Extreme housing prices in California -- driven by a combination of speculation, favorable legal/tax positions for landlords, foreclosures after the 2008 crisis, and an unwillingness to build public housing -- has created vast homeless encampments, but there's a less visible side to the crisis: working people in "good jobs" who have to live in their cars.
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Way back in the early 1970s, during the prior “pre-Photoshop” millennium, my fellow industrial design students and I labored to create photo-realistic renderings of products and cars with old-school, analog materials. Air-brushed gouache paints created super-smooth graduations of color, magic markers made deep shadows, and razor-sharp details like sparkling highlights and chrome reflections were added precisely with colored pencil.
Our shining inspiration was a series of print ads by Pontiac, which appeared in popular magazines like National Geographic. Exaggerated perspectives made for dynamic views of the “Wide Track” Pontiac cars, and the far-flung settings included romantic, young couples doing exotic things like surfing or rally racing in Europe. These dramatically lit and staged renderings of cars and people were totally believable and more glamorous and compelling than any photograph ever could be. And who were the artists? Each of fantastic renderings was signed only with the mysterious initials: “VK AF.”
VK was Van Kauman, a former Disney animator who painted the wonderful figures and background settings. AF was Art Fitzpatrick, a long-time automotive illustrator. Together they created 285 of these magical masterpieces for Pontiac.
This book brings you the art of Art Fitzpatrick, featuring new paintings of many of the muscle cars and other “Wide Track” Pontiacs. The large format is fitting — the square book opens up to a wide, two-page layout and the car renderings are reproduced in the eye-popping panoramas. The exaggerated perspective of AF’s early work is best appreciated at this big scale and even at that, some of the cars literally burst out of the layout frames. Read the rest
Musical Cars (A sequel to 15 point turn)
The guy on the scooter just wanted to add a bit of a challenge into the mix. Read the rest
This is what happens to cars that misbehave. Read the rest
Kudos to this guy for all the work he had to do to come up with a way to park his car. He is stuck with the particular car model for life, though, because it fits like a glove. Read the rest
This mom in Port Moody, BC is taking a chance by having her son block a car with his bike so she can swipe a parking spot. A road ragey driver would have bumped the kid out of the way.
Has this ever happened to you? After circling around endlessly for 20 minutes at a completely PACKED parking lot on a busy Saturday afternoon, I finally saw someone leaving, and patiently waited for the parking spot (blue car) for them to leave. Out of nowhere comes a punk kid and his mom, and I would guess the dad (driving the silver Corolla).
Apparently now you can sweet talk your way and reserve the spot if you just stand there and use a kid to block you with his bike. Your car was not even there. I waited a full minute before you even showed up. My turn signal was indicated at 0.06 of the video.
For what it's worth, the lady of the car leaving said to me, "they have been waiting here for a while, so they can have the spot". She seems clueless that I was there waiting for their spot way before they arrived and sided with them since they chatted moments earlier. SMH...
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