Car Lovers Paradise

When first arriving in Los Angeles you realize that this really is a city of car lovers. Not just your average car but classic cars, antique cars, original one of a kind cars, high end cars, customized cars, they all can be seen cruising down LA’s major arteries on any given day.

The Peterson Museum  is devoted entirely to cars. The Concours D’Elegance is held annually on Rodeo Drive on Father’s Day, closing off the street to automotive traffic so pedestrians can better admire the beauty and fine lines of unique automotive machinery. Car shows and events abound in LA, some celebrating a specific model others hosting every kind imaginable. We love Low Riders,  T-Birds, Dodge, Chevy, Mercury, Mercedes, Lincolns and Cadillacs. Whether we are jamming out at the Cadillac Ranch, building it one piece at a time, whether it’s pink or black we do love our Cadillacs.

We love car chases, car races, and car thieves. We couldn’t do without our rebels and our bandits,  our heroes and our villains. From Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to James Bond, from the Bat Mobile to Christopher Lloyd’s DeLorean, from the Blues Brothers to the Men in Black  cars are part of our culture and ingrained in our spirit.

Cars bring back memories and inspire dreams.  Whether you’re looking for paradise or on a highway to hell  they can be the ultimate status symbol or the ultimate gauge of shallowness. They can evoke a season, an era or even a section of the country.

We are a wandering people, it’s in our blood or we wouldn’t be here. Road trips are teenage initiations and adult rebellions. Whether the ride is fast and dangerous, slow and short, or miles and miles of twists and turns we love to drive. Some times the journey is one way and sometimes we come full circle back to where we started. From Route 66 to Ventura highway from the Beat Generation to the Green Generation our romance and passon for cars has evolved with us and carried us not just down the road but into the future.

Nostalgia at 45 RPM

Amoeba Music claims to be the world’s largest independently owned music store and I believe them. On Sunset Blvd. between North Cahuenga Blvd. and Ivar Avenue it takes up an entire city block. With vinyl record albums taking up about a third of the store, walking through the doors is like doing the time warp.

Sifting through the albums brought back sounds, pictures, smells, parties of two and parties of two hundred, revelations, revolutions, fantasy and history. Shared experiences dovetail between music and movies, between cultural clashes and cultural celebrations, between reality and dreams. It was a shared odyssey of the senses, a journey of new experiences, new sounds, new images, new ideas, challenges and growth. The kind of growth through experience that Mother never taught us. Some of us made it and some of us didn’t. We were in free fall and didn’t realize it until we hit the ground.

There were some albums and experiences everybody had. Who could forget Carole King’s Tapestry, Chicago’s big chocolate bar, and Jefferson Starship’s Red Octopus, a many tentacled heart. Everyone spent a night at the Hotel California with the Eagles. Frampton came alive, Elvis died and the Beatles officially broke up.

Queen rocked us, Led Zeppelin showed us the way to heaven and Lynard Skynard taught us how to fly free. Billy Joel was a stranger and Neil Young said not to let things get you down. AC/DC was back in black and Johnny Cash was the man in black. Rod Stewart told us that with love the first cut is the deepest and the Stones fought off wild horses in the name of love. We learned that if you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding. The building of a wall was documented and another wall came tumbling down.

Bruce Springsteen was born to run and Tommy ran away from it all, retreating into his own world. George Carlin said the seven words you can’t say on radio and Richard Prior set ears on fire with his language and himself on fire with a lighter. We fought killer bunnies and searched for the Holy Grail while some days a hard rain just fell.

Barbara Streisand was born a star, Stevie Nicks vamped it up like a gypsy princess, and Cyndi Lauper just wanted to have fun.

Electric Light Orchestra evolved from a neon hood ornament into a space dock. Jefferson Airplane became a starship. We had aliens from France, Mork from Ork, Wookies and Trekies. Aliens ate meatloaf and Meatloaf flew like a bat out of hell.

Today you can buy an LP to digital music converter, change your old LPs to MP3s and listen to your personal collection on your iPod. You can even share your playlist by docking your MP3 player, but the experience of vinyl still can’t be beat. It’s not just audible, it’s also tactile, visual and above all memorable. It’s a group experience, a cultural sharing rather than an individual, solitary journey. John Belushi went on a road trip and never found his way home, Peter Fonda & Dennis Hooper went looking for America and didn’t survive the trip, but we went looking for America and we found it… in our music.