WALKING WITH CARS

 

Motorists versus pedestrians: it’s a false opposition if you ask me.  I enjoy both driving and 

walking.  When I’m walking I try not to hate drivers.  When I’m driving I try not to hate 

walkers.  Sometimes it takes a bit of effort, but on balance I manage to stay tolerant.

 

The fact is I do like cars very much, the stranger and cooler and more patinated, the better.  I’ve lived with one or two ‘interesting’ cars in my life, but I’ve concluded that the more interesting a car is, the more trouble it’s likely to be. I still like cool cars, I just don’t wish to own one.  And when I’m out walking and I see one, then I go across the street and have a look, and in some circumstances take a picture.  As vicarious pleasures go, I think it’s harmless enough.

 

Naturally there was more scope for this when I lived in Southern California. Old cars last longer there because of the lack of rain and snow, and only high in the mountains do roads get gritted and salted. 

And cars there continue to be driven even when they look like absolute wrecks.  These are things magnificent and if I found myself by some chance driving one of them I’d be perfectly happy, but I wouldn’t seek one out, I wouldn’t deliberately buy one.  I just like to look.

Meanwhile here in England ... 

 

.... interesting cars are fewer and further between but they’re not completely absent.  They do a lot to make me happy when I’m walking.  Here’s one I saw earlier (Texas plate, I know, but it was in Mistley, Essex):

 

 

 

 

 

THE HOLLYWOOD MIDDLE

Some of you may still have enough short term memory to recall the little video I did a few years back with Anthony Miller to promote my novel The City Under the Skin, done under the auspices of the Los Angeles Review of Books and Los Angeles magazine.  The director was Jerry Gorin.  It looked like this, and still does:

Basically I walk around bits of LA, point at things and say something about them in a rather self-conscious way, not least about this onramp to the Hollywood freeway which I think is a wonderful zesty piece of engineering if not strictly speaking architecture. 

I seem to think that in the video Mr. Miller and I agree that it looks Ballardian.  The shot in the video looks like this:

And now, blow me down, I discover this album Do Hollywood by a band named Lemon Twigs, and they’re doing pretty much the same shot.  The NME website says of the Lemon Twigs, “Their greatest talent is their ability to pick the pockets of rock’s dinosaurs without making it seem passé or pastiche.” 

Hollywood – so many options, so few genuinely original ideas – although of course that applies to the whole world, not just to Hollywood.

YAY!

Somebody somewhere (actually at the Serpentine Gallery in 

London) has the chance to buy a book about walking by 

Geoff Nicholson.

Photo by Travis Elborough

Rubbing covers with Charles Saachi - ouch.

THE REFOUND ART

Oh and here's a thing to celebrate, and demonstrate my "international" status. While I'm in  New  York, the small format mass market UK edition of The Lost Art of Walking will be published.  Amazon.co.uk seems to have got the info all up the spout and they say it's not published till  October 1st, but they're wrong.  My publisher assures me September 19th is the real publication date.  

It's a slender, handsome volume now, and fits easily in the pocket and can therefore accompany you on your walks over hill and dale, and especially through dark alleys.  In due course it will make a lovely Xmas present too.  The Economist reckons it's "bewitchingly informative."