February 2010

This story wins the award for most dedicated motoring photographer in the world!

A British photographer living in America called Andy Willsheer was doing his usual shooting at Pomona Raceway in California when Steve Gasparelli’s 7000 horsepower funny car slipped on launch and started veering directly towards the Brit snapper, who calmly carried on pointing his camera at the out of control dragster to capture some amazing photos.

This is the series of pictures that he snapped.

Amazing photo’s I think you will agree but even more amazing when you remember this wasn’t with a zoom or something, as can be shown by this picture.

Balls Of Steel!

It is that time of year again when people all up and down the country are putting on their new running shoes and stretching on the Lycra to start training for the 2010 London marathon.

The silly fools!

I understand it is all for charity and it must be a pretty amazing feeling to actually complete the epic race but I can assure you that you will never get me doing the London marathon unless I was hired as a driver for one of the camera bikes or cars. It is quite funny watching the footage on TV though because every now and again you get too see one of the bikes lose concentration for a bit and crash into the back of one of the TV cars.

However the reason I’m making this post is because I think I have found a genius marketing idea for TV crews covering the event. Use an awesome Lowrider or Muscle car! Think about it how many shots of your car would be splashed around the news just because it would be an interesting talking point?! Have your company/slogan up the side and you just got yourself loads of awesome advertising for free.

So basically, TV crews, you need to find yourself an awesome car to use. Bonus points if you use something with a V8 in it that drowns out the sound of anything else in the immediate area…

Something like this would be good

I just saw this awesome picture called ‘Dead Meat‘ by Nik Scarlett on Proper Random (below) and it made me really want to do a post about lowbrow art.

Starting off in the late 70′s by Artists such as Robert Williams and Gary Panter it was a relatively small movement of underground cartoonists and started to grow throughout the 80′s with the first significant boom in the 90′s with the start of  Robert Williams lowbrow magazine, Juxtapoz.

It is one of the main parts of ‘Kustom Kulture’ and has always been closely related to hot rods and kustom cars, with huge names like Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth and Coop becoming familiar names in the art and car scenes.

Ed Roth’s Rat Fink, possibly the most famous creation in Lowbrow.

Coops devil.

As well as the older art there is still a big and ever growing lowbrow scene at the moment with brilliant artists and tattooists everywhere at big shows.

David Lozeau is a good example of a modern artist and his use of unconventional canvases just add to the awesomes. I love drawings in weird places, half of my furniture has got drawings all over it!

And of course, back to Robert Williams, who is probably best known for his album artwork for a certain little band called Guns n’ Roses…

I actually own some of his work and yes call me sad but I have the Vans special edition slip ons he did.

So does anyone else know any artists that I really should check out? Comment and tell me!

Bridgestones might be good but seriously, I would never give up that girl for tyres!