Tag: cars

Cruising Returns to Van Nuys Boulevard.

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Vette Caddy Girls

Rydell Overview

Red Cars Rydell

2009 has been the year that the American auto industry was temporarily rescued from its deathbed by an infusion of Federal money and the “Cash for Clunkers” program.

And this year has also seen the return of cruising on Van Nuys Bl., which was once the heart and soul of the auto culture parade in Los Angeles.

Ironically, it has been the needy dealers who gave. Thanks to the empty lot generosity of defunct Rydell Chevrolet and the newly resurrected Van Nuys Cruising Association, literally hundreds, if not thousands of vintage cars and restored vehicles are now congregating and parking near the corner of Burbank and Van Nuys Boulevard.

Pickup VNB

Mustang Flag

In Ralph’s parking lot, 4&20, the Mobil station, and all along VNB north of Burbank to Oxnard, there was an enormous and enthusiastic collection of car lovers and their cars.

Gathering

Bicycle riders cars

Culturally, these events may be nothing more than big car love-ins. But one could not help but notice the American flags, the overwhelmingly white faces, the fat and freckled faced ladies in the lawn chairs, the crew cuts and blue eyes, the NRA, POW, McCain/Palin and Marine insignias, the smiling LAPD officers… the subconscious nostalgia for a San Fernando Valley that exists no more. This was on the night that Obama spoke his big speech on health care, and one wonders who in this crowd might be grumbling dark thoughts about the coffee complexioned leader of the free world.

But all that is nonsense. Pure speculation. This is all about having fun, isn’t it?

Culver City Mazda.

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Culver City Mazda.

Photo: Here in Van Nuys

Very soon, sooner than we might imagine, there will most likely be hundreds of dealerships, all over California, whose vast acreage will be emptied.

People are simply not buying or leasing as many cars. Auto companies are not producing. There is a depression in the car industry.

What can we do with the leftover land underneath these closed dealerships?

I wish that these enormous plots of oil soaked asphalt, which once existed and thrived as a testament to our voracious hunger for cars, would somehow be converted back to orange groves or some agricultural use.

Culver City has a wonderful farmers market, that comes here Tuesday afternoon. What if this “progressive” city were to tear up this defunct auto dealership and plow its asphalt into dirt and grow organic fruits and vegetables here?

Humans will always need to eat. Our appetite for the gasoline powered automobile is not eternal.

Epitaph for the 20th Century.

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General Motors Century Cruise, originally uploaded by Zane Merva.

As big and powerful and immortal as GM once was, it could not survive in a nation that had no policy for reducing its dependence on oil.

Think about it. For 30 years, GM has been struggling. And that is just about the amount of time that the US has been involved in an ongoing “Energy Crisis”. When the price of oil goes up, people drive less or think about buying smaller cars. When the price goes down, the drivers go back to larger cars and trucks. What company could possibly produce vehicles to withstand this constant instability of fossil fuels? Would you expect McDonalds to stay profitable if beef went from $10 a pound to $300 in one year?

Give GM some credit. They have revamped and improved their autos so that they are just as good as anything Tokyo produces. Quality is not the issue, the national lack of an energy strategy is. It influences everything from terrorism to Iraq, from sprawl to global warming.

The car makers have missed one point in these years, however. They would have been better, all along, if they had been forced to produce energy efficient cars, and cars that did not emit pollutants.

Instead, we’ve spent the last 30 years in a fantasy where we can consume all the deadly oil we want, and then wonder why our planet and our industries and our way of life is standing under the executioner’s rope.