Serendipity

"What do you want to do for dinner?"

"We could go for pizza."

"That would be fun."

So we go for pizza. But the pizza place is really, really crowded. Way too crowded.

"Maybe this would be a good time to try that other pizza place that just opened around the corner."

So we try the other place. But they have TVs right up in your face everywhere you turn. One is showing a sitcom my husband deems inappropriate for his innocent daughter. We get in the car and start driving around aimlessly.

"We could go eat downtown."

"That sounds good."

Downtown it is. After a pleasant dinner, we take a stroll around the downtown plaza. And this is what we see:






The artcars are downtown. Ziad, who only moments before had been complaining about being cold, immediately forgot all about the temperature. There was a dragoncar.







Many of the owners were holding court near their cars. They were all extremely friendly, and encouraged people to touch, or even get in, the cars. Maya spent a good amount of time prowling around the cat-themed car:






This car got a lot of mileage out of the whole "pussy" double-entendre, although there was nothing so explicit that I had to drag her out of there. She was really intrigued by the fur-lined handcuffs dangling from the inside doorwell, but we slid right on past that with the non-committal, "Yeah, wow, look at that. That's really funny."

My favorite was Flivver, so it gets the most pictures.






The artist, sporting blue hair for the occasion, was extremely friendly. The car was just way over the top, in a sparkly, silly kind of way.






The dashboard was particularly encrusted, but I couldn't find any good pictures (all of these pictures, by the way are downloaded from Flickr, but are pictures of cars we actually saw.) This picture of the wheel well gives you some idea, though.






We walked back to our non-artcar through the plaza, where the grass and walkway were littered with purple jacaranda blossoms, and I remembered again how much I enjoy living in San Jose.