Okay, so I've been really bad about posting the rest of my photos and writing the rest of my trip report. What can I say, I took the weekend off. But anyway, the coolest thing happened today! I saw Toby Galinkin at the Panera sandwich shop. Actually she saw me, and came over to talk to me. Toby is Chapel Hill's art car driver (maybe not the only one, but the only one I know of). If memory serves we had only met once, years ago. So I'm amazed that she even recognized me.
Toby is the reason I drive an art car today. I saw her car around 1989 or 1990, in a parking deck in Chapel Hill. The roof was covered with baby doll heads, and it had a bunch of plastic grapes attached to the radio antenna, and baby bottle nipples on the rear bumper, and lots of other stuff too which I can't remember. There was a store mannequin in the passenger seat and a bumper sticker that said "Kiss My Art."
I had never seen an art car before, had never heard the term "art car," certainly didn't know about there being a community with events and all that. I was dumbfounded. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen! I didn't even own a car but I thought to myself that someday I would get a car and decorate it too. That car was Little Pig Boy, a 1978 Toyota that I decorated with pigs and drove for eight years. I loved Little Pig Boy, but I have to confess that I love Undersea Mah Jongg more. It's an amazing luxury to have an art car and air conditioning!
But here's the thing: Toby went to this site! Is that cool or what? She found out about it from a mutual friend. I'm going to see if Toby and Deb Allen and I can get together sometime soon. We're not Houston, but maybe we could have a little Triangle Art Car Klub of our own!
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