BrandX Photos on Flickr

Having once again missed out on a great day of vehicular mayhem somewhere in a ten mile radius of my house, I turned to Flickr to see if maybe some other like-minded soul was smart enough to get some photos of this shouldn't-have-been-missed 'cycle show. Success!


Indian Larry trailer shot via Jamie Boud on Flickr.
As you can see, I was completely wrong about what I send in my last entry about this show, regarding bikers scaring away rogue wanna-be hipsters. Of course, at some point the bedbugs and cockroaches end up taking over everything and there's nothing you can do but try your best to exterminate them...or move.

Check out Jamie's BrandX Flickr set for more great shots of a few of the bikes at the show. And next Saturday is the Rumblers Kustom Kills & Hot Rod Thrills show under the BQE in Williamsburg (hipsters beware).


For more info read my old post about it, visit the Rumbler's Site or visit Union Pool's Myspace for exact band times.

Upcoming Events: 6th Annual Exhibition of Vintage Motorcycles - Williamsburg, Brooklyn - Sun. Aug. 23rd

My custom bike-building friend Peter sent me this just now and I'm rarin' to go. The 6th Annual Exhibition of Vintage Motorcycles, "Brand X", is being held this Sunday, August 23rd @ Works Engineering 168 N. 14th Street Near Wythe Ave in Brooklyn in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. I'm pretty sure I've stumbled onto this show before back when I lived and worked in Williamsburg, and although I have no clue what happened to the photos I can tell you it was an insanely great showing of two wheeled power, technique and creativity. Best of all, the bike crowd is scary and angry enough to keep most of the curious hipster trash away.


The show is from 10am to 6pm with plenty of booze, BBQ and bands to keep your Sunday rollin'. Be there!

Puttin' the Dick in Dixie

Dear Hank III,

Yes, please.


Photo taken by David McClister, rock photographer extraordinaire.

I am starting to think long and hard about moving to Nashville, or maybe Louisville, Kentucky, so I can be neighbors with amazing artists and extremely lovely gentlemen Justin Kamerer (aka Angryblue) and Jeral Tidwell.


Justin (left) watches Jeral (right) airbrush boobies

Together, those talented, charming (and good looking!) men form Crackhead Press, a screen printing studio based out of Louisville. I just recently purchased their Ink Alchemy Vol. 2 book and the print quality and illustrations are just outstanding.


Order at either of their websites, Angryblue.com or Humantree.com
Of the two of these great guys, I think Jeral's work (I am lucky to have several art prints and posters of his at home) is probably of particular interest to the Greaser Garage crowd as he has a plethora of rod-related art to boot.


Tidwell poster for Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kid Rock
So ladies (if there are any of you even reading this site), this post filled with smart, savvy, talented, crush-worthy ass-kickers is for you.

Bernie Dexter: sweetly cheeky modern pin-up model

Some people in this universe, for one reason or the other, seem to get allllll the good genes. It's like they won the genetic lottery and, let's face it, although beauty doesn't give you a free pass to drive fast and wreckless down Easy Street, it sure does help you get out of the speeding ticket. While I certainly don't think I lost out on the big prize in that respect, I'd still have to work my ass off (literally and figuratively) to have a job where I got to dress up in fun clothes, have my hair and makeup done and prance around while someone takes my photo.

That said, maybe if I was more of a motivated person in general, I'd be posting a photo of myself here. INSTEAD, I take a moment to pause and rain praise upon Bernie Dexter, one of the cutest, sexiest (and luckiest) pin-up models I've run across in my hot roddin' travels around the interwebz.


I mean seriously...just looking at her smile makes me, well, want to smile. She beckons. She titillates. She makes me want to buy vintage clothing from websites I might not otherwise shop at. Yes, she most obviously resembles a "certain someone" that those of us into this particular pastime (of the hot rodding nature) know all too well, but she still seems to have a special charm all her own.

In case you're wondering where this all came from, I realized that if the Greaser Garage is lacking in anything it is clearly an abundance of hot chicks.

I mean, you know...from a straight up nerdy webmaster internet traffic SEO point of view. ;)

ROD-A-DAY: Goodguys Columbus brings the drag ass

GOODGUYS COLUMBUS 09, originally uploaded by HORSEPOWER & HONEYS

Now, I've seen a lot of radical channeling on rad rods, but this is just crazy. Can you even drive the damn thing? Who knows, and also, that's not the point. The point is that this spark-generating, road rash of a ride is pretty sick.

Look at you, Ohio. Who knew you had it in ya?

BASS SLAPPIN' BOOGIE: The Rockabilly Ranch

Sitting in front of a computer working all day can be a big, and literal, pain in the ass. My co-workers are constantly complaining about how much they hate everything in their iTunes library (self included) because it's all be listened to over and over and over. Today I decided to end the madness and go on a hunt for something to lift my spirits and put a little pushin in my tush. Lo and behold I found my sweaty seat salvation:



It's a happy little music blog (actually, it's pretty expansive) called the Rockabilly Ranch with hundreds and literally hundreds of old rockabilly tunes from a ton of artists that, sadly, I've never even heard of. You can download the entire program of songs from each week, but you need to download WinRAR (or another similar .rar file extraction program - .rar files are similar to .zip files, only a tad more powerful) to get the songs out of their digital file cage and onto your iPod or CD or whatever form of technology that delivers music to your ears.

Is it illegal downloading? I guess so, since I doubt any of those songs were recorded pre-1922. So, as far as I'm concerned, I am officially telling you that illegally downloading music is...illegal. Which means you shouldn't do it and I take no responsibility for giving you the information and the tools to do it. Hardware stores sell lock picking kits, chains, saws and guns (depending on where you live)...it's up to you to exercise your morally outstanding concience not to go rob stores or kill anybody. The way I look at it, this logic legally prevents me from being sued if anybody that reads this downloads anything.

I look at things like this as an opportunity to hear an artist you might otherwise never know you liked and then go on to buy their album and give $$ where $$ is due (and deserved). Enjoy!

UPCOMING EVENTS: Rumblers NYC car show & Coney Island Rockabilly Festival

Thank god I have nothing but time to kill this morning and can catch up on checking for updates on every website I haven't had time to visit in the last couple weeks. I say "thank god" because I was reminded of two very important events coming up in the next month - well, probably important to you too if you're into this website.

Rumblers NYC 9th Annual Kustom Kills & Hot Rod Thrills car show
Under the BQE in Brooklyn (Williamsburg)
car show @ 10am, bands start around 3:30pm at Union Pool, cost still TBA

Every year somehow, WITHOUT FAIL I miss this car show. I'm always out of town or just totally out of the loop completely. It's like the cosmos doesn't want me to get within five miles of the Rumblers yearly KK&HRT because the world will implode or there are too many dudes in attendance I've slept with and having all of us in one place will cause a black hole to rip through the space-time continuum and suck all the rockabilly retards in (yours truly included).

THIS year, however, I will be there for the whole shebang, camera and sexy car-loving man friend in tow (hopefully)...I owe the world at least that much.

BAND LIST: Rehab For Quitters, Tombstone Brawlers (my friend Eric used to drum for them and their bassist Pete...well that's none of your business), Homeward Bound, the Memphis Morticians (my favorite Ghoul-a-billy, or what have you, band in NYC), Sasquatch and the Sick-a-Billys and the Turbo A.C.'s.

The next event, happening for four days over Labor Day weekend is the Coney Island Rockabilly Festival. And like clockwork, I will be out of town that weekend communing with nature in a bikini and filled with substances swimming around in a lake in New Jersey. SO somebody else will just have to go enjoy this for me. Give me a choice between Rockabilly scenesters and hanging with my friends for a weekend in a log cabin on a lake? The choice basically makes itself.

There are so many bands playing - including most of them from the Rumblers event the weekend before) that I can't even list them all. Should be fun times, even though I firmly believe that burlesque and roller derby are horribly dated, been-there-done-that uninteresting excuses for fat chicks to wear their underwear in public. (Of course, I'm all for excuses to wear your underwear in public, not that you need any.) It's a terrible replacement for missing female self-esteem and something that, when it was first conceived, was more like a sexy ladies comedy song and dance troupe than whatever it has deteriorated into today.

But you should still go, because maybe you are still excited by, you know...that. Maybe if the burlesque was happening on top of a pit filled with vipers or on the back of a galloping horse I might be intrigued.

My main beef with events like this is that they are so fucking predictable, the whole "Rockabilly Festival" thing. Throw a few "fill in the blank"-a-billy bands, a couple zoftig chicks in pasties, a "Reverend So-and-So" and a set of fire batons and POOF - instant Rockabilly "fest" satiation. Do I have any suggestions of what I'd like to see more of that's a little less predictable? No. But then again, that's probably why I've never been swept with open arms into the inner-most cliques of the heppest of hot rod scene hooligans; being predictable is my numero uno pet peeve.

Predictability is just another word for "you're not trying hard enough". Lazy, complacent, underdeveloped...those all come to mind.

So why do I still like rockabilly music and cars and all this crap that goes with it? It all comes together to resonate within me in a personal way, which is what hot rodding is all about. It's about taking something standard - something predictable - that anybody can buy or have or do and painstakingly transforming it into something all your very own. Festivals and people that resort to cookie-cutter molds of "what works" as far away from the hot rod spirit that you can possibly get.

This is why I don't organize "fests"...but perhaps maybe I should.

I probably just opened up a big ol' can of ass-kickin' there. Heh.

ROD-A-DAY: '62 Brooklyn Buick LeSabre

Almost every day during the summer months when the sun is out and I'm not hungover, I mount my bike and make the harrowing 7.9 mile commute to where I work in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (That's 7.9 miles one way, mind you.) That means this week I rode 47.4 miles, not including any detours here and there off the designated path or jaunts to the supermarket. Lets say I ride three days every week for the last month (that's 189.6 just in commuting) and then there was the day long bike trip to Red Hook last weekend (another 12 miles)... Jesus. You get the idea. I know there are probably plenty of people out there who are riding 40 miles a day or something, but try doing that during rush hour in NYC and we'll see how long you last.

My regular route to work is an exhausting forty minute, smog-hazed, pothole-ridden, death defying, asshole filled road ragin' ride that makes me question my sanity just as much as it makes me feel like I'm incredibly' hardcore.


See? Insanity. The route I take almost every day to work on the ol' two wheeler.
While the trip certainly is filled with interesting smells (the artificial scent factory on 36th street somewhere, rotting piles of garbage marinating in the summer heat) and sounds (cat calls, car horns) and obstacles (road construction, gravel pits, flattened pigeons, blind assholes with drivers licenses), it tends to be lacking in interesting things to look at.

This seems like a bit of an imbecilic complaint on my behalf, because as everybody who bike commutes in this city knows, the minute you stop thinking and looking at the road for one millisecond is the minute you meet your maker. So naturally, why in the world would I want things to distract me? I guess what I'm saying here is that I've found the fastest, safest route to work that I ride several times a week and it is getting SERIOUSLY BORING seeing the same factories, tenement buildings and civil service workers every single freakin' day.

There is one thing however that I pass almost every day as I head up 3rd avenue right around Caroll Gardens that lifts my spirits - the '62 Buick LeSabre.

It might not be the showiest of things, but in a city fof 8.3 Million people crammed into 305 square miles of concrete, asphalt, rats and roaches, it's a nice breath of fresh air to see something with some character now and again. I keep fantasizing that one day as I'm slowing my riding speed to take it all in that the owner will come out (from wherever he - presumably - lives) and tell me that for $300 in cold hard cash "that hunk of junk can be yours for the taking." One can dream.

ROD-A-DAY: 1962 Chrysler 300H

For some reason today, even after a night filled with home-made sushi and one too many saki bombs, I am up at 8:30am, rifling through the photos on my computer in a highly unplanned attempt at their organization. I come to realize that I have a couple photos of cars I've taken around Brooklyn that I never bothered to share with anyone. What kind of an insensitive clod am I!? You must be furious with me.

So I uploaded them all and decided that, in at attempt to squeeze water from a stone, I will share them with you bit by bit, starting with this most magnificent '62 Chrysler 300H (to be particularly specific). A magnificent piece of two-tone machinery, presumably firing a 383 in. V8 with a 4-speed manual tranny...at least that's what this particular two door coupe model would have been manufactured with.


Satin black and glossy cherry red two-tone. Luscious, to say the least.



Assorted other angles. I still just can't get over how nice that satin finish looks.

I took these photos on N. 11th street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn probably around...jeez, like three or so years ago now and haven't seen that car since. It haunts me like a one night stand you keep wishing you could booty-call again but you were too smart (or perhaps too stupid) to ask for their number.


Reminiscing on this beaut' of a buggy made me hungry for the visual titillation of more pulchritudinous pics of the 300, manufactured from 1955 to 1965 as limited edition luxury cars focused on style, exclusivity and most importantly power. These vehicles were apparently the precursors to the America "muscle car", as they were the first models with big engines produced post-war that brought about renewed interest in the performance of your car. Heard of a Hemi? (What a stupid question.) Yeah, well these were some of the very first Chrysler models to feature the first generation of their innovative new hemispherical engine design (originally called the FirePower V8).


1960 Chrysler 300F.

Personally, and not surprisingly, my favorite years for the 300 were between 1957 and 1962. Those were the years when automobile designers were really into the whole futuristic Jetsons-airplane-aerodynamics wacko body design ideas, and locker-room "who has the biggest fin?" contests. Across the board, fins and body moulding were all the rage. Do note: '57 Dodge Coronet, '59 Ford Galaxie (also note futuristic naming!), '59 Chevy Bel Air, '60 Buick Electra, and of course, the 1959 Cadillac.


'55 Lincoln Futura (concept car) anyone?

I also firmly believe that designers like Virgil Exner, one of my favorite automobile designers of the time who, you guessed it, worked for Chrysler, were also inspired by their less "classically trained" artistic peers like George Barris and Ed Roth.


Barris went on to buy that '55 Futura concept car up above and later turned it into the original Batmobile (left). At right, Ed Roth's "Outlaw".

The Chrysler 300 also made for a pretty wicked wagon for schlepping your shit:

'62 Chrysler 300 WAGON...oh my, oh my.
...and I even found one that was converted into an ambulance. My Chrysler 300 micro fetish has now been (almost) thoroughly exhausted.

One last thing to share of extreme importance (to me): while searching around for images, I came across Plan 59 - an awesome company in Virginia that specializes in mid-century advertising and illustration, selling hi-res TIFF scans to people (ala yours truly) who graphically design junk. I am SMITTEN with them. I want to work for them photoshopping and scanning all day long. *swoon* You really do need to browse their collection, just to see how beautiful these things are. Not only that, but I can tell that the folks at Plan 59 and I both share a similar sick sense of humor. Only they swear a whole lot less than I do.


A sample of the wide range of images Plan 59 has to offer. Girls in glasses...hooray!