All posts by Steve Stern

Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance

Around home, Cars, Photography

From Corvette Expert Jim Gessner, memory by Steve Stern

One of my first car memories and my first racing memory was watching a Mercedes Benz and Corvette race for the Del Monte Trophy on the winding, very narrow, town roads of Pebble Beach. (We were kids and, as the Corvette with the bigger engine lead the MB 300 SL, we said such pithy things as Nothing beats cubic inches, then when the much more expensive MB passed the Vet, we said Except cubic money.)  In those days, before actual racetracks, we all got to stand very close to the action. The Pebble Beach race has moved to the Laguna Seca racetrack and the attached car show has become the  Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, probably the best carshow in the world, with an admission of $250 which does keep the hoi polloi pretty far from the action (the VIP tickets cost $600 and do include lunch [which proves, once again, that there is no such thing as a free lunch]).

To make the cars more accessible, the organizers have started the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance. The cars that are entered into Sunday’s show are encouraged to take a tour around the area on Thursday. While they don’t have to tour, if two cars are tied in points, the car that has been on the tour wins. On Thursday, Michele and I went down to the Monterrey Peninsula to check it out. Once again, we are able to stand very close to the action.

1924 Rolls-Royce 20 HP Barker Tourer 

1955 Mercedes Benz 300 SL

1954 Ferrari 500 Mondail Pinin Farina Spyder

At the end, when all the cars are parked, unbelievably close.

1925 Rolls Royce Phantom 1 Baker Sports Torpedo Tourer

But out on the road, listening to the cars go by, for a car nut like me, is thrilling. Getting close and seeing the details just adds to the thrillingness.

1939 Delage D8-120 S Saoutchick Cabriolet

 

1937  Talbot Lago T150C Figoni Falaschi Cabriolet 

 To be continued….

 

 

 

 

Pussy Riot

Current Affairs

I want to start  – scratch that – I feel it necessary to start this by disclaiming any alliance with Russia, Putin, child beating, or kitten killing, but two years in jail, even a Russian jail, does not seem like cruel and unusual punishment to me for what Pussy Riot did. They forced their way into Moscow’s biggest Orthodox  cathedral and sung an anti-Putin song – using the term loosely – and had to be dragged out. I have been told by our neutral, Western, press not to like Putin and I don’t, but imagine if  Dave Mustaine of Megadeth had forced his way into the Washington National Cathedral, sang a song against Obama – saying, for example, that Obama should be impeached for staging the Aurora shooting –  and had to be dragged out. I would be very surprised if he didn’t go to jail or get slapped with a huge fine and I, for one, would be all for it.

From all I read, Russia just sounds like a nasty kleptocracy and I would not want to live there and there is still something hypocritical about our State Department’s concern, about Madonna’s taking up the cause, about all the Western hand wringing. I imagine that Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and Samutsevich wanted to raised concern and outrage about freedom of speech in Russia and they are getting it. They just aren’t getting it for free.

Restoring Street Art

Americana, Art, Photography

 


I am sort of fascinated with informal street art – graffiti, if that makes you happier – I like the pictures, but I like the lettering even better. I am convinced that the lettering is a throw back to Mayan Glyphs.

About a week ago, Ed Dieden called to tell me to bring my camera with me to lunch, he had found a great vain of street art in Oakland.

By the time we got there, however, the art had been defaced. I have seen this on alot of Mayan sites, also. Somebody comes along later and trashes the art, presumable to show dominance. With street art, all it takes is a spray-painted line drawn through the art, sort of like keying a nice car.

OK, “restoring Street Art” is way too grandiose a term. But with street art, or any digital photograph, the photographer has an astounding amount of after-shot-control using Lightroom and Photoshop. I have talked to lots of photographers who frown on post shutter manipulation but I am not one of them. Ansel Adams – one of the demiGods of photography – retouched both his negatives and prints taking the tradition of post shutter manipulation back almost 100 years (and I am sure he was not the first).

My own standards – using the word standards in the most grandiose way possible – is having the final picture most closely represent what it felt like being there (I guess, by that criteria, I should accent the white defacing lines because, once I noticed them, they became very obtrusive but, at first, I didn’t notice them and they do detract from the art). I have no desire to Photoshop batman running through a wall although I have no problem with other people doing that. Here are a couple of shots, cleaned-up.

 

 

A couple of thoughts on Women’s Beach Volleyball & Women’s Gymnastics

Sports, Television

I am not much of an Olympics watcher. There was a time when I was interested in track, primarily because I had run the 100 yard dash – now the 100 meter sprint – and the broadjump – now the long jump – in Highschool. But also because I went to college in southern California and southern California was a hotbed of track in the 50s and early 60s, the “Golden Age” of track and field . In those days all track was amateur, or club track – so the athletes were paid under the table – and the spectators at a meet sat very close to the participants. Close enough to hear the runners talk, to see them sweat in the hot October sun; close enough to feel part of it.

Because I had seen enough track to know the athletes, I was pretty disdainful of the Olympics where, it seemed, the spectators were the amateurs, really didn’t know the players, and were only there for the spectacle, not the track. However, I did have a chance to go to one major, Olympic level, meet. It was 50 years and two months ago, in June of 1962 when the Cold War was at its height, and it was between  the the United States and The Soviet Union at Stanford Stadium. I still remember the Highjump duel: it had started earlier in the day but was still going on at the end of the day and by then everything else was over. All that was left were 70,000 hushed fans watching U.S. champion, John Thomas and the Soviets’ Valery Brumel – who was the best in the world – go toe to toe. Then it was only Brumel going for a world’d record. When he cleared 7′ 5″, the place went wild.

But this years, I got dragged into watching Women’s Gymnastics and, now I am watching some Women’s Beach Volleyball. My first thought is it should be Girls’ Gymnastics and Women’s Beach Volleyball. The Beach Volleyball players are women, the gymnasts seem to be girls trying to be glamorous. That does not mean that they aren’t great athletes, they are, and what they are doing verges on the impossible.

But I keep remembering my dad saying that women don’t become interesting until they were at least 30 or 40 and, I guess, I have internalized that. The women volleyball players just seem to have more gravitas, to be playing for higher stakes.

The biggest surprise in the Women’s Beach Volleyball – WBV from now on – is that the Chinese women did so well in chaotic  situations. That is the opposite of what I have been told to expect. In the semi-final, between the Americans and the Chinese there were atleast six times when the rally went on, and on, and on, losing any semblance of a set play and deteriorating into chaos. In that chaos, I expected the American to dominate, but the Chinese won four of the six long rallies. The first four, it is true, with the Americans winning the last two which, hopefully, points to a learning curve, but still a surprise.

One more thought, a question, really. Why are there no old gymnasts and why are there no young Volleyball, players.

Harry Reid and fantasy putdowns

Politics

I am sent or bump into crazy stuff about Obama all the time, He is a Socialist, He was born in Kenya, He is anti-American, and on and on. There is no way to argue with this kind of shit, let alone discuss it, so I sort of retreat into the fantasy of saying something equally stupid about Romney. Maybe, He is a polygamist would do it. I never actually do say anything like that because What is the point? I don’t believe it, I am sure that I am not going to convince anybody else, and somebody who thinks Obama was born in Kenya is a little unhinged anyway.

When Romney refused to release most of his back taxes, like alot of people, I wondered what he might be hiding. He seems he must be hiding something that would result in making him look even worse than refusing to release his taxes makes him look. Maybe not, though; maybe he is just stubborn. Maybe he got caught cheating and made a deal, maybe he paid so much he is embarrassed. Nobody really knows and what to say about it never entered my fantasy putdown pantheon.

Then along came Reid and his announcement that Romney paid No taxes during the period that he – Romney – won’t release his returns. Reid says he heard this from an anonymous source at Bain. This is really better than any of my fantasy putdowns.  The Romney camp – Romney, his surrogates, Republican politicians, right-wing pundits – understandably, but foolishly, has gone apoplectic. But there is no way to prove that Reid is lying without releasing Romney’s taxes.

If Reid is lying – and it is still an IF because we don’t really know the truth any more than we know it about Romney’s taxes – he is doing something that I should be condemning as immoral but I can’t help but admire. It is just too brilliant, tactically. First, even if we suspect he is lying, the only people that really know – besides Reid – are on the Romney side and Romney would have to release his taxes to prove that Reid is lying; then it has resulted in Romney being engaged in a fracas with somebody lower – politically – than Obama and that demeans Romney; because Reid is powerful enough to have a national soapbox from which to speak, it keeps the taxes question open and in the headlines; and Reid is in a different branch of government than Obama so Obama can’t, really, be held responsible.

The whole thing is just brilliant. It is no wonder that Reid is Speaker of the Senate.