Author Archives: Jay B.

Riding in a Wagon is Utter Humiliation

My hatred for the latest Toyota Highlander commercials knows no bounds. Yes, children, you should feel humiliated if your parents can’t afford to buy the latest, super-ginormous monster truck laden with electronic garbage to tote your entitled asses to and from your rich suburban school.

While Jalopnik protests the disparaging remarks made against the Corvette-engined Buick Roadmaster, Sociological Images nails the underlying shame the ad is intended to invoke: “If you’re too poor to buy a brand new mid-range SUV, you suck.”

Another ad in the series, entitled “Kid Cave“, is particularly disgusting because it tells kids they should just plug in their headphones and cut off all communication with their parents, as if it’s a good thing. The scene of the wedding-singer parents is funny, but in my car it’s rare that I get to listen to my own music with the kids.

Rather than enjoying listening to music TOGETHER, I guess I should be isolating my kids by covering their ears with headphones and listening to whatever I want. Seems the Toyota ideal is to have all the members of the family walk around plugged into their own electronic devices, silent on the outside and ignoring each other.

BONUS: More analysis on Hipster Runoff

IPD Newsletter features My Black Brick

I was contacted late last year to do a “Volvo Story” feature for the IPD newsletter “The Brick”. I happily obliged and am excited to see it online today.

The photo used on the site was taken at a chicken farm in NY state, before I installed sport springs. I may go back this month so I should take another shot to compare.

Fast & Furious: Swedish Drift


It took a moment of contemplation before diving into this little snow drift.

One week after a major snowstorm and 15-20% of the street parking in Hoboken remains under sooty iceburgs. Plowing was haphazard and there’s huge drifts next to driveways and pedestrian crossings. It makes it next to impossible to see around intersections at stop signs.

I witnessed a hit and run on Thursday. The driver of a big, red dump truck was so pissed at the slow traffic flow along Washington St. that he backed his truck into a passenger van parked in front of the local Elks lodge. The rear of the van was sticking out a bit into the lane and a Miller Lite truck was double parked across the street. This caused a pinch-point that slowed down traffic for 4-5 blocks. The guy in the dump truck kept blaring his horn, to no avail. When he finally squeezed through he stopped, hit reverse, and slowly backed into the senior-center van that was partially blocking the lane. He pushed it enough to move it, and luckily there was no one inside. He then took off, only to get stuck in the next traffic tie up. Cops drove to the scene about 10 minutes later, but I was already on a slow moving bus to downtown.

Below is a spot I managed to parallel park into in front of my place. I’d just driven 2.5 hours and was determined to fit, so I just plowed back and hoped not to clog the tail pipe with an icicle.

Snowed In and Dug Out

snowkids

The Great Thunder Snow Storm of Dec 2010 has covered our street with at least a foot of snow. As of Monday night our street hasn’t been plowed, 18 hours after the snow stopped. This has resulted in a 1/2 dozen idiots in CUVs thinking they can use our block as a cross-street, only to find their compact-car-based, tall,  AWD with fat street tires ain’t gonna make it through the mush. A guy in a BMW X3 caused a minor traffic jam when he got stuck with 3 cars behind him. 15 minutes of spinning and pushing and he finally started moving. 10 yards later and he was stuck again, requiring another 15 minutes of spinning and pushing. The cars behind couldn’t go backward so they sat there. A food delivery guy in an old Nissan gave up on his delivery and was chowing down on some lo mein. Once the beemer got out the Nissan was able to skate across the snow, benefiting from low weight and skinny tires.

I don’t need to drive anywhere til Wednesday but figured I’d shovel out so things don’t freeze. Above my daughters stand on a snow-drift next to my car. I had shoveled a bit the night before but there was plenty more overnight. Below is a couple hours later, with salt under the tires, a snow-berm to protect against fishtailers, and a tunnel near the front of the car so the kids can crawl through to the sidewalk.

snow-shoveled