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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. Read More →  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. Read More →
From Las Vegas, we made a week-long field trip to Los Angeles, the better to drive some new cars and meet some models for photo shoots. We found a secret place to hide the Incorrigible in Long Beach for a week of dry-camping, and set about exploring the madness that is L.A.
Of course, we can’t go to a major city without seeking out its goth club. Las Vegas’ is called sKizoFrenia, and it’s in the Harmon Theater which is part of the Planet Hollywood casino/hotel shopcenter (which used to be the Aladdin). Read More →  This mid-1950s Internationl "Metro" van was so cute and charming I wanted to find the owner and see if I could buy it. The Southwest is a car-spotter’s paradise. Not only does the dry climate preserve old autos, but because they last longer, there are more old cars to see just running around. Las Vegas and the surrounding area yielded a bumper crop, no pun intended. First off, out at the Nelson ghost town, there were a number of cars just sitting out in the desert, as old cars are wont to do. Read More →
Preparing the Crimson Haybaler for front-line duty was simple; part of the reason we chose the Ranger was its simplicity. It was inexpensive because TLC was needed, however. I installed a new starter and fuel pump and the little truck runs just fine now, albeit a bit loudly and not quite so prettily, thanks to a missing exhaust and the guerilla modifications we had to make in order to tow it (see below). We’ll set about turning it into the Ultimate Toad in the coming months. Read More → So what’s there to do in Las Vegas, if you aren’t a gambler (which we aren’t)? Well, fans of the weird and wonderful owe it to themselves to take a walk through the surreal landscape that is Vegas. Wander up and down the Strip, in and out of the big casinos, and marvel (or roll your eyes) at the sheer madness of it all. Taken in the proper spirit (that is, not seriously), Las Vegas is quite the architectural fantasyland. In the evening, of course, many of the casinos have free light, fountain and pyrotechnic shows as you walk up and down Las Vegas Boulevard. This is not a secret, of course, so we don’t have to tell you to watch for the fountains at Bellagio or the Mirage’s volcano. Venturing outside of Las Vegas’ environs, you’ll find a lot of boring suburbs and a lot of desert. The glamorous inner city seems to have pushed all of the normal working parts of the city–fast-food restaurants, real-world retail, industrial complexes and housing–out into a wide halo of sprawl, and beyond that there’s naught but desert. The summer tourist season wound down, and the temperatures in the Black Hills dropped steadily. We got ready to leave the Big Pine with the last of the summer campers, and seemed to run right into the real world as we left. An early snowstorm sprinkled flakes over Custer as we headed south. The snow and cold weather didn’t affect us much, but the accompanying windstorm certainly did! As we rolled south past Hot Springs and into Wyoming, vicious winds ripping across the plains broadsided the Incorrigible, making it difficult to keep the vehicle in its lane. This was merely annoying, until a particularly powerful gust tore our awning open. Read More → The historic part of downtown Rapid City is home to one obvious sight, and two you’ll have to go looking for. As soon as you enter downtown, with its strip of antique stores and coffee shops lining Main and St. Joseph streets, you’ll see the “City of Presidents” exhibit, or at least some of it. Life-size bronze statues of United States Presidents stand on every street corner. This series of privately-funded sculptures adds four Presidents every year, two recent and two historical, with the final installation planned for next summer. Created by local artists, the bronze Presidents present interesting photo opportunities, to say the least.
Not as obvious is Art Alley. Located in the alley between Main and St. Joseph and bordered by Sixth and Seventh Streets, this outdoor art gallery started life as a bit of civil disobedience, when local artists began painting over the graffiti that marked the power poles. The activity quickly spread, with original works being painted on the walls, canvases occasionally nailed up in the middle of the night, and elaborate collages being produced. The popularity of the exhibit with local art students and tourists seems to have ensured its survival, and artists have demonstrated marvelous creativity in integrating the alley’s fixtures and features into their work. Graffiti and art combine in a landscape that’s just as entertaining as any museum. Read More → |
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