3235

    I claim to be no artist.  At best I'm a nerd who has really bad spelling and even worse grammar.  Ten years ago I called myself a student film maker and living in Northern California that makes one be a artist film maker.  Every film class I took the teacher and students would brag about how the film making style of Nor Cal was that of being an artist and if you wanted to be rich you better move your ass down to L.A.  So I made many short student films soon to be released on DVD on this website but never called myself an artist.  I considered myself back then and even now more of a story teller than anything else.  But being an artist well that's a whole other thing all together.  What I just said makes almost no sense but I hope this will.

    My wife and I were invited to go up to the city (San Francisco) to see "...original furniture designs by San Francisco designers and fabricators" at a studio/warehouse called 3235.  One of the designers who is a friend, (I'll just call him Larry) had a piece on display.  Him and his wife really wanted us to come up and check it out.  So my wife and I and a few mutual friends drove up to check it out.

    I was quite impressed. Some of the pieces I saw looked liked templates that IKEA would steal.  The craftsmanship was amazing.  I don't know squat about furniture but this stuff looked great.  One artist took a bench seat from an old 50's style car and turned it into a couch.  It looked to be in mint condition.  Left me standing there thinking "God Dam, that's pretty fuckin' cool!"

    But there was one piece that caught every ones attention and it wasn't even a piece of furniture.  It was a CHP Patrol Cars Door that was severely damage hanging on the wall that turned out to be the topic of conversation for many party goers.

    So I pull Larry aside and ask him.  "Larry, what's the deal with the CHP door on the wall?"  his reply was this. "It's a very funny story actually, one of the guys here was driving down the road and he saw the door in the middle of the freeway next to the fast lane,  he calls me up, and says Hey Larry, I just drove past a detached banged up CHP door in the middle of the road.  And I tell him to stop the truck and go back and pick it up instead of calling me.  So he picks it up and brings it back to the studio/warehouse and we hang it on the wall."  I found the story more interesting than funny, but I could see how it could be funny if I was there.   But it did make me think..

    How many of us would have just drove by and said things to ourselves like "That's fucked up", "Good, I hope the pig was killed", "FUCK!!! I almost hit that fuckin' thing, the city better come out and pick it up before someone gets hurt"  I would be lying if I said that I was the type of person that would pull over and pick it up.  But how about YOU?  What would it take for you to pull over?  Money? Box of Porno Mags? A child? A puppy?  A slightly used but still good mattress?  What makes you tick?  What grabs your fancy?  What is your price? 

.....I once pulled over to take a pee