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.