The city looks better when I feel better. It's good to socialize you know. Stick out a hand to the guy who's alone. Hey man, what's up? This is especially true when you're with a big rollicking group. That's the best time to include other people in it. By other people I mean passers-by. It becomes a show. I see the tension in people everyday. It's right there locked in struggle with the part that wants to go beyond - everything that's ever been done before.

It's all about making an entrance. You have to come busting in. Once I heard it described as the center-stage moment. (tap the micrphone - hey, hey is this thing on?)

My friend has got this car. It's probably the most badass car in all of Los Angeles. A primer-black 1948 Buick. No door handles. No hood. Just the frightful looking old time radiator, a five foot long, painted-red valve cover on the engine. This black rockabilly sled has two shiny rebuilt *Stromberg 97s* carbuerators. The engine layout is so weird and old-fashioned he has to use a 6 volt forklift battery. Just walking up to the engine smells like a barn in Mississippi. The windshield wipers are gone and the stems are capped with chromed bullets.

The most striking detail is the wheels. Big, perfectly *whitepride* whitewalls, on red wheels with silver dogdish hubcaps. Those red, white and silver shoes look like spats on a clown. A clown who has a Tommy-gun and a cigar. Johnny, the owner of the beast, told me how he burned the springs with a blowtorch, settling them so the frame almost rests on the ground. When he drives it across a deep L.A. street wash, the rusty steel structure slams into the asphalt, scarring it. Just imagine the sound of a 1949 Buick banging off the pavement. It's an artful soundscape. Everybody laughs when they see it. Little boys with Davey Crockett hats shout hey ma, Ma! Look at that guy's car!

Inside the interior saloon of the sled, rust has sleeplessly eaten the entire floor. There are shiny steel plates tack-welded to the few steel points left on the fire wall. I can sort of see light down there, on the pavement. The emerald-green glimmer of broken glass. The three-on-the-tree column shift has an eight-ball on the end - of course. This car tops out speed-wise at 50mph. It sounds like a tugboat. When Johnny parks the car in Beverly Hills, in front of Doctor Phil's house, he flips down the visor on my side so that the licence plate shows. I ask why he has it set up like this.
"You can't have a reflective licence plate on the front of a car like this. It looks gay. The back is bad enough."

Just riding in the Buick with Johnny over to Doctor Phil's place showed me that I must have a 40s car. I'll keep my '71 so that I have something newish for when that need arises.