L.A. isn’t much different from Havana.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a veritable car MUSEUM!<\/p>\n
Now the reason is different.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no economic embargo.\u00c2\u00a0 No need to hold together antiques with baling wire.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, the dry air and the absence of road salt serve to hermetically seal automobiles.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, not exactly, but let’s just say cars LAST!<\/p>\n
It’s weird to drive down the avenue and see my old ’63 Chevy convertible on a regular basis.\u00c2\u00a0 My sister Wendy wanted to leave it on Nantucket THIRTY YEARS AGO!\u00c2\u00a0 It barely limped home.\u00c2\u00a0 How in the hell can these cars SURVIVE!<\/p>\n
Whenever I see one of these ancient vehicles, I slow down and inspect, take a close look, see how well it’s preserved.\u00c2\u00a0 So maybe that’s why I took notice of the red Mercedes on Olympic two weeks ago.\u00c2\u00a0 The fact that a car three decades old was cruising the highway was intriguing.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe it was the unfinished bodywork that caught my eye.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you fix a car from the seventies?\u00c2\u00a0 And if you choose to tack on a replacement panel, shouldn’t you bother to paint it?<\/p>\n
And the windows…\u00c2\u00a0 They had that dusty look.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the rest of the car.\u00c2\u00a0 Like they hadn’t been washed in years.<\/p>\n
Yet they were all raised.\u00c2\u00a0 Did the a\/c still work in this vintage automobile?\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve driven an old car you know this is the first thing to go, the air conditioning.\u00c2\u00a0 You rationalize not fixing it, since oftentimes a compressor equals the value of the vehicle, and it doesn’t tend to get that hot on the Westside anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 But this day was a scorcher.\u00c2\u00a0 And the windows were all up.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I pulled alongside I saw a shriveled up old man, maybe a septuagenarian, topless, i.e. wearing no shirt!<\/p>\n
He was driving this old Mercedes in his shorts.\u00c2\u00a0 Exposing his epidermis to the masses.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, at least those curious enough to look inside this curio.\u00c2\u00a0 But, if the a\/c didn’t work, why didn’t he just lower the windows?<\/p>\n
And contemplating all this later in the evening, as I was pulling into my garage, my next door neighbor pulled up in his Audi convertible sans shirt also.<\/p>\n
Was this an epidemic?\u00c2\u00a0 Had I missed the memo?<\/p>\n
Sure, the top was down.\u00c2\u00a0 But so was the sun.<\/p>\n
I don’t think it’s a class thing.\u00c2\u00a0 One time my neighbor drove home in a Bentley, and left it all night in the alley, unprotected.\u00c2\u00a0 Was this now de rigueur, was this now acceptable behavior, driving with no shirt?<\/p>\n
Then I forgot about these sightings.\u00c2\u00a0 Until today.\u00c2\u00a0 At Whole Foods.<\/p>\n
The California heat is a major news story.\u00c2\u00a0 How people are dropping like flies.\u00c2\u00a0 Going to the mall and the movies to escape the oven-like atmosphere.\u00c2\u00a0 But I didn’t think grocery stores fit the paradigm of relief, that’s not why I stopped at the Whole Foods on National today, I just needed sustenance.<\/p>\n
After checking out, as I was walking back to the entrance, a vision came forth from the distance.\u00c2\u00a0 Walking straight at me was a woman, not a girl.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone deep into her thirties.\u00c2\u00a0 Wearing a string bikini.<\/p>\n
This wasn’t one of those fifties jobs.\u00c2\u00a0 Not even one of those sixties Annette Funicello numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 Any less material and the cops would have been writing her up for indecent exposure.\u00c2\u00a0 The most private of parts were covered up, and that was it.<\/p>\n
And it wasn’t like she was showing off, wasn’t like she was parading, not like a teenager displaying her body for the assembled multitude.\u00c2\u00a0 She was just doing her business.<\/p>\n
She was by no means overweight, but age does engender some consequences.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a bit of sag.\u00c2\u00a0 And the suit itself…it wasn’t a 2006 number.\u00c2\u00a0 It had been around the block.<\/p>\n
I felt like I was in an Allen Funt show.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, this is California, shouldn’t I be able to act cool?<\/p>\n
And I’m wondering where she’s coming from.\u00c2\u00a0 Emotionally.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s not like she just walked in from the beach.\u00c2\u00a0 The beach is MILES away.<\/p>\n
And it’s not like I want to stare, but she’s so out of place.\u00c2\u00a0 Amongst the Westside matrons.\u00c2\u00a0 Wearing practically nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 Her tushie in plain sight.<\/p>\n
Maybe she was just rushing in.\u00c2\u00a0 For one item.<\/p>\n
But no, she picked up a basket, and started cruising the aisles.<\/p>\n
And as I contemplated all this, as I tried to make it compute, a well-groomed gray-haired gentleman tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to her and smiled, in that conspiratorial way all males share.<\/p>\n
I thought I’d seen it all.\u00c2\u00a0 That I found nothing shocking.<\/p>\n
I’ve found out that’s not true.<\/p>\n
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L.A. isn’t much different from Havana.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a veritable car MUSEUM! Now the reason is different.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no economic embargo.\u00c2\u00a0 No need to hold together antiques with baling wire.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, the dry air and the absence of road salt serve to hermetically seal automobiles.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, not exactly, but let’s just say cars LAST! It’s weird […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-7S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}