We spent our first night at The Clubhouse, a warehouse in some bad part of Los Angeles following an art car fund raiser party put on by the L.A. Cacophony Society. In the planning stages, this had worried me, what with my car having no roof. Street-people gravitate toward Duke's chaotic colors and cozy confines. A homeless guy actually set up house in Duke during an overnight stay once in San Francisco's Haight. But I need not have worried about the L.A. location, what with the high iron gates, barbed-wire and gun turret-fortified compound they had us parked in.

This was my first time meeting other art car artists after some four years in Duke feeling like the only freak on the road. I was excited at first, awed into admiration of Ron Dolce's Glass Quilt and thrilled to meet Harrod after much correspondence. I wowed at the sight of Michael Gump's Frozen Bug and oohed and ahhed at a flame-shooting, espresso-making cast iron vehicle of sorts, though neither were to join us the following day. But then it got late and it became apparent that the only place to sleep was the back seat of my car. The hundred-odd L.A. culture buds and cocktail-apron actors that had come to see the Art Cars had gone, leaving our seedling circus caravan to fend for ourselves in the festive detritus of the post-party night.

I awakened hungover and dehydrated and craving a Cherry Slurpee at four in the morning. I could, however, discover no way out of the compound nor into the locked warehouse where there was a bathroom. For a small-bladdered, claustrophobic, light-sleeper from the mountains, my first night out on what would otherwise be a fantastic journey, was basically hell. I spent the pre-dawn hours scrunched painfully in the back seat of my car, vibed-out by the brain-baking buzz of the high voltage power station next door and freaked by the far off tink-tink tinkle of urban gunfire.

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Last update April 1, 2004