Art

The WordPress Gods Were Looking Out For Me: Art On Wheels, Part Six

Yeah, Another Blogger127 Comments

And so, here I am again with yet another essay centered around my quests to find and photograph commercial vehicles that are adorned with fine designs. This story is the sixth installment of what will remain an ongoing project (assuming that I continue to stay above ground, that is). What, like I’ve got something better to do with my time than to troll streets and the parking areas of shopping centers and strip malls for handsome trucks, vans and cars? I don’t! At my advanced age I ain’t interested in reaching for the brass ring, goal-and-activity-wise, you dig? Not that I ever was, to tell you the truth. Thus, no novels will I be writing. No corporations will I be starting. No applications to graduate schools will I be submitting, unless there’s a PhD program out there that would accept a doctoral thesis titled An Unambitious F*cker’s Aimless Thoughts.

In other words, trolling suits me just fine.

Frustratingly, it hasn’t been easy finding an adequate number of beauties for this story. Five hunting trips, each of an hour or more in length, brought forth only six vehicles whose images I deemed worthy of inclusion. I want and need one more pleasing photo, but I’ve had my fill of intensive hunting. I’m very confident, though, that an object of my desire will present itself during my normal activities over the next few days (I’m typing these words on the 20th of July). Lucky number seven surely is heading my way!

I didn’t run into a numbers problem during the creation of this series’ previous installments. In fact, for most of them I bagged enough useable photos during only one or two expeditions. Which was amazing, considering that the vast majority of commercial vehicles have little, indifferent or no artwork upon their bodies.

What accounted for the change in numbers? Partly it was just one of those things. A cold streak, if you will. But I’m pretty sure that the good ol’ coronavirus was the main reason. Although many stores and offices are open in my area (I live near Philadelphia), the pandemic has harmed business here, as it has everywhere. Decreased demand for goods translates into fewer deliveries. There weren’t as many chances, as a result, for me to cross paths with good-lookers.

Luckily, part of the shortfall was made up by artistic vehicles of the non-delivery type. The Omni Comp car, for example. It belongs to a computer repair store in my town and is used, I assume, by the workers there for service calls. That car is cute as a button, no?

And how about the van owned by Noble Dentistry, whose office is in a town nearby to mine? The van’s greens and blues are oh so dreamy. But why does ND need a van? For mobile dental services? Uh uh. Their website makes no mention of that. I suppose the practice’s owners simply want to have a sharp vehicle parked in front of their building in the hopes of catching the eyes of some potential patients.

My favorite hunk of metal and glass, though, is of the delivery sort. It’s a truck that was delivering Canada Dry beverages to a Wawa food market near my home. As with Noble Dentistry’s van, greens and blues rule on the truck, only much more profoundly and on a significantly larger scale. Man, it was hot as hell on the day I walked around Canada Dry, admiring it from various angles. Its soothing, refreshing facade cooled me down, though that was mostly in my head. In reality, I continued to sweat like a pig.

With that, I’ve come to the end of my commentary. But only for now. I shall resume the narrative when beauty number seven reveals itself to me. Don’t go away!

I’m back! It now is the 21st of July. Two hours ago I returned home from a dental appointment in Philadelphia’s congested Mayfair section. Because traffic was lighter than usual — another consequence of the pandemic — I arrived ten minutes before my appointment time. I parked on one of the neighborhood’s countless rowhouse-filled blocks and silently said something along these lines to myself: “Might as well walk around for a couple of minutes before going to the dental office. There’s a decent chance I’ll spot a sweet vehicle parked on the street.” Turns out there was a 100% chance, for on Frankford Avenue, a shopping mecca, I saw a vision in red and white: a Meadow Gold dairy truck that was making a delivery to one of the stores nearby. It’s a great beauty, colorful and wonderfully designed. But I still have to go with the Canada Dry truck as my favorite, because of the loving way in which its greens and blues resonate with me. Meadow Gold, you are a real close second.

Naturally, I snapped Meadow Gold’s picture and gave deep thanks to the WordPress gods for looking out for me. They wanted me to bring this story to a satisfactory conclusion, of that I have no doubt.

Well, that’s about it. As I do with all of my stories, though, I’ll let this one marinate for a few days and tinker with it compulsively. Thanks for reading. Please don’t be shy about letting me know which vehicles you like the best, or about anything else. Goodbye till next time!

My Favorite Color Once Was Yellow, Now It’s Blue. What’s Yours?

Yeah, Another Blogger171 Comments

A couple of stories ago I reported that, for health reasons, I recently started going out on half-hour walks four or five times each week. A lot of the walks have taken place in my remarkably hilly neighborhood. In early February, while hauling my ass up and down slope after slope, I listened to a podcast that I like quite well. The podcast, Music From 100 Years Ago, is hosted by easy-going and real knowledgeable Brice Fuqua, and the episode that played from my earbuds was called Yellow Music (click here to find it, if you like).

Now, I’d chosen this particular episode, one of many that I’ve heard in Music From’s archives, because the word yellow had jumped out at me and set my mind in motion. As I readied to begin that walk, I fondly remembered that yellow was my favorite color when I was a wee lad. Yellow was a good choice of color for me back then. It’s cheerful and packed with energy, like most little kids. I still dig yellow, but for a long time haven’t been in love with it to the extent that I was millions of moons ago. That’s especially true these days, seeing that I ain’t especially cheerful and packed with energy anymore. Ah, the joys of getting old!

I don’t know when yellow ceased to be my fave. Probably when I was more or less ten years old. For the next 35 or so years I didn’t have a favorite color, not consciously anyway. During that time I was a fan of just about every color, something that has remained true to this day.

But somewhere in the 1990s I began to notice that I was particularly attracted to blue, or should I say blues, because various shades of blue pleased me just fine. I suppose that blue will remain my favorite for the rest of my life. I’d be shocked and awed, for instance, if on my death bed my final words were something like these: “Listen, after all this time I’ve decided that I like green more than blue. Who’d have thunk it? Okay, it’s time for me to go. Goodbye, cruel world!”

And I’m not alone in my pick. Surveys have determined that blue is the favorite color of more people than any other. So, why blue? Well, I’ve given this some thought and have come up with some notions. For one, I suspect that the preference has to do with the prevalence of blue. In daylight, when the heavens above aren’t cloud-covered, it’s blue that dominates our world. Duh! And who can resist a blue sky? It smiles upon us with a twinkle in its eye and with welcoming embraces. We’ve probably come to think of blue as a healthful force.

Blue comforts us. It helps us to vibrate at a beneficial pace. You can’t say the same for all colors, I think. You better watch out for orange, red and yellow, among others, for example. They just might bop you in your frigging nose or get your hormones racing way faster than you’re in the mood to deal with. And though white, black and the rest of the neutrals might possess blue’s healthful qualities, they lack the factor that, to me, sets blue apart from them: prettiness. Blue has just enough in the looks department to keep you more than interested.

Still, what do I know? There’s no right or wrong when it comes to color preferences. I’d be very interested to learn what colors are favored by this article’s readers.

The time has arrived to insert a couple of photographs of my once and current favorite colors. The explosive painting below hangs in my living room. It’s from Haiti and won my heart when I saw it in a Philadelphia art gallery in the 1980s. There are a variety of giddy yellows in there.  As a child, all of them would have enthralled me.

I have no doubt which shade of blue rates highest on my scale. It’s the blue of a late-morning sky, a soft but rich blue. Looking at the photo below, which I took on February 16, I can feel my blood pressure dropping to an acceptable level. Healthful is right.

Let’s get back to Brice Fuqua, a guy with wide musical ears who builds each of his broadcasts around a theme. The theme for Yellow Music is songs with yellow in their titles. During my walk, the number that got to me the most was one I’d never heard before, Yellow Dog Blues. W. C. Handy wrote it in 1915. The version that Brice played, sung by the fabulous Bessie Smith, came out in 1925. The song is about a heartbroken lady who is desperate to find out where the love of her life has disappeared to.

Yes, it’s very appropriate to this essay that Yellow Dog Blues contains in its title the colors that have stood out the most for me in my life. Thank you, Brice, for enabling me to bring the present proceedings to a vaguely logical conclusion.

(As always, comments are welcome and appreciated. And please don’t be shy about sharing this story. Mucho gracias.)

Here We Go Again: Art On Wheels, Part Five

Yeah, Another Blogger106 Comments

My editor, Edgar Reewright, wasn’t pleased when I told him last week that my next story, which in fact is the one you’re now reading, would comprise observations garnered and photos taken in my pursuit of nicely decorated motor vehicles.

“Edgar,” I said to him over the phone, “you know that I get a kick out of photographing these bad boys, and maybe an even bigger kick from writing about the photo shoots. What can I say? It’s what I do.”

“Well, Neil, editing your attempts at writing is what I do. And I don’t want to deal with yet another of your Art On Wheels efforts. You’ve done four of them already. That’s more than enough. Believe me, nobody has been praying that you’d turn out a fifth. Neil, if you insist on going ahead with Part Five, then you’re on your own until you come to your senses.”

Being more than somewhat of an asshole, Edgar then hung up. Screw him! Who needs an editor anyway? Well, I sure do, come to think of it. But if this story has to be editor-less, so be it. I’ll bring Edgar back on board after I launch Part Five into cyberspace. He may not be a fan of my journalistic output, but he damn well is in favor of the monies I pay him for his expertise.

Yup, I surely enjoy an occasional quest for trucks and other vehicles whose bodies are artistically painted canvases that advertise goods or services. What’s surprising is that relatively few commercial vehicles, maybe one out of 10, fit that bill. The rest are either very plain Janes or are decorated not at all. As for the latter (the totally unadorned ones), more often than not they are monochromatic homages to one shade or another of white. Sure, there’s something to be said for going about your business anonymously. But, vehicularly-speaking, I prefer a nice amount or more of splash.

Parts one through four of this series (which you can read by clicking here and here and here and here) describe expeditions in my immediate area (I live near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA). Each adventure was confined to one day, a day in which I spent a few hours trolling shopping centers, strip malls and wherever else I could safely and slowly drive my car. When I found my prey, I parked the car, exited from it, and documented with my phone’s camera the vehicle(s) that had caught my eye.

This time around, though, I took a different approach, which began on the first of this month while my wife and I were visiting The Big Apple. That evening, walking to Penn Station to catch a train that would take us part of the way home, we passed a trippy wonder of a truck that sold cannabis-infused sweet stuffs. Weed World Candies was painted in nearly every gleeful color under the Sun. Natch, I had to take its picture.

The idea for Part Five began to solidify in my mind at that moment. No need this time around to snap the photos in one day. And no need, necessarily, to troll in a car. Three days later, therefore, I wandered around my home area on foot, and found four victims that met my standards. But, lazy guy that inherently I am, I used my car the day after that to locate more artsy examples. The pictures of all the vehicles that passed muster on the various photo shoots are on this page, but in no particular order.

So, what do you think about the trucks and the one SUV (Kremp Florist)? Me, I’ve got to rate the cannabis truck as number one. It probably is as sharp as any example of art on wheels that I’ve ever seen. And my pick for second best is the Sysco truck. Its blues are calming, its message one of graciousness and welcome. The third-place prize? I grant it to the Trotter Services truck. The precise, hard-edged design, though severe, is oh so modern to my eyes.

By the way, when I was about 80 feet from Sysco, which was partially obscured from my view by plantings, I heard what I assumed was the opening or closing of the truck’s rear door. Not knowing which direction the door was moving, and not wanting to wait to find out, I quickly took up position behind some bushes, enlarged the truck’s image on the phone’s screen, and pressed the button. Man, I was lucky to get the shot. In the photo, that’s the driver only seconds away from climbing into the vehicle and taking off.

I tell you, the writing game can bring surprises. The longer you’re at it, the more likely your true nature and inclinations will emerge, not only in words and story lines but in real life. When I began this publication in 2015, never would I have expected that I’d be tracking down good looking vehicles, and liking it. I confidently say that, assuming I remain above ground for the foreseeable future, there will be another installment of Art On Wheels, Edgar Reewright notwithstanding. What, like I’ve got something better to do? As I’ve noted in my articles numerous times before, I’m an old f*cker. Humor me.

(As I almost always mention, please don’t be shy about adding your comments or about sharing this piece. I thank you.)

(If you click on any photo, a larger image will open.)