, at the show and go.
thought about heading to lincoln park on the way home today, but i think i sprained my knee a little yesterday, so unfortunately had to skip it. perfect weather for los angeles. really wished we could have gone. :(

regardless, i have a zillion pictures from the two shows my better half and i did get to, so if i told you i’d post your car, be patient. really busy at work on weekdays, so it may take some time, but it will get up here eventually.

here’s a t-bird from the grassy knoll at chicano park. dappled shadows on a rough paint job—it’s seen better days, with that post-sunburn peeled look, sort of like my face—but the car itself is otherwise in pretty good condition.

next post is almost ready, of that red pontiac next to it. both of the lady owners asked to see the pictures. i’ll get that ready while i import my riverside photos this afternoon.

fuck chipotle

1965 chevy impala

saw this at legg lake, end of summer cruise. very clean, and not one i typically care about. but i like nice pinstripes, and the tail lights are distinctive, so there you go.

i grow tired of going to the same places for lunch every day at work. don't get me wrong, there are a lot more fine dining establishments nearby, but i get an hour, and i dont want to pay twenty bucks for something fancy every day.

so end of last week, i thought i'd give chipotle a shot again. it had been a while since they'd been in the news for food borne illness, and figured maybe they had gotten their shit together.

well, they must have gotten their shit together. the employees must have put that shit into the carnitas, cuz i got sick a day later, and felt like shit all weekend. chills and cramps. it was over a hundred outside, but i was under a blanket off and on for a day.

as usual, there wasn't much of a line there. the enthusiastic employee that greeted me and served up my burrito was really quite nice, though a bit over the top, but i think that it was just his personality.

now on the other side of a crap weekend, i'd really just like to reach over that glass partition, grab him by his chubby face, and scream, "i know it was you, fredo!" then invite him to go for a ride on a boat to catch some fish...

anyway, i didn't do much for most of the weekend. late sunday, i did manage to go uptown, to snap a picture of an old car i'd seen drive by the window. but no shows for me. just sleeping, crapping, and whining about the cramp in my side. yay.

never say never, but it will be a very long time before i venture into that place again. thanks, fredo.

no number given

1965 ford falcon

on a normal day, i would not have taken this shot. but random white guy, with a muscle car at a viejitos show, bounds up and starts chattering away, so i can't not take it.

he seemed really nice, and really enthused. sort of that surfer dude attitude.

said he'd grown up in cerritos. had been at some other show, where i think he said raynbow had told him abou this show, so he figured he'd come on down. mentioned that he'd seen himself driving his car in someone's video on youtube. told him i'd seen myself in someone's video on youtube...my backside, because i was busy taking pictures of cars as the videographer went by...seems to be typical.

got kinda wierd when he asked what i was doing later. i said playing with my pictures, but i don't think that was the answer he thought i'd give.

i took a few shots of his car. and when he yelled, asking if i wanted his phone number...ya no. told him i didn't think my better half would be cool with that, showing up with some random guy's number and no reason to have it. the guys nearby giggled a bit, but no offense was intended.

fifty

ok, mustangs really aren't my thing. probably because my sister had a boyfriend with one back in the day. and i didn't like him much, but what does a kid know?

i usually don't give them much more than a glance at shows, this one included.

i had walked past these and was happily shooting some old pos truck, covered with rust, when some guy walked up and asked if i had shot his car yet. i asked which one, and he pointed over at the 'stang, or should i say 'stangs. both of these are his.

told him i hadn't shot them, probably wouldn't because they just aren't my thing, aren't old enough.

he argued that i probably had seen this, and probably wouldn't very often. his point was that there is a fifty year difference between these two models, and they are both his. the story was that he'd bought the '65 when he got married in '65, and had bought this stinking new mustang this year for their golden anniversary.

it is a big, beefy model. i'm sure it purrs when he drives it. i had a rental mustang a couple of years ago, and i couldn't stand it, but maybe this is a little better.

so i took a few shots. not bothering to post the new model by itself, cuz, you can just go see one of those at any ford dealer today.

happy anniversary, btw. i forgot to tell the guy.

cool riv

yeah, i don't usually shoot many models older than the early '60s, but every once in a while, i yearn for something different. this one was quite lovely, in spite of it's simplicity.

so angel tells me the other day (that's his name, not one of the filmy wing-ed ones), that the lot at the broiler was actually very full, even all the way out in the back lot. oh, stick the knife in and twist...i couldn't go to the show that evening due to other commitments. i've been lamenting how empty it's been the last few months. and tomorrow is the 4th of july, so suckage, no one will be there.

hisss and hisss

couple of cobras in henderson, nv. i haven't seen a lot of these around here, but there were three of them on this day. yeesh, i pounded the pixels the previous one. i like this one better.

i suppose i won't make it to this show again until next september, which is unfortunate. seemed to be a lot of interesting cars, and they said that was not even a quarter of what normally shows up...it was kinda rainy that day. at least it wasn't a typical sweltering day in vegas baby.

and there were a few other shows in the area that week, but i was too busy to check them out. at least i can vicariously enjoy them via my flickr friend, darkhorse68's photostream.

triplets

so in case anyone noticed i haven't been around much lately, i haven't been. spent the better part of the last month working a bunch of overtime on deadlines, then i had to go to vegas this past week on business. honest. not fibbing. i don't gamble, smoke, or drink (what do i do...), so really, if i didn't have to be there, i wouldn't be.

anyway, one of my flickr contacts (shout out to darkhorse68), lives somewhere out there in that desert oasis, and is always posting the coolest pics of cars from this show. so i managed to squeeze in a labor day show on the way up to vegas, and then this one on the way home. fortunately, for both shows, it was early morning, the sky was overcast, with thundershowers likely, so it was perfect weather-wise, and with a giant natural light box above, killing off real harsh shadows. the bummer was that the possibility of rain probably scared off a bunch of cars too.

in spite of the weather, this parking lot got very full, so i can only imagine a typical day. i arrived just as they were doing the pledge of allegiance, which i did not realize until i saw that everyone was standing and looking back somewhere behind me. apparently i had parked in a section of the lot that typically lines up the corvettes, and a nice gentleman directed me to more appropriate parking.

after re-parking and pulling out my cameras, i bee-lined to a couple of old chevy bel airs, afraid they'd leave before the rain started. not a problem. took a bunch of shots of those, then spotted this trio in the aforementioned corvette lot.

i wandered over there and started shooting. being that there were three cobras, but four or five guys sitting behind them, i'd have to say the owners had been joined by a couple of their buddies. they mostly ignored me, and/but watched closely while they chatted. finally one of them came over to check out my tripod when i started to set it up low to the ground. he was intrigued and had never seen one quite like it, then went and sat back down with his buds.

at some point, after shooting several views of each car, another one of them walked over to see what i was doing. i asked if he wanted to look at my book of prints while i continued to shoot pics. should have done that sooner, because then all of them came around and looked at the book pretty quickly...and that would have got them out of the earlier shots. i'll have to remember that next time there's a bunch sitting there staring back at the camera.

anyway, they chatted a bit, and i thanked them for letting me shoot their cars, and went off to take more shots. not thinking, i had forgotten to hand them my card, in case they were curious about what shots i got, i wandered back over to them before i left. they were the only bunch that took the time to chat a bit and see my book at either show i went to, so that's that. maybe i'll post pics of the other two. i'll see if i get an email from them before i bother, if i don't post them anyway at some later date.

only bummed i didn't get to meet darkhorse while i was there, but then, i didn't warn him either. maybe next year...

time warp

so, on this last day of the year, i think back to times past. flipping through my parent's photo albums, i found these.

i vividly remember this oldsmobile tornado. the thing was built like a tank, and had huge tires, at least relative to my size.

that's my younger bro and me in the snow, when we lived in virginia beach. i look a bit evil in this shot, but i think i was just trying to look at the camera and keep the snow out of my eyes at the same time.

my dad was pretty stylin' in that plaid jacket. lol. that must have disappeared before i was born, as i don't remember ever seeing him it or having it in his closet.

every year, back before seat belts were required, my dad would drive us 10 hours to my grandmother's house in west virginia at thanksgiving. i'd be crawling around on the floor space under my mom's feet up front, sometimes with a pillow and taking a nap. lots of leg room, or was it that i was just small? we'd have to put snow chains on sometimes to get over the mountains, and my dad drove like a maniac then...and still does now. he never wanted to stop, just drive straight there, but with kids, my mom wouldn't let him; kids get really cranky when they're hungry or have to take a whizz.

we'd stay a few days there, get the creeps down in gramma's basement, which always smelled like mold, and was always very cold. then we'd turn around and do another 10 hours home. joy.

i wanna say there was space under the back window, behind the seats you could lay on and watch the clouds go by, but maybe i'm thinking of just the back seat. i'll have to ask my brother with the seemingly photographic memory.

i don't know why, but every year, maybe every other year, my dad would have us out sanding all the paint off, and then he would primer it, then sand it again. then paint it with a couple of coats of the same blue every time. i don't remember it having scratches or anything, he just seemed to like using his paint gun, and maybe he was just bonding with my older bro. guess i'll have to ask.

when i was old enough to drive, i finally got the keys to it. i drove it to work for a couple of months, before it went christine on me. i think the brakes went out as i was coming to a four-way stop. fortunately, there wasn't anyone at the intersection and i somehow wrestled the thing into a parking lot and whacked it up against a curb to stop it. freaked me out so much, i don't think i ever drove it again. he sold it a year or two later.

he also had this 1959 oldsmobile 98 for a while; i think that's the tail end of it in the picture with my brother, but i don't remember it at all. my mom says it was their first car together, and it was pretty nice. i would rather he'd kept that one, but oh well.

hope you all have a safe and happy new year!

falcon sans snowman

yesterday, i happened to be in anaheim on business. not far from the show at angelo's burger joint. i'd stopped there several months ago, where there happened to be only two guys standing in the lot with their cars at the time. that had been disappointing.

happily, there were definitely more cars, though i didn't stay long. i was still dressed in my work clothes, and it's difficult, but not impossible to do my ground crawl in a skirt and dress shoes. i did a few anyway; hope i didn't flash anyone.

so the owner of this falcon closed the trunk and moved his chair so i could shoot his car. thank you ever so much. then, since it was early and not too many cars had shown up, he told me about the history of his car, the model in great detail, the development from the falcon to the mustang...the guy has an encylopaedic knowledge of the old cars, makes, models, engines, bits and pieces, nuts and bolts. really amazing to listen to, and listen i did for at least ten minutes, if not longer. it was interesting, though a lot of the detail went over my head.

his baby here, he said had three previous owners, all female. last one just had too many cars, and sold this one to him, pretty much in the condition you see it. he did mention that it had been repainted with a special acrylic enamel paint that you can't get anymore, the interior had been redone, the engine had been reworked or rebuilt. that it had a super secret feature on the gear shift that most owners didn't know about, that i can't begin to tell you what it does, because i've forgotten the details already. maybe it has a steering wheel like speed racer's, with buttons that do different things...maybe it makes that cha cha cha sound effect when it jumps... i've gone off on a tangent

he said he lived the american graffiti life as a kid, and often hung out at harvey's, now known as the bob's broiler in downey.

he also carried pictures in his wallet of his friend's cars, and his other car – i know it was red, and it was worth about $60,000, but i'm having a brain fart, and can't remember what it was. i know it has wheels, and was very cherry. it's almost 11 p.m. as i type this; i've had a long week, been to two car shows this evening, and my eyes are tired, so i apologize for not remembering some of the stuff.

he mentioned another car show up the road a few miles, so i decided to drive by. turned out to be the cypress show. i drove around the perimeter, but didn't stop, as i was tired and not dressed to do a decent job on the cars that i saw. maybe another time, now that i know how to get there.

gotta get some sleep; i may have to drive out to san luis obispo tomorrow :)