Cars Archive

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Ways in which New York City has failed me today

By
Tom OHare
– May 9, 2012

In response to my appeal of a parking ticket acquired one month ago.

The respondent has been charged with violating Traffic Rule 4-08(f)(7) by stopping, standing or parking a vehicle in a manner which obstructs a curb area which has been cut down, lowered or otherwise constructed or altered to provide access for persons with disabilities. As of 1/31/12, fine mitigation is no longer available simply by request of the respondent. Also, claim that respondent thought parking was legal fails to provide a valid basis for dismissal. Therefore, inasmuch as no persuasive evidence has beeva [SIC] submitted to warrant dismissal of the summons, the violation is sustained and the full fine is imposed.

Clearly, I am going to appeal this decision as well, based on its staggering incoherence indicated by the all-caps, bolded “SIC” above. I should also note that my appeal contained a photograph of a vehicle parked in the spot I was allegedly “illegally” parked in taken the very next night, sans ticket. This evidence was disregarded by the unfeeling pencil-pushers in the NYC Department of Finance, no doubt because they are Yankees fans and I am from Massachusetts — which, SYSTEMATIC DISCRIMINATION MUCH, NYC?!?!?

Thought so. This isn’t over, New York. Not by a long shot.

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Song of the Week

By
Trevor Macomber
– April 2, 2012

As usual, I’m a few days behind the eightball on this one, but this van-centric cover of Hall and Oates’ “I Can’t Go For That” by Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers is flippin’ awesome. I hope they blow up (in a fame kind of way — not a car van bomb kind of way).

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Timelapse Video of a Roadtrip Across the Country: West to East

By
Tom OHare
– September 16, 2011

I’m only posting this because I made the exact same trip (minus the last leg, and plus a prelude from Portland to Seattle) two years ago. In fact, two years ago today I was probably desperately trying to fix up my 1984 Subaru hatchback in preparation for the 3,000 miles of road ahead. I may or may not have been drinking heavily with Neil and/or Joe while desperately trying to fix up my 1984 Subaru hatchback. I may or may not have been convinced that my alternator was going to give out over the Continental Divide.

It’s nice being reminded of the journey, though. And if you’ve never done it, you should.

Here’s a bonus picture my own mean machine in Wyoming somewhere, circa 2009. Best $500 I ever spent, that car.

UPDATE: Watching it again (and really I should’ve noticed the first time when I didn’t see NYC), I see that the driver in the video and I diverged somewhere in Ohio. I think it was Ohio anyway, where I was given the option to shoot north or stay south. I stayed south. Dude in the video went north.

That is all.

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News to make you feel bad about yourself

By
Trevor Macomber
– August 5, 2011

According to MSN,

British actor Rowan Atkinson, famed for his “Mr. Bean” television shows and films, is recovering in a hospital after crashing his $1 million supercar, according to reports.

To reiterate: the man from the video below owns a $1 million automobile.

 
Ahh, I’m just hatin’ though. The first 60 and last five minutes of Bean: The Movie are honestly some of the funniest moments I’ve ever witnessed on film. If it weren’t for that short lull near the end, I’d almost have to rank it with Dumb & Dumber for pure ridiculous humor.

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I want to ride in this car

By
Trevor Macomber
– July 25, 2011

 
And I definitely want to ride in its successors.

(h/t)

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Reimagining American Identity, Corporate American Style

By
Sam Cheuk
– February 28, 2011

***

I’m sure I’m pretty late to the party but I just watched this Chrysler Superbowl commercial and it has my brain a-humming. Wow. Huh? Wuh?

First thing that struck me was exactly what the title suggests: the rebranding of American exceptionalism to better empathize with the contemporary American cultural anxiety. But don’t be mistaken: it’s still American exceptionalism alright, only it’s no longer the innocent ex nihilo exceptionalism that charges a Dodge truck through a pine-lined dirt path before braking heroically before a cliff or beneath an opened moonroof where a couple in black kisses elegantly under the undulating citylight. If anything, it is a reactionary exceptionalism, Rocky-style. An even more hyper-realistic (à la Eco) presentation of the American spirit in the slogan “Tried, Tested, and True” (which, okay, is Chevy’s, but if you weren’t familiar with car models and I showed you a slew of American car commercials of yore with penises photoshopped on their logos, y’know, so it’d be pixel-blotted, could you tell them or their branding differences apart?).

What a fitting symbol, Detroit, the municipal equivalent to the famous Edward Hopper painting that captures (holds hostage?) the American nostalgic imagination, to be used by this advertising firm to juxtapose the current mood of the American psyche: shots of ugly obsolete industry and Hiroshima-esque building facade (synced with a husky-voiced “I got a question for ya, what does this city know about luxury? Huh? What does a town that’s been to hell and back know about the finer things in life?”), then reinvention, set in false-dichotomy: cityscape, classical sculpture, various images testifying to “hard work, conviction, and a know-how that runs generations deep in every last one of us.” The latter is still the exact same message they had preached to pre-recession America, isn’t it? But it has been co-opted into a larger cultural narrative (rather than, say, the “unrealistic” isolation necessary for the ideological or the romantic in earlier car commercials), one that not only identifies with the fear and anxiety of America, but offers up a hopeful answer, if you were to believe that fear and hope are two sides of the same coin, the narrative of the comeback kid as the beat of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” turns up and we begin to see the car, we see Eminem in the car— “That’s who we are, that’s our story.”

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