Elepent

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

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.

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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. Continue reading