Elepent

Okay, so here’s the story:  while generally entertaining to write, this travel blog is also time-consuming and in the end, not as focused as I’d like for it to be.  Lexie and I are walking a number of different paths these days, writing-wise, and the Elepent blog is splitting the lanes between them, siphoning off energy that would be better channeled into different places.

So there’s about to be some change.  First off, there won’t be much in the way of new posts for a while.  We are off the road for the moment, the Incorrigible temporarily mothballed.  With luck, that means that this time will prove to be a cocoon before the butterfly stage, but there’s not much point in going on and on about the boring chrysalis part, especially if things don’t pan out.

That sounds kind of dire, but it isn’t, not really.

Over time, you’ll see this site morph gradually into a landing page that’ll serve as the gateway to a whole bunch of different places.  My fiction website, named Looking for Strange, is one of those places, and at that site you’ll be able to read the club reports and some of the more personal ramblings that are generated as we roam, as well as my fiction.  Over at my automotive writing site, recently redubbed Fuel Infection, you’ll find just about everything that has anything to do with things that go:  museum reports, car-spotter collections, and of course an archive of new-car reviews going back over a decade.  Lexie’s photography is also becoming more accessible, so you’ll see a bridge to that particular kingdom arising from here as well.

The ongoing chronicle of our adventures is fun, but there are a great many people doing a great many more interesting things out here in Internet-land.  What Lex and I are proud of is our art, and our work, and we’ve been unhappy that it’s taking a back seat to pictures of the cat and long-winded stories about ghost towns.  We’ve been looking for a way to combine all of these things under a single umbrella, while making it easier for you (that is, our faithful readers) to focus on what you’re interested in seeing.

Redirecting this travel blog will also enable me to spend more time generating directed content; automotive and product reviews, fiction and editorial comment.  Look at it this way:  Elepent served as a window into our lives:  now it’s expanding to become a door so you can come right inside and pick a room to hang out in.

Das Bunker is one of those ground-zero scenes, the kind of club that everyone has heard of. It’s been a fixture of the LA scene for over a decade, in fact, hosting bands like VNV Nation, Combichrist and Covenant, who played just a week before we arrived.  So, were we intimidated? A little. Excited mostly, though, since we’ve heard about the place and hoped that it would live up to its hype.

Did it?

Yeah, it did, well enough. Continue reading

Hot Wheels display at the Petersen. Yes, they're mounted on that awesome orange plastic track!

Of course, Los Angeles is a car-guy’s paradise.  The weather’s friendly to old vehicles, and there are twisty mountain roads and speedy freeways and slow-n-low cruising spots within an hour of one another.  The streets are filled with equal numbers of everyday exotics and awesomely-preserved daily drivers, and if I tried to shoot them all we never would’ve gotten anywhere.  This is one of the few places where you’ll see a Maserati Quattroporte or Lamborghini Gallardo in the wild, however.  It’s definitely one of the few places where you’ll see those cars sharing space at the traffic light with original Austin Minis and Volkswagen Microbuses.  Mercedes is a common nameplate in the area, both old and new. Continue reading