The Bottom 10 list!

Check your location and your sexual preference by using the "Bottom 10" checklist. Score yourself at the end.

10. Neon Lights...As Eighties as Monochramatic paint, these will make you really nostalgic for a bygone era, you know, from before you could buy under-car neon tubes. Perfect for when you're cruisin' Lead East, the neon glowing, your outside-mounted speakers blasting "Let's Go To The Hop" and practically screaming out the window, "Look at me, Look at me!", the only thing missing from your rolling juke box is a bubbler. No, puking anti-freeze when you finally park doesn't count.

9. Flame Throwers...The precursor to Neon Lights, invented by pyromaniacs who needed a portable arson kit. If you put the expense, time and effort of engineering these public hazards into your engine, body or paint, people might look at you and your car 'cause it's Kool, not 'cause you just set their shoes on fire.

8. Pinstripe Flames...The hardest, most tedious and time consuming part of flame application, the striping. If you're gonna do it, why not do the easy part and paint some flames first, then pinstripe 'em? Maybe I'm missing something, there might be ghost flames so subtle they're invisible. Yep, that'd be pretty sweet, pinstriped ghost flames!

7. Ghost Flames...You went through all the trouble of designing, laying out, taping off and painting something you can't see. Just like combing half your hair, if you stand a certain way and look from a certain angle, you can see the effort.

6. Fuzzy Dice...Like a pair of hairy testicles blocking your view, nothing screams "I like boys!" more than some pink, fuzzy balls, right in your line of sight.

5. Floor-Less Hot Rods...You ain't Fred Flintstone, you should have working brakes. Hydraulic brakes, not engineer boots or Chuck Taylors.

4. Stuffed animals/Cry babies...Pedophiles and Michael Jackson use props to lure children into their homes. What else you got in there, candy and videogames?

3. Off-Brand White Letter Tires..."Yeah, I stepped up to the Jetzon Revenger, 'cause that's how I roll."

2. Surfboards on Land-Locked Station Wagons...Are you planning a driving vacation to Hawaii? If you live in the Northeast, get a tobbogan. Rocky Mountaineers, vintage snow skis, Midwesterners, water skis, The Great Northwest? A giant chainsaw. Minnesota, a two-man buck. Surf boards are for people who surf. I'm sure actual surfers have a name for these posers, but since I don't surf, I wouldn't know what it is..

1. The Dread Chrome Smoothy or Florida Smoothy...No matter what you call 'em, or how you dress 'em up (e.g. Shannon cones), they're just horrible. Yes, they are cheap, we all know that. It also infers that you are cheap, too. Papier Mache' is even cheaper, but I wouldn't use it on a car. You know what looks better than a Smoothy? Anything. Wagon-spoke wheels, Center Line knock offs, modular dot mags, saw blades, 30 spoke wires, 100 spoke wires, 20" billet wheels with plastic caps, mismatched hubcaps, even a whole set of space saver spares would rock.

If you have 1-3 of these things, you may be Closeted or just Canadian.

If you have 3-6 of these things, you're probably Out already, or you live in Florida.

If you have 6-9 of these things, You love Show Tunes, watch Bravo a lot and you live in New Jersey.

If you have all 10, you're full of shit, 'cause 7 & 8 cancel each other out. If you did manage all 10, Richard Simmons would say you're too faggy.

If you have none of these things, Congratulations, you probably live in California or Ohio!

 

11. this thread

 

oregon and/or new jersey apparently...

 

Just ask a Californian and they'll tell you everything on your list was invented in California......they did evrything first

Everytime someone asks me to do ghost flames I have to ask them why they want to spend that much money for something you can't see. If you're gonna flame something ...flame it!
Clark

 

ghost pinstriping will be the next big thing...

 

I already got ghost pinstriping on my ghost rat rad, see the pic below













see, I told you, I was first

 

Don't forget a "sock hop" scene airbrushed on your continental kit, curb feelers, teal wire looms,chrome "leadsled" script on your grill. trust me i'm from NJ, every other car is named "Peggy Sue" or "Lost in the 50's".

 

Only alien immigrants from NJ who think they're "Californian" because they've been here long enough to have been fired from their first job here tell stuff like that.
Those of us who were born here KNOW we are too high and mighty to bother...
(and self-righteous, but we aren't conceited. Conceit's a fault and we have no faults.)

No shit!
Ghost flames are STOOOPID!!!!
Flames should be seen from a mile and a half away on a busy freeway by someone coming the other direction!

I think the miss-logic can be found in this character type;
Where we usta work the always dark gray pinstripe Brooks Brothers clad CEO bought a new Turbo Trans AM painted "Medium Metallic Gray". Wife asked him "Why such a dull color on such a "colorful" car?" He said it was less "conspicuous"
She asked " If you want to be inconspicuous, then why did you trade in your gray BMW sedan?"




Hey, Flake, can't you just let 1 of the 10 slide?

 

those smoothies are killin' ya, doc! at least you don't have any neon.......or do you?

 

WOW!! that was your car. If none of you have seen this thing you missed out!

 

if you look at it just right, you can see my ghost neon kit

 

So what one are ya gonna use on your car?? You forgot another New jersey trademark,the drive-in movie speakers & car hop trays with plastic burgers & colored rubber dildos.

You'll be stylin at Lead East this year. HAHA.

Billy

 

At least they're rusty 16(?) year old smoothies...
and I just couldn't put the redneck NASCAR knock-off black spokes or the white enamel "Tacoma" spokes on it, not in SO.Cal.
Northern Nevada maybe, and besides, they're remnant's of and bought on clearance sale in the 80's.
Plus, you're right they were the cheapest wheel I could buy, anywhere, and I needed wheels and they cost less than what they wanted for rusty bent used wheels at the junkyard.
Besides,who can honestly say they "Knew it all" about your dumb list in the 80's anyway?
I was at a disadvantage I think because I built my truck before Ryan built the HAMB, so I didn't have any of you guys great wisdom and opinions on taste and style to refer to.

Think I'll take the garden hose off the rusty chrome Skylark wire wheel on the front porch and put a tire on it and find some mates and run it...

Actually, I think lists of don't's suck and some people on this site get too anal-retentive "hotrod restorer" minded some times.
You/We don't get to tell everyone else how or what to do.
We just aren't that damned important.
Just let people have there own fun, it isn't any of your business if someone has neon on their car as long as they aren't trying to force it on you.
When this HOBBY starts getting RULES of conduct, when it starts becoming like RELIGION, it's time to back off.
Back off because it's too dangerous to go there, either there.

But if you must,
I think one thing you missed was "boom boom" base boost sound systems that polute, MY ears with usually BAD noise

I can ignore everything else on your list except the flame throwers, and the day I get burned by one in a parking lot is the day I set fire to a car with the driver in it..
(that reminds me, gotta clean the .45 today)
but unnecessary noise (insert anything similar to rap/hip hop here) from chest hurting "sound systems" should be on the list, probably on #10 along with the outside speakers.
And I'm tired of hearing the 50s-60s Sock-Hop bubblegum music that were never hits too.
CDs full of unheard of and awful "B" side music sung by the "Whiney White Boys" or the "Shrillellas" because no one bothered updating the copyright on them so they're free,,, spare me...

 

I'm going to name it "James Dean Dream" or "Poodle Skirt Special", but I don't fit in because i'm not Eye-talian.

 

Monsterflake, that is an insightful(or would that be inciteful) and hilarious treatise. Thanks fer that. Still laughing.

 

Are white enamel wagon wheels the Radir of the future?


G.

 

Well I'm from NJ and have fuzzy dice in my mirror, but they are the traditional white dice with black dots, and they match the white fuzzy mirror muff and white tuck and roll

I run an oem set of chrome reversed wheels with baby moons, so they're not smoothies!

 

I'm always joking with a good friend of mine about NJ because he came out here in '63 from Philly and NJ because "this is where all the cool cars were being built" and he's still building cool cars. It's all in FUN though!

Originally, fuzzy dice were knitted by your girlfriend and SHE hung them up in your car to claim that your "hangin fuzzies" belonged to her, and if you lasted a couple seasons she might have replaced the dice with baby shoes...

I gotta get them slot mags out and polish them up for the next phase of what's "ok, it's traditional"...

 

hey, it's my list, i can put what i want on it. 7 of the 10 are strictly "look at me!" things. i know it's easy to get caught up in accessorizing your car, especially on the east coast. it's hard to stand out in such a densely populated area. are you desparate for attention? do you need recognition, in the form of trophies, peer praise, tiny black and white pictures in the gazette, or the approving glances of sidewalk hustlers in west hollywood? then, by all means, ring up jc whitney and get started!

i'm sorry, but i think the whole point of this car thing is to remove the unneccessary, bolster the weaknesses and improve the visuals. adding gee-gaws, including non-functional parts (fake blowers, dummy spots, lake pipes that aren't connected) doesn't fit MY plan.

buying cheap wheels doesn't make you a bad person, it just gives off a low-end vibe to the whole car. i think zocchi or d'agostino has used 'em,
too, so even high rollers aren't immune from the "Curse of The Dread Smoothy".

i hate spending money on tires, too. what i won't do, is pimp the off-brand shit i buy sometimes.

7 look-at-me's, 2 budgetary decisions and 1 dangerous situation. not too bad of a list, i think.

 

I gotta get them slot mags out and polish them up for the next phase of what's "ok, it's traditional"...

slots WILL be the new torq-thrusts...be ahead of the curve!

 

Do you have nothing better to do.

The sad thing is I had nothing better to do than read this crap. Im gonna go work on my car now.

 

that's some funny stuff
i caught some footage from Lead East,i saw every one of those violations,and more

 

I HAD MY WHITE SPOKE WAGON WHEELS REVERSED, THEN CHROMED SO THE RED PAINT WOULD STICK BETTER. Hey Steve do you have raised white letters on anything?

 

be honest

 

This thread is stupid, and I, for one, am sick of everybody judging everybody elses shit.

If you have a car, do what ever the fuck you want to it.
Turn a Merc into an El Camino, or run 15" radials... whatever.

I went to one car show, this year, and all I heard was this same judgmental bullshit. Made me not want to go to any others... I used to think car people were better than this fucking crap...

Who makes the fuckin' rules?
Just so I know who to check with before I touch my car, again.

JOE

 

Pep Boys sells them chrome already....I think they had them on sale for around $35 each a while back...At least they know what they are worth!

I kinda like the original style Centerlines, but they don't like curbs or potholes much
When did they hit the market?
Probably in the 70's, since I don't remember that decade...

I just found out the "free" console and floor shift I'm fitting in my '60 Elky along with the '82 Volvo Stationwagon bucket seats is out of a first generation Monte Carlo...That's why I'm considering the slot mags!

 

I like slots why are they on everyones hate list?

 

Yeah, I run American GT Grand Turbo's...Letters OUT!

 

That's funny!

Sam.

 

I am with Junkyard Dog....when did we become the arbiters of cool. Let people build their cars as they like. This place spends to much time setting standards. Let people make their own art their own way, I promise, they don't care what your rules are.

True