IT'S A WRAP

And on the subject of looking at cars while walking, I remembered something somewhere in Kingsley Amis, in a letter to Larkin I think, where he defines a bore as someone who “when he sees an unusual car in the street GOES OVER AND HAS A LOOK AT IT.” Well, just one more thing to disagree about with Kingsley Amis.

So I wonder how he’d have felt about wrapped cars.  It’s not specifically a Los Angeles thing, the English do it too.  This one was in Suffolk:

This one in Essex:


But LA seems to contain a higher number than anywhere I’ve ever been.  I suppose it protects cars from passing vandals, and I think from the burning sun.  Only the first of these is a problem in England.

You assume there must be a really nice care under the wrapping, something worth protecting, but you can never be completely sure:


If you’re enough of a motorhead I dare say you can always tell what’s under wraps, and some are obviously much easier than others.  VW Beetles are especially easy to spot:


And you know, aesthete that I am, when I see wrapped cars I’m often reminded of the bondage photographs of Araki:

And more often of Christo – like this:

And this:

But then, wouldn’t you know it, I found this picture; a Beetle wrapped by Christo himself – well worth going over and having a look, I’d have said.