On the streets of Los Angeles, Beauty Comes in Many Forms, Including that of of a Classic...

Pontiac Firebird

In 1968 it was another quite respectable American muscle car.Today RoLA is humbled by the opportunity to share with you this exquisitely maintained example of beautiful arrogance in the form of industrial design, as could only have been expressed by Detroit during a certain moment in time...just before the realities of domestic excess and nascent globalization were to hit home during the decade following that of this 'Bird's creation. 

(Photos by Thom Senzee)

This Firebird, with its illuminated-badge accents and chrome detailing, has conquered the barrier separating purpose from poetry;  transportation from transcendence.  Did her designers even ponder that their opus would, in another age, eclipse the drive for market share to become remarkable art that would be shared...by a stoic and contented custodian (for no one will really own her from here on), with me, a stranger with whom he sensed a common love of art on wheels...at an ARCO station in Hollywood, circa 2011. 

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As the encounter among men and machines ended, my new Nissan showed deference, waiting to activate its garish technology, which might falsely outshine the lights of the graceful, elder beauty dressed in tested sheets of turquoise metal, affording her the exit she deserved.  Yet unencumbered by navigation or Bluetooth, she required no handicapping.  The aged Pontiac glided out of the station, onto the street with an elegant precision, which bespoke a technical prowess all her own. 

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Now growling, her fleet rubber mitts grabbed the on-ramp to the Hollywood Freeway.  That's how I came to snap a precious handful of ghostly images before the Turquoise 'Bird vanished one Saturday evening last spring...in the new century...in the new millennium, when kindred souls born in the old ones crossed paths.

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