People who put racing stripes on an extraordinary shit box

Here’s the rule: if your car isn’t fast enough to even be capable of causing a moving traffic violation, it should not have stripes, flames, a spoiler, or any type of exhaust modification. Period.

I was in traffic the other day when I saw a Mustang with racing stripes. I was far enough behind the car that I noticed its single tailpipe — the V6 version that burns through less rubber than an academic achievement fraternity (think about it…harder…aah! you got it!). Now, if you want to throw some stripes on your GT or your Cobra, or whatever Milwaukee’s Best soaked chariot you chose, that’s fine. At least those stripes signal that the car can move quickly and that you are the one who should be arrested. And in the case of the Mustang or a Corvette, those racing stripes are probably at least partially responsible for holding your plastic car together, which I can’t fault you for. You paid for the whole thing, so you may as well not scatter parts of it in front of Cracker Barrel billboards on 75 S.

Seeing this car gave me flashbacks of a number of cars I’ve seen with these types of decorations. Unfortunately, I neglected to get a picture of any of them, but I’m relatively confident I can get Google to help me out on a couple. Here we go:

Those are not race times on the passenger door; that’s a shopping list.

This actually isn’t a paint job. This is a PT Cruiser trying to kill its own driver.

Now, I want to be clear about something. I don’t think that any car is inherently ridiculous (ok, I lied). I think that people buy their cars like they buy their dogs. Cars are a reflection of your personality. The guy in the Porsche RS is a driver. The girl in the Prius cares about the planet (and not so much about the quality of her driving, or the planet, either, since the Prius is an ecological disaster with those batteries being shipped across the world). The dude in the Wagoneer has a sense of nostalgia and class. The girl in the Wrangler is fun and lets her hair down. The dude in the Volvo is saying, “Cars aren’t important to me.” . . .  with his car.

But consider what your dog would say about you if you bought a Pomeranian, put a muzzle on it, and walked to a Greyhound race with your speed-mouse in tow? How would your Attack Pug communicate your sense of self-worth and security? And people would almost certainly be disturbed if you put a sticker down the side of your dachshund that said…”dachshund.”

So, can we please end the nonsense identity crises with our cars? Buy what you want, buy what you care about. And then be realistic about your purchase.

People who would not buy a Pontiac, even if subjected to various forms of torture and / or Britney Spears music

We live in a time of uncertainty.  When will the terrorists strike again?  What is going on with this economy?  Am I going to have a job next week?  Will my children grow up to hate me?  Is butter or margarine better?

In these times, it is nice to know that there is one truth in the world.  One truth that will never change, no matter what forces are at play.  This truth, we all know, is that all Pontiacs are ugly as shit.

I was in front of a duo of Bonnevilles today on the way to work.  In the battle of ugly, they both won.

Where the saying, “polishing a turd” came from.

Going after the the highly sought after “I want a car that looks like my mom’s 8 year old winter slippers” market.

The second most ridiculous thing ever made by humans, after George Michael.

I just hope that Jess doesn’t own a Pontiac, after that blast from the Christmas tree post.

People who make the police say, “How the hell did this happen?” when they get to the scene

Today in Atlanta, the gods are relieving themselves after a long night of drinking, and it’s a mess out there.  Usually a rainy day will bring up all sorts of pleasant thoughts about fireplaces, blankets, drinking hot chocolate and all of that crap, but on a workday, rain just means one thing: look the hell out, because here comes the idiot brigade.

Filming the pilot for CSI: Rainy Day Atlanta.

People in Atlanta, we’ve established, are evolutionarily equivalent to sea monkeys, and it’s my experience that a good, rainy day brings out the worst in us.  With our proliferation of successful gangstas driving fast cars and a healthy population of soccer moms heavily dosed on medication and $9 Chardonnay, a rain day in Atlanta is a living metaphor for the bloodbath that will ensue throughout the day.

Now, Atlanta isn’t alone.  It seems like any city that isn’t used to crappy weather is filled with citizens who are completely prepared to submit themselves to science as soon as the skies go dark.  I was in Dallas about 6 years ago when they had that big freeze: ice covering the streets, huge snow banks, etc.  Every time a traffic light would turn red, it was like watching an ice ballet – only the failed Olympians were replaced with deadly Fords and Pontiacs twirling about at 40 mph.  Minus the massive injuries that resulted, it was poetry.

We had a similar experience when Nashville got dumped on in 2003.  The snows came, the streets froze, and the city was utterly unprepared for any of it.  Someone hinted that salt would help, and people literally went to the grocery stores and bought iodized salt to put on their streets, bewildered that there was no effect.  People would cruise down West End Ave. at 50 mph, a speed no longer controlled by gas and brake pedals, but by hills, telephone poles, and buildings.  Mayhem.

So to all 4 people out there reading this today: please slow down.  Save yourselves.  Let’s make it through this day and we can continue to enjoy the rest of our 55 degree, sunny December.  Good luck and godspeed.

People who cross the street slowly (on purpose)

I guarantee that this woman is going 8x as fast as the average Atlantan street crosser

Call me crazy, but I have a healthy fear of objects that can kill me very easily.  In the matchup of flesh and bone vs. steel on wheels, I have concluded that I will lose that fight often enough to avoid it altogether.  Yet every day, I come across people who want to singularly challenge traffic by crossing the street at sub-sloth speeds.

It doesn’t help that Georgia law is pedestrian-oriented.  No matter what the circumstances, cars have to stop for pedestrians.  I don’t care if you’re going 50 miles an hour, if someone’s dumb enough to put a foot in that crosswalk, you have to slam the brakes on and save their lives.  If grandma is in an ambulance and Laqueshia wants to cross the street while she’s on her bluetooth headset, hello inheritance! She aint’ going to let no damn ambulance tell her what to do. 

Something I’ve been wondering is where these people are going at one eighth of a mile per hour?  How far can you travel at these speeds before the sun goes down?  I would feel cheated if I had been walking for an hour and could still see my point of origin.

So, what should I do here?  Is it okay to honk at those who enter a battle of will and tell them to get the hell out of the way, or am I supposed to just take it?  I have tried both, with mixed results.  Mostly, I find that honking just slows people down even more, which is a frustrating outcome to which I have no response.  It’s a lot like getting in an argument with Delta customer service: “I’m sorry you feel that way sir – oops! somehow all of your frequent flyer miles disappeared and all of the rates have doubled on your flight.  I do have an engine-mounted seat next to the broken lavatory door available, though.”

How do we fix this problem plaguing our nation?

People who back into parking spaces

If shit goes down, advantage Lexus.

Ok, so this is the third post that I have written from pictures I took without moving more than 11 feet, so let me know if this is getting old (first, second). Or maybe I’ll make this some sort of quest: how many posts can I write from pictures I take without moving more than 11 feet? A lot, so buckle up, bitches.

In Atlanta, we have the highest population of people who back into parking spaces, with the exception of Hong Kong, who is cheating because all of those damn rickshaws always back in and throw off the statistics.

Source: Me

Atlanta does, however, dominate the rest of the engine-powered cities, with Los Angeles coming in second. A deeper look into this reveals that both Atlanta and Los Angeles have the highest populations of gangstas with Bentleys, Ferraris, Porsches, and Chrysler 300Ms, which have a 100% back-in participation rate. In New York, where this population also exists, there are no parking spaces. Parallel parking is not factored into this study. Additionally, most New Yorkers with cars don’t park themselves, and professional parkers such as hotel bellmen and valets are exempt in the study.

The study also revealed that females in Atlanta will disregard their genetic parking setbacks and attempt back-ins as well. These usually took several attempts and an average of 2.6 calls to State Farm Insurance before the car was successfully in the spot and damage to other vehicles, pets, and government property was financed. In most other cities in the study, women were on their way to a workplace, unwilling to make the significant time investment of backing into a parking space, which was not an issue in Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta where much of the study’s data were gathered and women are responsible for economic stimulus through investment in Juicy Couture as opposed to earning.

The study concludes that, while the causality of backing in is a mix of many factors, the primary character trait of people who back in is that they are assholes.

People who know what day of the week it is

If you carpool and save the planet, you get the best lane on the interstate. It you are an idiot, you get the next best lane. What the hell is that? I am so sick of people who cruise the left lane of an 8-lane interstate going 52 miles per hour, I might just cry. Every weekend, I make a short trip to go play golf. And every weekend I have to drive up I-85 with all of the short bus escapees. It is a part of my life. I like to drive at a healthy pace on the interstate, so this is very frustrating. I feel like a person with prosthetic arms who loves potato chips.

What I want to understand is why the left lane? Why not the right lane? Why not the center lane? Atlanta has a veritable lane buffet laid out for these people who should wear football helmets to walk down a sidewalk, but it’s always the left lane.

On top of that, most left-laners are women on their cell phones, which have approximately the same lethality as a patriot missile. The outcome of honking your horn at these guards of vehicular progress is that your car makes more noise. That’s pretty much it. These women have a level of awareness that rivals a goldfish with cataracts and have a driving pattern that would lead you to believe that the steering wheel has been replaced with buttons that say “left” and “right”, which they press once every 1/4 mile, and the cruise control has been set to “keep ‘em guessing” mode, whereby the car speeds up to 80 mph every 3.5 minutes before decelerating back down to approximately 52 mph as it approaches another car going 52 mph, creating a moving, impenetrable barrier of stupidity.

But perhaps there is a brilliance about these ladies’ desire to murder fellow drivers. The near-death experiences on the interstate are rarely directly with the minivan carrying the alcoholic housewife, but are carried out by her minions of death, who are people in zippy little cars who become adrenalized enough by her terrible driving to drive terribly themselves, passing her at 100 mph in the emergency lane before having to swerve back to avoid a motorcycle guy taking a weed break on the side of the highway. Now that’s killing power!

Or maybe they’re just idiots.

People who use their turn signal to indicate they have already turned

Driving around Atlanta, you see a lot of things that fall into the “interesting” category, a few things that fall into the “annoying” category, and a handful of things that fall into the “I am going to buy a rocket launcher on the black market” category. The use of turn signals generally falls into the last category.

By this point, I think it is becoming clear that we have a serious driving issue in Atlanta, but for the sake of continuing to make me look creative over time, we will look at each issue individually, so you can suffer through it as much as I do. Doesn’t that sound nice?

To illustrate the phenomenon I’m talking about, I’ve created the following picture, diagraming where one would hope that a turn signal was used, and where the typical Atlantan activates their signal:

As you can see here, the typical Atlantan has 9 more brain cells than a sea monkey, activating their turn signal more than halfway into the completion of their turn. This phenomenon is seen across races, creeds, and religions; so I think it’s just Atlanta.

Now you’re saying to yourself, “Evan, you must be exaggerating, you terribly attractive and intelligent man.” No, I am not exaggerating. And thank you. This does happen in 86.9% of turns in the city of Atlanta, according to undisclosed sources. It is an epidemic.

I think that the most appropriate thing to do at this point is to just rename this device to the “turned signal”, and it will serve the dual purpose of alerting other cars “Yes, you did just witness a turn”, and “I have little to no desire to move my vehicle into the indicated lane, so please cut me off at your earliest convenience”.

Problem solved.

People who park as far as possible from the mall

Something that’s always struck me as worth investigating are the cars that are parked as far as possible from the mall, but equally curious are the people who will drive around for 20 minutes looking for a “close” parking space, bypassing dozens of perfectly viable middle-distance spaces. I don’t know if these people are expecting to have to get a rabid raccoon from Nordstrom to their car, but the quest for close parking is a serious one.

I conducted a small survey of the people in the room I’m in to better understand the people who are near and far parkers. I am the only one in the room. Here are my results.

Women circle for parking spots like vultures. Men typically don’t give a shit. There’s that one guy with his midlife crisis car who parks far away from the mall. Then there are a few women who park far away “for exercise”.

At a young age, respondents have nothing better to do with their time than find excellent parking. Up until age 30 or so, the ritual of pointing out where you’ve parked to people you’re meeting at the mall or a restaurant is still very active. In midlife, people are too busy to worry about where they’re going to park or whether or not they should wear a dress shirt with baby spit on it. In the coveted elder years, blue parking passes are issued, opening the gates to the most coveted of parking real estate: handicap spots.

Interestingly, all women still parked as close as possible (barring “exercise”), regardless of the age, but did not participate in the “look at my parking space” ritual as often as men.

Now, looking at distance vs. fear (nearly all respondents who feared door dings also feared black people, and notably feared Democrats, as well), we see an interesting trend. People who have little fear tend to park in whatever spaces they happen upon, while those with a healthy amount of fear must choose whether they are more fearful of door dings or black people, either parking close to minimize the number of broken radiators and diapers for a baby girl they are asked to finance, or parking far away to avoid unsightly door dings but expose themselves to solicitation. High-end malls have combated this stressor with valet parking.

Indeed, the study of mall parking is an interesting one. Please feel free to leave comments with other valid bits of data I may have neglected.

People who have been outside of their state

I have spent most of my time so far in life in Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia. Now, before you jump to any conclusions because of that list, I did not go to the University of Florida, Georgia, or Tennessee, so I do not own any team flags that I mount to my car windows on Saturdays. Despite this, I have been exposed to the southern phenomenon (and I guess it’s not just a southern one) of either owning or dreaming to own a ridiculously large truck.

There is something about trucks that never satisfies owners. When you get a Ford F150, you want an F250. When you get a Ram, you want a supercharged Ram. When you get an H3, you wonder why you don’t have any friends.

The appetite for larger and larger trucks, or truck lust, is something that consumes southerners who would rather spend their hard-earned cash on a lift kit than take their wife to Europe. Perhaps the funniest part is that the wives have somehow been brainwashed: “We wur gunna go to It-lee, but Frank got his truck lifted so he can see down them city girls’ shirts in their convertibles. He’s such a maaaan. Ooh baby, I love you!”

But I do have to be fair: big trucks are good for the economy. Big trucks open the door for macho dudes to purchase the equivalent of “man jewelry”. While fancy men are at Neiman Marcus shopping for their newest bracelet with a skull superimposed on a cross, the macho dudes are accessorizing not themselves, but their trucks. You’ve got tires, wheels, chrome galore, review mirrors, sideview mirrors, antennas, CB radios, bedliners, trailer hitches, trailer hitch accessories, trailer hitch accessory accessories, and more. And the great part about it is that the guys still feel like men while they’re accessorizing.

For me, I prefer a faster car that has little practical value. I like to get places fast, accelerate unnecessarily, take turns at high speed even though it makes no real sense, and generally behave in a way that truck people say “look at that lil city boy, let’s kick his ass.” Whatever, it helps me to get to Neiman Marcus faster.

Right: People with little disregard for fellow man, co worker, or their own property

Do you ever feel like buying an old Ford F150 just so you can smash into another car that parked so awfully it affects more than 5 other cars? Yeah, me neither, but I guess some people do.

While walking into the mall to feed my Apple lust the other day, I saw no less than 10 cars that would qualify for a bat to the windshield. Of course the one here is not exactly an Aston Martin, but one thing I’ve noticed is that bad parking is not partial to race, creed, or religion. Bad parking can be a Porsche, a Pinto, young, old, a man, a woman, and even those people who you can’t tell if they’re a man or a woman. Bad parking does not discriminate, but I have a dream that my four (unborn) little children will one day live in a nation where people are harshly judged by the quality of their parking. I want to bring the locks and stockades back and put the bad parkers in there. Maybe even give them a scarlet P. Until we make an example of these people, the problem will continue.

The thing that I find most confusing about this whole parking issue is that it’s not just a disservice to other people, it’s also a statement to “please do whatever you want to my car. I don’t give a damn about it.” These cars are keyed, dented, tires deflated (not slashed, that’s just bad style), etc.; so do these people really wonder “why?” when they get back or do they just shrug and say, “Is that all you got?” Maybe we need to up the ante. I’m thinking that a service that could pick a car up, turn it upside down, and put it back on the ground with minimal damage might be a great business idea if you can figure out how to do this cheaply – like “We’ll charge you $25 to flip a car over, just for your own satisfaction.”

I can hear the phone calls between spouses now: “Dammit, Margie! This is the third time this month. Maybe you AREN’T responsible enough to drive that nice Altima I got you. Maybe we should go back to the Ford Focus since you don’t SEEM TO GIVE A DAMN!”

Now that’s a conversation I’d like to overhear from an adjoining office in the next 6 months.

Angel Investors, please use the contact form to buy shares in the car flipping business and get this thing started.