Dear Listers,
I'm not sure how the LBC heaven thread morphed into the where is the hobby
going thread but . . . . . . .
>In a message dated 97-07-28 07:53:11 EDT, mowogmg@pil.net (Kai Radicke)
>writes:
>
>> I don't know but I know of quite a few teenagers who are interested in the
>> LBC hobby/sport...so I don't think that you have to do anything.
>
>A very true statement. . . . . . . . . The car was just different enough
>to be mine, but not too off
>the wall. I like the soul of the car, but to my American Muscle car friends,
>they don't see it. I guess it's like being a Priest, you have to be
>called...
>~Mike Lishego
We also must realize that the days of the automobile as transportation are
numbered. The horse was as commonplace a century ago as as the car is
today. By the mid teens, other than on the farm, horses became the toys of
the rich and rides at the state fair. The future of transportation seems to
be a combination of telecommuting and some sort of public transport. As
the suburbs populate and grow into each other, as they have in LA and more
recently in my native San Francisco Bay Area, the businesses that develope
there (like Silicon Valley in Santa Clara/San Jose) will draw employees
closer to the new business centers. Sure people will have to get together
for meetings once or twice a week and there still will be skeleton crew on
premesis to mind the store but this wont require two-thirds of the
population of Los Angeles to get into Honda Civics and Ford Explorers and
drive fourty-five minutes across town to sit in a cubicle to be brow beaten
by managers and supervisors. In the future, a good supervisor will be the
person who can effectively brow beat by email! (you can tell who is the
free lancer is here!)
The media message that people get today is that cars are disposable
appliances that are of so little value that they are blown up and crashed
for no appearant reason. While a necessary evil to get to school and the
mall, they are also dangerous, expensive to own and are ruining our air and
water. If we could see what we love through the eyes of the people who will
eventually vote our hobby off the streets and into museums, we would see
ourselves viewed as Disney's Mr. Toad or Mr. Magoo in their antique tourers
or Jack Benny and Rochester in the mythical Maxwell. Sure we can, and
should, lobby the government and fight the system and buy ourselves more
time, but we can't fight the tide and we can't fight progress. These very
computors that have made it so easy for hobbiests to communicate and
increase interest in what we value will ultimately become the angle of
death of the same. When I became an automotive journalist, I gave up
building and collecting and now spend most of my time talking and writing
about cars.
Someday, all of us will be driving virtual cars and taking the light rail
to two or three big local events each year to see the collections of the
rich or government funded collections. While we might have hidden away an
old MG in the basement, we wouldn't dare drive it because if caught, it
would be impounded and destroyed. LOOK AT THE LAWS THAT ARE BEING PUT INTO
PLACE TODAY! In some communities you are not allowed to have more than
three running and registered cars on your property, and if turned in by a
nosey, Nazi, neighbor; your car can be legaly "abated" (stolen and removed)
and sold for scrap. Sure we can fight these draconian laws but good luck
trying to change the mass mentality that creates them.
I know this sounds bleak, but greybeards like me probably will be too old
to care as this "new order" actually comes into being. We might even
welcome a relaxing train ride in a retro '30s deco lounge train or the "Old
West" railroad cars that will be offered as transportation companies and
amusement parks merge to keep our media overstimulated minds from going
into screensaver mode on a long boring train ride. Young enthusiasts will
be able to bolt a Le Carra steering wheel to their Atari auto simulator,
turn on the turbo electric wind fan option and slip in the MGTD CD ROM and
go for a ride in the hills in the comfort of their media rooms. (Hey! Let's
build some of this shit and get rich!)
See you on the Funway! - Rick Feibusch - Venice, CA
|