The Garage Company, The Petersen Museum & The Last Bookstore - April 26 (1)

Thursday, April 26

On advice from back home I visit The Garage Company in Inglewood and The Petersen Automotive Museum, the former conveniently located on the way to the latter. Cool place, The Garage Company: It has a large eclectic collection of motorcycles, and seems just a little bit messy, dirty, scruffy, about 10 % of what 'Oliehulen' ['The Oil Cave', my workshop in Copenhagen] back home looks like on a good day. Owner Yoshi is one of many Japanese motorheads who have done well over here, and I see more than a hundred bikes inside the premises; ranging from large, perfect custom bikes to small rusty bikes that for one reason or another caught the owners attention. Too many to list, so I'll just mention a wild dragster with drag bar and exhaust ports pointing skywards, that also has lights and a license plate.

The Garage Company collection included a goosenecked Honda chopper and the small US built Mustang scooter.

An elderly (as in; 'my age') guy is there to sell his Dave Mann style paintings, and later, when outside, I entertain him with details of the Danish tax system. He rolls his eyes, mutters things about 'socialism', while his buddy is all over the MZ. Upon hearing the asking price of $2,000, the buddy says he'll buy it. Great, so I already have a buyer, and one who thinks he'll ride it back from New York City. If he's serious about both things, he gets a discount...

An hour and 50+ traffic lights later I'm at the famous Petersen museum in the actual city of Los Angeles (as opposed Greater Los Angeles, which is the size of Sjælland), and make the mistake of eating in their upscale-ish cafeteria. Overpriced and undercooked spaghetti, but I make up for a bit by paying as a 'senior citizen'. Never tried that before without cheating.

Soon, at $20 extra, I find myself on a tour of the basement vault, where frustratingly no pictures can be taken. It's something about very expensive cars, and location of CCTV cameras' placement, that they don't want anybody with bad intent to know where are. 1 1/2 hours of an enthusiastic, speed-talking guide is good, so are the cars - especially those shown the last 20 minutes - and many owe their commanding prices of up to $50 million some interesting history. Steve McQueen may have been dead for 38 years now, but he's still way more cool than you or I, and is also very, very good for jacking up the price of cars and motorcycles. Like I wrote, we weren't allowed to take pics, so I've lifted these two off The Internets:

1939 Delahaye.

Huge 1925 Rolls-Royce with art deco bodywork from the 1930s. Note the round doors.

7,000 lbs. and 100 bhp, the guide said.

Despite being as jaded as I am, the above-ground three stories collection of cars and custom motorcycles still manages to impress me, There's a special Porsche exhibition, with various prototypes and a motorcycle, where for this guy the 917 racer in orange and light blue Gulf livery is the highlight, along with an early record car. The world's first hybrid car is mentioned, but not the 100-ton 'Maus' tank Ferdinand Porsche designed during WW2. Again way too many to mention, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Sign at the parking garage at the Petersen museum. Go figure... 

Porsche record car was built right at the time WW2 started, hence the covered headlights.

Salsbury scooter, one of the postwar era's most beautiful designs.

1948 Davis Divan, which the constructor saw as a car of the future. The buying public thought otherwise, not caring for neither the three-wheel layout, nor for the four abreast seating.

Defenders of The Cheeseburger?

Last stop is at The Last Bookstore, California's largest used book store, recommended by my host Debbie. Located in the building of a former bank, it looks wonderful and quaint, one of the reasons for this being that it still has the doors to the safety vaults. It beats The Strand in NYC hands down.

One of the bank vault doors at The Last Bookstore.

Then it's on the LA freeway system again, now in dusk and eventually darkness. This way it looks much better than in the daytime, with the sea of lights making it appear more like some enormous living organism. Which in a sense it is, and it never ceases to impress me. Half the time I'm following traffic at or below my self-imposed 50 mph max. cruise speed, and the other half of the time there's a clear road ahead of me, and a car or van or pickup or truck right on my tail. 

Final stop is at another bar with Kaj and Dave, it's parking lot filled up mostly with large Harley dressers and the accompanying noise.

Shopping carts at the local supermarket, for those too weak or too fat to walk around shopping by themselves. I briefly considered trying it.