Badges

It has been a while since my last post and for that I apologize, but I offer a great big post with lots of pictures to repay my debt. While eating my daily morning sausage egg and cheese bagel, drinking my coffee and checking the news I stumbled upon this article in the New York Times. The gist of this article is that for luxury automobile brands that offer a great deal of engine options, buyers (mainly in Europe) are opting to have the badges removed from their cars. Looking at this from an American perspective, one might think that the reason for this is that buyers don't want other people knowing that they bought the very cheapest version of a luxury car. From a European, and particularly German, point of view, the goal is not to look ostentatious or flashy. European owners don't want to stir jealousy from those around them.

Unfortunately, making those around you jealous is EXACTLY why many Americans buy cars. In fact, that is why you see so many look-alike packages being offered by the manufacturers themselves. You can buy AMG wheels for your Benz and get a nice AMG badge on the back as well. The same is true of the BMW ///M sport package and the Audi S-line appearance package. These are cars that look extremely similar to their more expensive relatives but have none of their substance….and entirely American phenomenon. Other American phenomena in the same vein are:

Grillz (you spell it with a 'z').

Chainz (also spelled with a 'z').



Rimz (you get the idea).


And finally, Skillz.

Now clearly, the common theme among these attention grabbing accessories must be the key factor: the edgy and dangerous way they are spelled with a 'z' at the end rather than its more predictable and common cousin the 's'.

That said, I have seen a few examples of cars recently with badgez as well as the enginez to back them up.

The first of these was a nice BMW M6 with the coveted ///M badgez on it.I don't know what LELIK means but I am going to assert that it stands for Living Entire Life Inside Kingdom (if he is royalty), or Leading Every Looser In Kills (if he's a gamer), or Love Entails Lurking In Kitchens (if he's a pervert).

Later that same day I parked next to a similarly fast and expensive BMW M5.

This one was modified however and had the requisite rimz, and yellow brakez as well as very special badgez on the back.

In big chrome letters it said DINAN, which is a company that takes already expensive and fast BMWs and makes them even faster and more expensive. Judging by the fact that it had the big yellow brakez, this car either cost an additional $15k or $50k on top of the normal 80k price tag, depending on what was under the hood. This is a lot of money, and as with most things that cost a lot of money, I thought it was most likely bought by a man who wanted it to impress women. Unfortunately for most men, however, women are much less impressed by rimz and badgez than they are by pursez and shoez, so this money is usually wasted.

Much to my surprise, a woman, and an older woman at that, walked up to and drove off in the 550-650 hp BMW. This was baffling, as women don't need to try to impress men with things men don't actually even care about. In fact, most men would be intimidated by a woman who drove a car with bigger badgez than his own. (Men say the size of your badgez is correlated to the size of your testez, women know that the size of your badgez is inversely correlated with the size of your peniz). I can only assume that this intimidation is the desired effect of the car, and it was used in business to give its owner leverage against others. That, or she is simply taking the inverse correlation mentioned above to an extreme. Is there a correlation with the size of the clitoriz? Ladies, you need to answer this for me.

Also of note is the fact that cars that have badgez also tend have many exhaust pipes. These pipes are usually grouped in pairs, and typically the more powerful the car the larger the tips on the exhaust. Because of their appearance and the message they attempt to send, I will refer to these as exhausticles (not to be confused with TruckNutz). Both the M5 and M6 above have nice sets of exhausticles, with the M5 having larger, augmented examples. I'll end this post with a big AMG Mercedes SL63 I saw parked in Bethesda with a matched set of 4 badgez as well as 4 very nice meaty exhausticles.

Now, Excuse me while I go de-badge my car

-CLDC

Failure to Obey

I’m from North Jersey. This means that I have spent a great deal of time in Manhattan. I love driving, cycling, and walking in Manhattan. Manhattan is a city where true traffic laws are unimportant and as long as you aren’t slowing other people down you are probably ok. As a result, I have gotten into the habit of crossing streets whenever and wherever I damn well please. This has not been a problem in any of the cities I have spent time. I was therefore very surprised when I was approached by three police officers on foot after crossing a traffic free street against the light in Bethesda recently. Each of the officers reprimanded me for violating the traffic laws and one wrote me this warning.



It says, “Pedestrian Warning : Failure to obey pedestrian control signal: Pedestrian may not start to cross the roadway in the direction of a solid ‘don’t walk’ signal or ‘upraised hand’ signal’ Penalty:$40 or up to $500”.

Luckily the officers chose to spare me any monetary fine, however I was annoyed to have to deal with police for walking across a street. Now it would seem to me that the Bethesda Police Department should have better things to do than to threaten pedestrians with fines for crossing streets. In fact, I don’t see how I could do anyone harm by crossing a street, other than by a car crashing into me and denting its bumper. Ultimately though, I think I would have the worse end of that deal. I think taking on that risk should be my decision. I guess in Bethesda pedestrians have the right of way, unless they’re in the way, in which case they have the right to remain silent.

Exotics

I have been pleasantly surprised by how nice the areas I both live and work are. Bethesda, where I work, is a very clean and upscale little city. Falls Church, where I live, is a nice upper middle/upper class suburb of DC. As a result of spending time in these areas I have seen some very nice cars around town. A couple nice examples of exotic cars I have seen in the past few days are this Ferrari f430 spyder



and the Porsche Turbo Cabrio



that I saw parked a couple feet from eachother in front of a steakhouse in downtown Bethesda. Most of the time I am content to simply admire these cars from a distance.

However, not even $200k supercars are beyond reproach. For example, about a mile from my house I frequently see a Bentley Continental parked outside under a car cover. One would think that if you are willing to spend around a quarter of a million dollars on a car, you would at least buy a house with a garage, or build a carport or something to protect your investment other than a thin piece of fabric intended to keep dust off of collector’s items.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of the only other Bentley that I’ve seen parked outside at all times. I'm from Newark, N.J., which isn’t the nicest area in the world. I lived about a block away from a housing project where residents were forced to find parking where they could on the street. For quite a while there was a Bentley that was parked there that I initially thought was someone just visiting. After a while it became apparent that the owner of the car lived in the housing project. This puzzled me, so I thought about what could possess someone who had enough money to buy a Bentley to live in a housing project with $180 a month rent. Finally, I realized, he lives there for the same reason that young professionals live in tiny apartments in manhattan: he wants to be close to work. The only difference is that one person works 15 hours a day at an investment bank and another works short hours selling crack to 15 year olds.

Now, I’m not suggesting that my new Bentley driving neighbor is a drug dealer like my old Bentley driving neighbor was. Frankly, my neighborhood is too upper-middleclass professional for crack and the margins on weed aren’t high enough for a new Continental. Not to mention that crack was invented by Republicans to destroy black communities…but I digress. I am suggesting, however, that my two neighbors hold similar personal values. This would imply that my new neighbor does one of the legal jobs that is reasonably similar in morality to dealing drugs, such as work as an insurance adjuster, or a hedge fund manager, or as a tobacco executive, or certain types of lawyer, or a plastic surgeon. Matter of fact, it seems that there are many, many professions that are more morally dubious than dealing drugs. Is it bad that I’ve very seriously considered at least 3 of them?

Speaking of determining someone’s job from the car they drive, I have a tough case that I came across the other day. While drinking a coffee at a Starbucks I saw this car drive by and park. I apologize for this being a video and not a photo, but I have an iPhone and I hit the wrong button, and certainly didn’t want to drive past this guy slowly again, since he was just standing outside his car…..looking. To summarize, we have a fat, middle aged man, dressed like a hippy, with tight jeans and a tie-dye shirt driving a small yellow car covered in cartoonish stickers standing outside of his parked car in the middle of a shopping center parking lot, looking as if he is trying to attract children by disguising his car as a pokemon. The thing may as well have said “Free Candy” down the side. What profession could this man possibly hold? I struggle to think of any 9-5 job that you could show up in a car like that and not be fired for simply looking ridiculous. Matter of fact, I can’t even think of any part-time jobs that wouldn’t discourage such creepy behavior. Oh, wait! Remember what I said about the margins on weed being low, well here you go. If you become a pot dealer, the only car you’ll be able to afford is a small yellow hatchback and enough stickers to make you look like a pedophile. Between that and the risk of going to jail, you’d have to be an idiot to deal weed.

And that brings us back to my last post where I said that you’d have to be an idiot to buy an old Ferrari 308 as a young man. Well no sooner did I write that post than I drove by this.



I promise you that I am not making up the fact that 20-something got out of this car as I drove by, and that I took this photo days after my last post. Well, someone has to pay the Ferrari mechanic’s kids’way through college.

You are what you drive

Last night I was convinced by my roommates to go out to a club to meet up with some of their friends. I’m usually not one to go out on weeknights simply because I have to wake up at 6am to for work. (I know.) I think partly because I haven’t been out with my roommates too much and partly because my bosses are away at a conference today I decided that I could get away with partying on a Thursday. Because I had to be up early and therefore was gonna leave early I decided that I would drive. Once my roommates were in my car they started exclaiming how nice it was, which of course served to stroke my ego a bit. That said, I bought my car for less than they paid for each of their cars, but was willing to get something used. A pic of my car, in front of my new house, can be seen below.



It was then that one of my roommates said something that caught my attention. “I told my friend what you drive and he said ‘Wow, he must be a baller.’” This got me thinking about what various cars in my price range that I was looking at buying and what they would have said about me.



For example, if I bought a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, they would say, “Wow, he must be a street racer”

Nissan 240sx, “Wow, he must be a drifter”




e46 BMW M3 “Wow, he must be a toolbag”




Cadillac Escalade, “Wow, he must be a gangsta”




Mercedes CL500, “Wow, he must be a drug dealer”




Ferrari 308, “Wow, he must be an idiot”


With the exception of the Escalade, these are all cars that I considered getting. Ok I didn’t actually think about buying a Ferrari 308, but I did look at them online. It is interesting to note that cars do have a use and value outside of what they do and how they look and perform. All of the cars above are good looking and will get you to work in varying levels of comfort and speed. The intangible component here is the attitude and social class that’s associated with cars. Ultimately, you are judged by your car much as you are judged by your clothes. Being as I don’t usually wear boots, baggy jeans, and big white T’s (anymore), I couldn’t really pull off an Escalade or a big Merc. My car looks clean, professional, and sporty, but with no big silly wing on the back, which is about the image I was going for. I wonder of older people decide at some point that they WANT to look like they’re near death, and this desire leads them to buy Buicks.

-CLDC

Road Rage

Recently, my job has found me driving from my main office in Bethesda, MD to the General Services Administration’s regional office occasionally. Now I know that just the mention as something as exciting as the General Services Administration has got you salivating for a thrilling post, but I regret to inform you that this post has nothing to do with the GSA except that it is located in DC. Usually I get there quickly without too much traffic getting in the way. Yesterday, however, on the George Washington Parkway before the 395N exit I found myself in quite a bit of bumper to bumper.

Despite being from New Jersey, I am usually a pretty courteous driver. As I was in the queue to get onto 395, if someone tried to get over into my lane, I would usually let them in. Over the course of about 15 minutes I let 3 or 4 cars in front of me. Now I have better things to do than worry about what effect that will have on my total travel time, but I can’t imagine that it was much more than a 30 second difference. Apparently the man in the car behind me did not have better things to do with his time, and became increasingly infuriated with me for allowing people to ‘cut’ him.

I was blissfully ignorant of his anger until he started honking at me at which point I looked in my rear view mirror to see what looked to be a older, very bald, very red man, in a Buick gesturing violently and talking to someone, despite being alone in the car. Being as I am still not used to taking pictures of these sorts of things, I forgot. Instead an artist’s rendering of him can be seen below.



I looked and laughed at this guy for a while, only to notice that there was a new person trying to cut infront of me. This guy had gotten my attention with his hand and was being very courteous, not getting too close to my car or anything. This put me in a tough position; I could either be mean to the nice guy trying to get into my lane, or risk being killed in a fit of road rage by the angry geriatric behind me.

I chose both. I edged forward as if I were not going to let the man in, watching the face of my furious follower calm; then stopped dead and waved on my new friend. My new archenemy behind me exploded in a fit of gesturing and honking that gave him the appearance of conducting the crescendo of an intense orchestral piece.

I’m sure this fit of rage shortened Buick-man’s life expectancy significantly. That said, it couldn’t have been too much longer anyway. I am now stating my Car Related Assertion of the Week (CRAW): No one younger than 50 drives a Buick by choice. They are cars exclusively for old people, and if you drive one, you are either old, very old, or know so little about cars that you didn’t know you should sell it when you inherited it from your grandfather when he died. That brings me to something that might extend your life, my second Public Service Announcement: Chill out in Traffic, life is stressful enough without worrying about whether you’re adding 10 seconds to your commute every time someone goes in front of you.

-CLDC

Hit and Run

Last Saturday was an eventful day. In the afternoon, my roommates and I went to an Oktoberfest event in Maryland. The celebrations were only slightly dampened by the rain that fell for the entire day. You paid a flat rate of $30 and got six beer tokens upon entry and every subsequent token was $1, which sounded fine to us. Six good, rare, German beers for less than you’d pay for a bottle of Bud Light at a bar in Dupont, sign me up.

We did sign up, in fact, only to discover that the Token to Beer Conversion Rate, or TBCR as I will annoyingly abbreviate from now on, was 1 token for 4oz of beer. This means that it cost 3 tokens per normal, 12oz beer (never mind that Germans normally buy beers in pints or larger at Oktoberfest, which are about 16oz). This was much less of a good deal. It brought our DBCR (Dollar to Beer Conversion Rate, keep up) to a whopping 15:1. This was unacceptable. Luckily, however, as we entered the event, people leaving gave us a handful of tokens, enough to last the six of us about a half an hour. After that we had to be much more creative. Upon seeing the tip jars in front of each of the people serving beers, one of my roommates tried tipping $1 and he was given a full beer with no tokens. This brought our DBCR to a healthy, drunken 1:1. We continued with this until we had our fill of beer and cold rainy weather and retreated to the warmth of our designated driver’s car.

After a recovery period of a few hours we decided that we should go out to a club. The choice of club was left to one of my roommates, who wanted to meet up with some of his friends. He said that it was “Asian Night” at this club, which sounded fine to me. Maybe it’s me just stereotyping, but I thought that would mean a bit more techno than usual and cheap sake bombs. Keep in mind that two of my roommates are Asian, and the one who isn’t has an Asian girlfriend. What my roommate meant to say was that we were going to AQUA, “The Pioneer Asian Nightlife in the Washington DC Metro Area.” What that meant, in practice, was that I, until my other roommate got there, was literally the ONLY non-Asian guy there….I looked. As you might expect, as a 6’2” half black, half white guy, I was somewhat conspicuous. I knew I didn’t belong when I was repeatedly asked “Why are you here?”, or “What are you doing here?” or “Who brought you here?” It’s as if this were some speakeasy off the map that you need to know what unmarked door to knock on and say the password, in Mandarin, to gain entry. I’m sure most people there thought I had an Asian fetish, which would be a reasonable explanation for me infiltrating their club.

I had a great time until I was bounced from the club for serving someone who was underage a drink, which I simply didn’t do. I still don’t know how you can serve someone without buying any drinks. I imagine this was just an attempt to keep the ethnic purity of this club intact. I understand, I was cramping your style, it’s ok, Aqua. In any case, I wasn’t ready to leave so I talked my way back in. I continued to have a good time, and when the club closed, and after the stripper had finished (apparently Pioneer Asian Nightlife involves having everyone stand around and watch a black stripper do a very athletic pole dance), we all went to the parking lot to wait for cabs and such.
The parking lot is relatively small, at least for a club sort of in the middle of nowhere. There were many, very nice cars parked there and packed very tightly. Of note was a very tiny young woman driving a Mercedes SL550. Also a police car was parked outside I suppose to quell any fights that might break out. As we waited for our cab, there was a kid backing out of a spot, who took the most terrible angle for leaving the lot. Now I’m not stereotyping, but this inevitably led to the driver backing up into someone else’s car. Upon hearing and feeling the hit, the driver stopped. But because there was no way he was getting out of the lot in his current position, he decided that the best thing to do was to CONTINUE BACKING UP, doing considerable damage to both his and the other car. Now, I figured that the next reasonable step would be to get out and leave some information on the parked car so that insurance can be sorted out. Despite the crowd of people and the police car (which was apparently oblivious to the entire situation) the driver simply left, his bumper half hanging on to his car. Had I been a smarter (or at least less drunk) man, I would have used my camera phone to take a picture of the situation. Alas, I did not.

This leads me to my first public service announcement. If you hit someone’s car when they’re not around, leave a note. Even if you think you’ll get away with it, the Car Karma Gods will eventually kick you in the ass, at least 5 fold.

-CLDC

First Post

Let's get the introductions out of the way. I'm Will. I am a recent Princeton grad, and I am working in DC. I'm a very devoted car guy which led me to become a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineer. I have done a great deal of work with rusty old Datsuns, and have recently bought my first real car (You know, one with AC, and heat, and leather.....and a horn...and turn signals....and an exhaust system....), an Infiniti G35 coupe that I picked up used.

I now live outside of New Jersey for the first time that I remember, in northern Virginia, and commute to various locations around the DC area. As such, I spend quite alot of time in my new car, much of it in traffic.

I have always been very interested not only in cars but in car culture and the little social groupings and stereotypes that form around cars. Just as people are judged and grouped into social catagories by the clothes they wear, they are grouped by the car they drive, and what they do with it.

In this blog I hope to take an entertaining look not only into the trials and tribulations of getting to and from work alive, but into these unique and rarely documented social systems. I hope you enjoy it.