deuces wild

this guy needs attention. i can't imagine you'd do this much to a car if you didn't want to be noticed. pinstripes, airbrush, striking color combo, tweaky bullet lights on the back, red tinted windows, airbrushed seats...ya, it's different. a little overkill. but i did take a picture of it.

actually, i liked the car to the right more, but the doors and trunk were open, and that guy kept talking to the owner about the indian artifacts he was displaying in the trunk. so, while he wasn't ruining this shot, he prevented me from taking a shot of that car.

also just noticing the dude smiling for the camera off to the left there. that makes me laugh.

rat

found this rat rod around back of the industrial park at the super cruise. its pretty beat to shit, and seemingly haphazardly put together. but if you look closer, the small details are really fun to discover. seems to have a thing for skulls too. wonder what freud would say to that?

the mottled paint is the color of rust, but it really isn't rusted at all, and it adds a wonderful layer of texture to the thing. and hells yes, real bullet holes instead of the stupid stickers!

work in progress, or will they stop here? 

  

  

up and coming

not much to say today, and it's late.

one from dia de los muertos show here in whittier. usually pass these kind of cars by, but the little blue bottle caught my eye. gives it that extra "get up" and go i guess.

spudnut racing

quick pic. already running late on somewhere i'm supposed to be. 

found this rat rod way out at the end of the street, on the other side of the railroad tracks, at the rialto run whatcha brung show. i think the owner next to him said they'd arrived late, so parked out there in the shade. they did also get out and drive the circuit once in a while. the other owner also said i'd made this guy's day because i bothered to take a picture of it. such small things can make people happy. don't think i gave him a card, so i suppose he'll never see it, but its here, hiding on the internet in plain sight. you never know.

ttfn

flamed and a little grumpy

the lovely couple that own this hot rod have been waiting a month to see a new picture of their baby. they thought they'd been going crazy and missed it, but no. i just don't post everything, especially if i'm not satisfied with it. i suppose i have an old email from them somewhere, so i could have let them know. or i guess i could have written something here. but then i wonder if they're just looking for the picture and not reading it, they wouldn't know then either.

i had been having an internal arguement over a couple of shots of it from a show out in riverside, but there was something in each that was just not doing it for me.

then this weekend, a couple of local shows i'd heard about and planned to attend, just simply didn't happen. so having awakened at an ungodly hour for a saturday, took my better half along for the ride out to rialto, promising him that i don't drive out there anymore if it isn't worth it. i'd scoped out a few while my son went to ucr, so i knew this would be ok.

and i kinda guessed they'd be there too. i saw them drive in as we walked over the train tracks to the main strip. we didn't actually get there until after 8am, so the sun was already past the sunrise we were looking for, but not so high as to be irritating.

i took a few shots early, then wound back around and took these two before i left. i think either one looks better than the shot with gary's favorite outhouses.

my better half went to the car show with me, so afterwards, we went out to chino planes of fame for him. he had fun...hardly anyone there, and a nice breeze for a change.

thanks for telling about another show the next day, but i just couldn't do another whole day in riverside.

oh ya, and there's the little grumpy on the back of the other car. didn't notice him last year, when i was just all about the skulls.

oh, and buy a print here

checkered past

i still have a couple more cars i promised before i get back to my favs. 

this one was just different than the typical hot rod. mainly the checkered paint job on the radiator and inside the engine compartment. otherwise, pretty standard hep cat.

wonder what that guy in the doorway is thinking...or the zombie to his right. neither is looking at me, nor the car. must be something driving by out of the shot.

mr pig

found this over at hooters a couple of months ago. probably wouldn't have taken the shot, except i noticed the little decoration on the engine, or rather the air filter cover. other than that, this is a pretty generic bucket.

-----

got busted by the doctor, who knew i'd been walking too much by the look of the cyborg boot. almost was free to go, when he happened to push on the wrong place on my foot. yep, another shot of courage into the foot. this time, a needle that looked a mile long, and deeper into my foot. hurt like a bitch.

promised to keep off the foot as much as possible. kinda putting a damper on going to car shows. but this weekend is the show at chicano park and also the annual show in orange plaza, neither of which i've been to before. i think i can do one or the other, but not both. better half is going to insist on going and pulling my bag around. maybe i can talk him into helping me up, if i want to take a low shot.

rod riguez

let's hear it for the time change...pfft. i'm going to miss that extra hour of sleep.

busy week ahead, probably won't be posting until sunday, if i'm lucky. so i'll leave you with this guilded beast. a total look at me, look at me car, so i looked at it, looked at it.

i really just liked the pinstripe picture on the back, but am including the front and back views, for those who always ask. it was a really different take on a hot rod. the running boards probably aren't that useful.

the owner offered to let me shoot the inside, but nah, that's for someone else to have fun with. i'm busy judging the book by the cover.

indecisive

i've gone to a few shows this past week. just about done doing the backup on my computer and have made some room, so i figured i'll start shooting again.

made it out to the broiler last wednesday. was relatively warm out, so hoped more cars would show up. actually, there were a lot of regular cars taking up space. good for business, bad for car shows. 

anyway, this car i'm pretty sure belongs to one of the guys that works in the broiler. i see it a lot, but usually parked over on the other side. i saw him back this puppy into one of my favorite spots to shoot, and the space next to it stayed empty for quite a while. figured i'd take a couple before someone would want to park and move me out of the way.

i walked up to it and saw this first picture, and knew i had to get that reflection in the window. the pictures are a little rough, and there's a bit of lens flarey stuff, but i still think they're interesting.

trouble was, i couldn't get the rest of the neon in the picture. so i couldn't decide which picture to post. so, i'm posting the other view, because i like it just as much. and why not, the owner is a nice guy.

buckets o’ fun

i was looking for a picture to play with last night. found this older one. started tweaking the pixels. was about half an hour from posting, when one of our visiting college kids decided to warm up something in the microwave, which is pretty standard for a college kid, right?

well, i am currently living in an older place. not a nice victorian. not even a craftsman. just some old thing from the thirties, that happens to not have enough juice running through it to power all of this century's technology. at least not all at once.

so, when my mother-in-law has got her space heater on, and i'm running my computer, and there's a tv or two on, as well as my better half running his puter back in the back room, well, the house kind of squeaks by. but the key seems to be, add the microwave or the little toaster oven, and the place throws it's hands up and blows a fuse. which just does wonders for my attitude.

my computer is on the same circuit as the kitchen and the front room. so it all goes dark up front, and my computer and whatever i'm working on, just goes poof. and my vocabulary gets very loud and colorful. really makes me a joy to be around.

oh, and it has no effect on my better half's room. but when he hears me dropping loud f-bombs, he knows what happened. doesn't save my file, but does get the place lit up, and i'm welcome to start all over again.

so, as i was saying, while i had saved my file not long before the fuse blew, it was late, and i dreaded seeing if my file was ruined, so i didn't even start my computer back up last night. and don't step on all the f-bombs i dropped all the way down the hall to the back room, and back. took a hot shower instead, and went to bed.

took two tries to get my computer back up and running this evening. my file was ok this time, but other times they've corrupted. had to rework some stuff, but here it is. i've got things to do, so i'll just post it before someone gets hungry again...