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Lots of cool, creative types gathered in San Mateo over the weekend for Maker Faire, a celebration of human adaptability.

My photos are here.

This is my last post describing our trip to far northern California last week.
(Our camping trip here;
my Lassen Peak hike here.)

On Friday morning we left Lassen
Volcanic National Park via the northwest exit and headed to Redding to check
out the way-cool Sundial
Bridge, which was designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and
opened to the public on July 4, 2004. I saw a documentary about the bridge’s
building earlier this year and knew I had to see the thing up close.

Here’s one look at most of the bridge, commissioned by the McConnell Foundation, which apparently wanted to build something
unforgettable and opened its wallet wide. Final cost: $23 million, of which the foundation supplied more than half. As much as
I hate to quote the Mastercard commercial, here’s one case where the result
is truly priceless.

The bridge has only one job: giving pedestrians and bicyclists a quick way
to cross the Sacramento River. You can’t see it from this angle, but the supporting
spire rises at the same angle as the riverbank, making it seem integral to its
surroundings.

The spire practically begs a photographer to capture it from numerous angles.
They’re all pretty cool.

Note the sun’s rays seeming like more cables from the bridge. I can’t imagine
the architect had this effect planned out, but the guy is a genius so
one never knows.

I’m especially fond of the solar-eclipse effect.

One more angle from the nearby shore.

Salmon spawn nearby, so the the bridge was designed to span the river without
touching its waters.

A sculpture by the architect is beneath one end of the bridge.

The Sacramento River glimmers in the morning sun.

OK, one last look from the opposite bank.

This one little project in a small city 200 miles from the nearest metro area
seemed to define why humans have had this perpetual urge to create wonderful
public art. The art is never exactly necessary but once finished it seems absolutely
essential.

It reminds me of the Sistine Chapel, whose ceiling would’ve required some kind
of a paint job. Any old painter could’ve put a nice, comforting tint up there.
But one pope decided he wanted something special up there, so he hired one of
the best artists of his time — Michaelangelo — to paint biblical scenes on
the ceiling.

I’m not saying the Sundial Bridge is in the same league as God’s finger touching
Adam’s, but the idea is similar: taking something that is merely useful and
making something amazing. Not all the motives were the noblest: just as the
city of Redding enjoys the tourism dollars spent by folks coming to see the
bridge, it’s a fair guess that the pope who hired Michaelangelo was flattering
his own ego and hoping to create an attraction that would fatten the Vatican’s
receivables. But if greatness happens, all is forgiven.

The documentary about the bridge’s construction featured interviews with befuddled
people of Redding who didn’t quite know what to make of the bridge, particularly
during the mess and tumult of its construction. Even after it was done, they
couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about; some thought it was an eyesore.

I practically shouted at my TV: People, one of the world’s greatest architects
is building something remarkable that he’ll get no use out of but you’ll get
to use as you please for years to come. It’s not costing you much. Try to
show some appreciation.

People usually get what they deserve, but the magic happens in those rare instances
when they get something better.

(If you’re curious: a blogger from southern Oregon has a pair of interesting posts about the bridge here and here. The San Francisco Chronicle also has a review of the bridge.)

Downtown San Jose, typically the squarest place in 50 miles, became a tad cooler
yesterday with the arrival of ArtcarFest 2004.

The premise of ArtcarFest is that people who have made a canvas of their cars
gather all their zaniness into a single zipcode. There’s a strong aroma of hippiedom
– lots of peace symbols, feminist agitprop, antiwar statements, etc — but
the tone is light, frivolous, antic, occasionally silly. ArtcarFest presumes
to be the exact opposite of the typical classic-car show, but the people who
put 90 coats of paint on a 1950 Mercury have a lot in common with the people
who glue 90 Disney figurines on the roof of their 1969 Beetle. The classic car
buff wants to celebrate the automobile; the carart buff wants to subvert it.
Either way, cars provoke a creative obsession that produces more photo ops than
you can shake a hubcap at. Just what I need on a cool, cloudy Saturday.

An early ’60s Caddie covered with costume jewelry. Because the car was so tired
of its owners getting to wear all the fake pearls.

The couple kicking back in Snorky’s back end are having a high old time.

A Bug, with wings. Somebody had to, right?

Sometimes an artcar is a concept. The frame rail says "Guitars not guns"
but from this angle those axes look remarkably similar to firearms.

I’m pretty sure I saw this car built in some Discovery Channel show. Note how
unromantic cigarette smoke is from this angle.

No, bud, it’s a lot longer than that.

This creation was absurdly over-chromed.

It looks much cooler from the rear — suddenly "Rudolph the Red-Assed
Reindeer" springs to mind.

Who profits from your self-loathing, this car with curlers on the roof asks.
One of those "message" cars that’s about as subtle as a blown engine.

… because we all should tremble before the Creator, right?

Look, it’s interactive: people write their suggestions for Scooby doings on
the paper.

Some people you just know were hippies back in the day.

Two guys having a deep geographical discussion — good thing somebody left
that globe there. (this is weird: every time I try to write globe, it
comes out blog.)

For those lacking a globe: a pickup truck coated with maps.

File under: What’s the wackiest thing you could do to four-door Ford Maverick?
You start with tailfins, naturally….

… but you keep adding stuff like this compass and all these mechanical-looking
contrivances.

Some carartists just stick as much junk as they can find on the roof.

Others stick to a theme. Note the cat ears up there on the roof.

One car was covered with snow globes: I wanted to shake it real hard and see
what happened, but I figured it might shake the globes off the roof (which,
come to think of it, might not have been a bad idea. I love the "Rosebud"
moment of a snowglobe exploding.)

I took this only to get the downtown fountains in the background.

This guy took the "cover it with junk" ethic to extremes. Fortunately
he eventually ran out of car.

Here’s a little girl checking out the famed Carthedral — an old hearse done
up in Gothic fashion.

The guy next to the Carthedral had this little black dog that attracted a very
large dog to stop by and sniff.

A carartist with her art, her dogs and her lunch. All that matters in the world.

Here’s where it all began.

The fun begins on this plaza next to th the San Jose Museum of Art. The weather is sunny, pleasant, blue skies to the horizon, like just about every other Saturday in recent memory.

It’s true: People die of anticipation in the months leading up to Artcarfest.

Some of the cars are lined up on Market Street across from a big hotel … the one you see reflected in the windows of this minivan, a conveyance so nerdly that it could be saved only by splaying these swirls down the side. It’s way cool now.

Police investigate the sudden disappearance of hundreds of license plates from cars parked in the downtown area. (Just kidding; as far as I know no crimes were committed in the acquisition of this car’s exterior. Except for the crimes against good taste, but we’d have all been in jail if that were an actionable offense on Saturday.

Melissa’s Mona Lisa smile — art cars bring that out in her. Either that or she’s kindly plotting how to make a certain digital camera disappear.

Of critters and kids

They go together like sun and sunburn.

My digital camera, being an early model, doesn’t have the circuits to convey precisely how orange this caterpillar/stretch-taxi is.

The celebrities inside were stuffed with the usual stuffing — as opposed to the ego stuffing you get with human celebs. Far preferable.

This happy creature is called Snorky, who looks like an embarrassing third cousin of Godzilla.

One of the hallmarks of Artcarfest is the perfectly useful but unremarkable vehicle made remarkable but useless (only in comparison to its previous incarnation, of course).

Another artcar hallmark is the clever use of everyday stuff. Here’s a car whose scaly hide is made of CD-Roms.

Sometimes they’re just plain clever, like this Radio Flyer for Paul Bunyan’s 3-year-old. Sometimes the photographer gets lucky and finds a dog in the frame, making the picture even cooler.

The fish and the lobster on this car break into song and rise and fall in time with the music. The funniest happening in an afternoon full of them.

Fender mosaics can be amazingly intricate like this shark on the attack.

Most of the cars reflect the personal wealth of their owners so you’re not apt to see many sporty British supercars. But if you did have a Jaguar you’d want to put a tail on it.

There is an artcar for every age.

One of the coolest feature of downtown San Jose (the only one, really) is this fountain that shoots jets of water straight up into the air.

The kids have a great time playing in the water. These two boys were having more fun than seemed humanly possible.

Beetle mania

People have been doing crazy, inventive things to their cars pretty much from the beginning, but the artcar movement really started picking up steam in the late ’60s, when people started painting their buses and Bugs.

Here’s one with a globe on the hood that serves as a token of goodwill for visiting alien species.

I was going to put “You Are Here” on this section of the globe but got too lazy.

Yet another hallmark: The car with way too much stuff attached.

Then again, if you had this goose taking up space in the garage, you’d want to put it to the best possible use.

Sum it up in a bumper sticker

Television is drugs. And it’s clear that many car artists watch LOTS of TV.

Advice for what to do when the Boss’s Son shows up.

The love of Jesus manifests itself in many ways.

A feminist twist on some old cartoon. Not nearly as funny as it thinks it is.

… because their agents are lurking about constantly.

“The more you disapprove, the more fun it is for me.” There is this mildy amusing pretension among the artists that they’re stretching the boundaries and freaking out the squares. This creates the counterurge to approve with mad abandon, depriving them of a precious source of angst.

Always good advice.

More evidence of hippies in the vicinity.

That license plate frame says “I’d Rather Be Topless.” The artwork above seems to be in agreement.

The surface of this car is entirely covered with keyboard keys. Thank God I’m just clever enough to figure out the subtle artistic statement of using keys to create a message. (They’re arranged to form the face of Homer Simpson on the front hood).

What’s on top

The naked expanse of a car roof cries out to the artist.

What is it about dolls that makes them so terrifying?

This guy has to drive fast through suburban neighborhoods to get away from the kids waving quarters at him and demanding a double dip cone.

Part of me objects to piling a bunch of junk on a car roof and calling it art. But the M&M guy melts my objections away.

While we were watching this rhythm & blues band trot out the old standards (whose lead singer did some scary Tom Jones covers), I looked over to my right and saw this wonderful statue of Janis Joplin stuck on the roof of a car.

A coven singing ’round the ol’ stew pot. Or a scene from a Disney movie.

An angel on the roof is always good for morale. We noticed later in the day that the breeze makes the wings rise and fall. Nice.

Cadillac, Cadillac

And now, to the tune of Bruce Springsteen’s “Cadillac Ranch”…

In the early ’60s the folks at Cadillac stopped equipping their cars with huge tailfins. At least one car artist has strived to correct this error.

Cow horns on the front make any Caddy more photogenic.

This guy’s Caddy was a rolling DJ booth, complete with tons of boxes with intriguing sliders and knobs. I’m a stereo guy so I really swoon at such things.

A Cadillac hearse turned into a rolling Gothic edifice. A stunning piece of work but notably gloomier than its rollicking neighbors.

Artcar mania. We’re going to San Jose today to checkout artcarfest2003, a gathering of people who have done funny, absurd and inventive things to their cars.

(It’s plain to see why artcats2003 has not been tried).

I’m planning on taking pictures and posting them here tomorrow.