Saturday, May 20, 2023
Friday, May 19, 2023
airports vs international smuggling
In March 2019, agents at Los Angeles International Airport intercepted a man traveling from Vietnam with 28 songbirds packed into the lining of his suitcase.
In May 2017, a Fountain Valley man was arrested for smuggling 93 Asian songbirds from Vietnam to LAX. All but eight died in that instance.
Among the surviving animals (transferred to the L.A. Zoo, where they received veterinary care) were two red-billed blue magpies, one Indochinese green magpie, one Bali mynah/starling (a species that the Zoo has worked with for some time), one golden-crested mynah, one black-collared starling, and one gold fronted leafbird—all of which found permanent homes at the zoo.
https://zooscape.lazoo.org/2019/06/01/silent-forest-refugees/
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/photo-ark/
https://abc7chicago.com/endangered-species-day-photo-ark-joel-sartore-bird-smuggling
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/photo-ark-magpies-illegal-wildlife-trade
imagine if the variety of expensive sports cars actually raced each other....
the Rimac, Pagani, Corvette, Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, Mercedes, McLaren and Lamborghini.
How is it that they don't?
Here's an interesting idea, how about the old electric car batteries get used as long as possible, to support the city electric grid?
A company called B2U, in the Southern California high desert city of Lancaster, has developed a system to use depleted EV car batteries to store 28 megawatt hours of electricity from only three megawatts of solar panels to power the grid when the sun sets.
The depleted batteries can be used in that capacity for over five years.
B2U takes depleted EV batteries from Nissan Leafs, Honda’s Clarity, and General Motors and even Tesla batteries, racks them together, and connects them to its big array of solar panels. The solar panels charge the battery packs all day. Then, when the sun goes down and the solar panels can no longer power the electric grid, the old Nissan Leaf batteries discharge their stored electricity onto the grid and B2U sells the electricity to the local utility.
The supply of depleted car batteries is relatively small right now but is doubling every two years, Hill said. As more of the world’s car fleet goes electric, the supply of semi-depleted batteries will grow.
.jpg)
Seven California highway patrol officers and a nurse were charged, and the state of California settled out of court for 24 million dollars inn order to not admit wrongdoing, for manslaughter due to the 2020 death of Edward Bronstein, 38. It's the biggest civil rights settlement in the state’s history
Bronstein was taken into custody following a traffic stop on suspicion of driving under the influence on 31 March 2020. He died at a highway patrol station less than two months before Floyd was killed by police in Minnesota as he, too, repeatedly told officers, “I can’t breathe.”
Six officers pinned him down by pressing their knees on his legs and neck while his blood was drawn, according to prosecutors.
George Gascón, the LA county district attorney, said while announcing the criminal charges that the highway patrol officers failed Bronstein, “and their failure was criminally negligent, causing his death”.
A nearly 18-minute video showing the officers’ treatment of Bronstein was released last year after a judge’s order in the family’s federal lawsuit alleging excessive force and a violation of civil rights.
While he is unresponsive, the nurse continues to draw blood and the officers keep pinning him down.
After they realize he may not have a pulse and does not appear to be breathing, they slap his face and say, “Edward, wake up.” More than 11 minutes after his last screams, they begin CPR.
Bronstein never regained consciousness and was later pronounced dead.
Annee Della Donna, an attorney for Bronstein’s family. “It is a huge message to every officer out there: Take your knees off our necks.”
George Gascón, the LA county district attorney, said while announcing the criminal charges that the highway patrol officers failed Bronstein, “and their failure was criminally negligent, causing his death”.
A nearly 18-minute video showing the officers’ treatment of Bronstein was released last year after a judge’s order in the family’s federal lawsuit alleging excessive force and a violation of civil rights.
After they realize he may not have a pulse and does not appear to be breathing, they slap his face and say, “Edward, wake up.” More than 11 minutes after his last screams, they begin CPR.
Bronstein never regained consciousness and was later pronounced dead.
the 6 CHP officers and the nurse were indicted on criminal (not civil) charges of involuntary manslaughter, their arraignment is set for next week and they have not yet entered a plea, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
Thursday, May 18, 2023
an 84 Camaro was just pulled out of a lake down the road from the used car dealership it had been stolen from in 1991
Scott was still preaching, but he’d also started up an auto dealership named Scott’s Auto Country in 1990 on the road leading to Kentucky Lake.
“I had just opened the car dealership up, and you know, when you first open up, the (cars) you buy, to you they’re like your babies, you might say. You go out and scout them out, and you find the exact car. Then you get it back to your car dealership and you put it out there where everyone can see it.”
One of the cars Scott brought back was a red 1984 Z28, sporty-looking but affordable, and known for its looks and power.
Unfortunately, one Saturday, he closed the lot at noon as was his custom, and took what was to be his last look at the red Camaro.
“I remember as I drove off that day, that car just looked great,” Scott said. “It just stood out, so I had it down there by the highway, on my first driveway coming in. When people came down the four lanes there, they could see it just perfect.
“I just wanted to show it off,” he said. “It was one of those type of cars.”
When he returned a day and a half later, he immediately noticed the Camaro wasn’t where he’d left it.
32 years later, it was found in the nearby lake, upside down nearly 200 feet from the boat ramp where it obviously entered the water.
Can you win a lawsuit against a tire manufacturer for a tire blowing out, causing your vehicle to escape your ability to control it, crashing and being destroyed? probably not, but it's fascinating to see the legal precedents about it
https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/136/supp1.html
Then, how can someone sue a gun manufacturer for murder? Damned if I know... but I bet it has a lot to do with sneaky lawyer shit if you can afford the very most expensive law firms that specialize in suing corporations out of existence
1957, Indiana
Indian Hill & Iron Range working cuts of cars north of the rotarty dumper 11-11-57 View from the cab of an Indian Hill & Iron Range steam engine working the tracks north of the rotary car dumper in Whiting IN (located at Calumet Ave. and the Lakefront) . The track at left leads up to the car dumper, which can be seen in the distance. Looks like they're pulling another line of loaded cars out to start cycling them through the rotary dumper.
Indian Hill and Iron Range RY water truck
For a photo gallery of the IH and IR railway : https://www.flickr.com/photos/76677346@N04/albums/72157655080811639/page2
Two former LA County sheriff’s deputies are indicted for violating the civil rights of a skateboarder in 2020 and perpetrating a coverup
Miguel Vega and Christopher Hernandez are accused of throwing the skateboarder — identified as “J.A.” in court papers — in the back of their cruiser and detaining him without cause in Compton in April 2020. He was still in the patrol vehicle when they engaged in a pursuit and crashed the car, injuring the skateboarder. Prosecutors say the duo then conspired to coverup the 23-year-old man’s unlawful detention.
Vega, 32, and Hernandez, 37, are charged with conspiracy, deprivation of rights under color of law, witness tampering and falsification of records. Vega is charged with another falsification of records count.
On April 13, 2020, Vega and Hernandez approached two young Black men outside a Compton skatepark. J.A., who was inside the enclosed park, yelled at the deputies to leave the men alone. The deputies pulled J.A. through an opening in the fence and threw him into the back of the cruiser, prosecutors said.
“Vega and Hernandez did not handcuff J.A., did not secure J.A.’s seatbelt, did not tell J.A. that J.A. was under arrest, and did not inform J.A. of J.A.’s rights at any time,” according to the indictment.
Vega, the driver, told J.A. that they would drop him off in gang territory as Hernandez, from the passenger seat, told the skateboarder he would be beaten. Then Vega, with J.A. still in the backseat, began pursuing a bicyclist down an alley, where the deputy crashed the vehicle, prosecutors said.
A former Georgia sheriff convicted of violating the civil rights of people in his custody by unnecessarily strapping them into restraint chairs was sentenced Tuesday to serve a year and a half in prison.
A jury in October convicted Victor Hill — who was sheriff of Clayton County, just south of Atlanta — on six of seven federal charges. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of three years and 10 months in prison, while defense attorneys asked for a sentence of probation, home confinement and a fine.
Before he was sentenced, Hill told the judge: “My intent was never to harm or injure anybody. My intent was only for safety, proactive safety.”
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross ordered Hill to serve six years of parole where he cannot work in law enforcement or serve as a consultant to a law enforcement agency.
Prosecutors said Hill ordered detainees strapped into restraint chairs at the county jail for hours even though they posed no threat and complied with deputies’ instructions. The use of the chairs was unnecessary, was improperly used as punishment and caused pain and bodily injury in violation of the civil rights of seven men, prosecutors argued.
Defense attorney Drew Findling said restraint chairs are used in jails all over the country
Hill, 58, was suspended by the governor after his indictment and retired after his conviction. He had been a magnet for controversy from the time he first took office as Clayton County sheriff in 2005. He fired 27 deputies on his first day, though a judge later reinstated them. He used Batman imagery in campaign ads and on social media and called himself “The Crime Fighter,” sometimes using a tank his office owned during raids.
https://apnews.com/article/sheriff-victor-hill-sentence-civil-rights-case-287d7373a132e9fb1a95044718f5c2ef
Before he was sentenced, Hill told the judge: “My intent was never to harm or injure anybody. My intent was only for safety, proactive safety.”
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross ordered Hill to serve six years of parole where he cannot work in law enforcement or serve as a consultant to a law enforcement agency.
Prosecutors said Hill ordered detainees strapped into restraint chairs at the county jail for hours even though they posed no threat and complied with deputies’ instructions. The use of the chairs was unnecessary, was improperly used as punishment and caused pain and bodily injury in violation of the civil rights of seven men, prosecutors argued.
Defense attorney Drew Findling said restraint chairs are used in jails all over the country
Hill, 58, was suspended by the governor after his indictment and retired after his conviction. He had been a magnet for controversy from the time he first took office as Clayton County sheriff in 2005. He fired 27 deputies on his first day, though a judge later reinstated them. He used Batman imagery in campaign ads and on social media and called himself “The Crime Fighter,” sometimes using a tank his office owned during raids.
https://apnews.com/article/sheriff-victor-hill-sentence-civil-rights-case-287d7373a132e9fb1a95044718f5c2ef
Wednesday, May 17, 2023
in response to the post on Paul Newman's stuff, M. Currie wrote:
A bit of a ramble here, but long ago I was treasurer (and unofficial handyman) of a little nursery school called "The Children's School of Lime Rock." One of the fundraising efforts was a lemonade stand that volunteers ran at the race track where Newman fronted, if I recall, the Datsun team. After a few years, the track owners decided to cancel the agreement and started selling their own lemonade, but theirs was artificial, and not ours (which was real). Many drivers, prominent among them Newman, I'm told, boycotted the track lemonade, and demanded the return of the Children's School. And back we came.
We also had to move our quarters, and in attempting to refit the building to meet codes, I followed up on a lead, and ended up buying some stuff from a defunct local camp, run by a dance instructor named Joe de Jesus, who, it turned out, was an old friend of Newmans, having, among other things, coached him for his moves in The Towering Inferno. Some time later, after a huge hike in insurance premiums. the school ran into fatal financial trouble, and I wrote a letter to the Hole in the Wall fund, asking if we might get some help, at least to finish out the year. In addition to the lemonade link, I was able to throw in a greeting from Joe. They came through on that, and though we were not able to keep going, we were able to finish the year and pay the teachers. It was A.E. Hotchner rather than Newman who wrote the check, but hey, all the same as far as I'm concerned.
The tldr upshot: I'm a Newman fan.
(Lemonade stand fundraisers are an American time honored tradition, you might remember that a young girl had a lemonade stand at Bonneville. Hotchner was the co-founder of the charity food company Newman's Own. I had no idea there was a co-founder...)
Just a note to say to all of you, THANKS! For the many comments and feedback
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming
Oh, and a note to say I'm sure you've realized I don't post as mush as I used to, that's a side effect of me getting into a couple other projects, and since this blog is, and always has been, a spare time thing.
There are a finite number of hours after work and before I gotta sleep and go back to work, so, the other projects are using up some of the limited spare time
a Delta Airlines pilot was asleep, at about 11pm, in the Revere Hotel on Stuart Street, Boston (damn, nice expensive hotel room! Is the airline paying for that?) when the FBI woke him up rudely, and interrogated him, for an hour, by mistake.
To no one's shock, the FBI were having a training exercise, in the expensive hotel (you don't expect them to get their suits filthy in any cheap hotel, on the some of some highway, do you?) on the 15th floor, and they screwed up what room the actor who would be portraying a criminal, was supposed to be in, that they were supposed to interrogate.
They handcuffed the pilot and cold shower interrogated him for nearly an hour before realizing their mistake, sources said.
Is that possibly code for water boarding? Yup.
It was meant to simulate a situation they "might encounter in a deployed environment," officials told USA TODAY."They were mistakenly sent to the wrong room," according to a statement from the FBI. While there, the federal authorities detained the room's occupant in an incident that appeared to stretch on for longer than an hour, a police report shows.
When Boston Police arrived, they confirmed it was a botched federal training exercise. the US Army Special Operations Command were conducting “essential military training” in Boston on Tuesday with local FBI agents, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Burns at U.S. Army Special Operations Command told The Boston Globe.“The training was meant to enhance soldiers’ skills to operate in realistic and unfamiliar environments,” Burns said. “The training team, unfortunately, entered the wrong room and detained an individual unaffiliated with the exercise.”
Vic Hartman, a former 25-year veteran of the FBI, said the training exercise in public does not make sense to him.
"Night arrests are unusual so why would you train for a night arrest at 10 p.m.," Hartman said. "It's unusual, there could be a justification for it, it's just not apparent to me on the surface."
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
the Variety Children's Charity Bash was just featured on Almost Australian, episode 3 of the nice road trip documentary by Miriam Margolyes (actress famous for portraying Prof Sprout in Harry Potter movies)
https://www.varietybashqld.com.au/ for more about it, or https://www.facebook.com/groups/19875036792
Her movie acting career is wonderful https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0546816/
100 pieces of Paul Newman items are coming to auction, one astonishing (to me) variety from trophys, posters, rings, helmets, and fireproof racing suits
this legends race car doesn't come with any guarantee that Paul ever drove it, it's description says that he acquired it to sponsor young drivers https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/pn23/high-speed--paul-newman-s-racing-legacy/lots/r0004-1997-legends-racing-car/1344464
https://rmsothebys.com/en/home/lots/pn23
The Grand Tour returns on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, June 16., with Eurocrash... I love that, on a Central Europe road trip, driving what is described as “cars nobody would ever dream of”. The main theme of the episode will be exploring the effects that World War II had on Eastern Europe.
Yes, that is a Crosley, yes, Capt Slow will be driving it.... no one else would bother
Throughout their journey, the presenters utilize a number of cars from the west as well as testing out some surprising Eastern European Vehicles.
Monday, May 15, 2023
It's been a long time since the Lamborghini racing tractor was unveiled.. about 6 years ago, but it's finally for sale
https://www.classicdriver.com/de/car/lamborghini/centenario/1960/957332 about 1/2 million usd
It was a big deal when they first publicized it, then disappeared https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-lamborghini-centenario-tractori.html
Chuck Berry burst onto the music scene with rockabilly-style "Maybellene," in 1955. But just a couple years before he made became the legendary rocker, he was working at the Fisher Body Plant in St Louis, that would be in 1953, when that plant was assembling Corvettes
._3809_Union_Boulevard.jpg)
St. Louis Truck Assembly was a General Motors automobile factory that built GMC and Chevrolet trucks, GM "B" body passenger cars, and the 1954–1981 Corvette models in St. Louis. Opened in the 1920s as a Fisher body plant and Chevrolet chassis plant, it expanded facilities to manufacture trucks on a separate line. During World War II, the plant produced the DUKW amphibious vehicles for the military. Another expansion was added for the Corvette line in 1953.
The song reached No. 1 on Billboard's R & B chart and No. 5 on the Hot 100.
1955 was an amazing year for music:
Rock and Roll's first #1 hit Bill Haley "Rock Around The Clock".
Bo Diddley debuts on national television on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town.
Elvis Presley is signed to major label RCA Records
For the song to get airplay in New York on the influential Alan Freed radio show in WINS, Alan Freed traded the airtime, it was played for 2 straight hours, for the song's copyright, and song writing credit.
That's one aspect of what Payola was, you pay the radio people, and they play your record.
If it's a really good song, they would pull a stunt like adding themselves to the writing credits, for a perpetual income, from the work of songwriters and singers that hadn't made any deal at all.
In April 1953, at the height of his Cleveland popularity, Freed drove his car into a tree after a late broadcast. His face required 260 stitches and 12,000 dollars’ worth of plastic surgery, but five weeks later he resumed his broadcasts from a hospital bed.
That same year, he plugged the Orioles’ record, ‘Crying In The Chapel’, the first R&B record to make the pop Top Twenty. The day after Freed’s repeated spins, the disc sold 30,000 copies in Cleveland; that so many copies were readily available appears evidence of some prior agreement. Dubious financial arrangements seemed confirmed when, years later, it was revealed that Jerry Blaine, owner of the Orioles’ Jubilee label, held the mortgage on Freed’s house.
Freed also worked at WABC in 1958 but was fired from that station on in 1959, after refusing to sign a statement for the FCC that he had never accepted payola bribes (at the time, the lid blew off the tv quiz show racket, and Freed was a presenter on one of those shows)
Ugly, ain't it.
In the early 1960s, Freed's career was destroyed by the payola scandal that hit the broadcasting industry, as well as by allegations of taking credit for songs he did not write.
In 1964 Freed was indicted by a federal grand jury for tax evasion and ordered to pay $38,000 in taxes on income he had allegedly not reported. Most of that income was said to be from payola sources
(lets say that the word taxes implies that the 38k was 20 percent of the payola... that would mean he had been paid 190k in cash, and blew it all on booze and lawyers to keep him out of jail for inciting a riot in Boston. That's nearly 200k, in what the govt THOUGHT he'd been paid, the real number was likely a lot more. That's 200k, in 1960 money. More than 2wice what the president of the USA made.)
Alan Freed died in 1965, alcoholism. Soupy Sales, once remarked: ‘In fact, Freed was always drunk but it was alright … he could handle it.’
He wasn't all bad, he certainly was antiracist in the era of segregation.
In 1986, more than 30 years after he wrote "Maybellene," Chuck Berry was finally credited as the song's sole composer.
I love the song Johnny B Goode. Might be my favorite 50s rock song
I set out a couple hours ago to dive into what Chuck Berry did at the Fisher Body Plant in St Louis before he launched his music career, but diving into a story is like trying to find a sentence in the internet, rarely does it show up, but everything related to it comes up first
Chuck Berry was the first person selected for the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. He WAS the 1ST selected, but only among the first inducted, maybe that was alphabetical, I don't know.
NASA, the scientists, and Carl Sagan picked 'Johnny B. Goode' as the representation of music from the United States to send into space. Then, when he got the Kennedy Centre honour
A Michigan boy who recently stopped a school bus from crashing after the driver lost consciousness leapt into action because he was the only passenger not distracted by an electronic device
Dillon’s father, Steve, told CBS: “What else are you going to do when you don’t have a phone? You’re going to look at people, you’re going to notice stuff. You’re going to look out the window. It’s a very powerful lesson, maybe a change-the-world kind of lesson.”
In a video that was captured by a bus security camera before it went viral, Dillon can be seen rushing up to the steering wheel after noticing that the driver had passed out during a medical emergency. Dillon stepped on the brakes, steered the bus away from traffic and eventually brought it to a stop as other students yelled in a panic from their seats.
Did anything connect more car drivers in the early 60s than Wolfman Jack?
Why? Strict religious censorship. KKK. Good ol boy network... whatever it is that makes the govt do irrational freedom smashing nonsense, the FCC (a govt dept) has been right there to prevent free speech, to tighten the leash on the invisible air waves, and prevent the English language from causing aneurisms in the Gladys Kravitz types looking to be offended anywhere they stuck their unwanted nose.
And for the first two-thirds of the 20th century, we were an apartheid nation, with separate water fountains, separate bathrooms, separate schools. Ricky may have loved Lucy, but in TV Land, they slept in separate beds.
Elvis was freaking out the Pat Boone type parents, and the Beatles were causing swooning screaming teen girls by the tens of thousands to lose their little minds. The Doors were told they couldn't use the word "higher" on the Ed Sullivan show.
But where there are strict moral standards there are inevitably underground movements against them, and Wolfman Jack was broadcasting out of TiJuana - on a radio that put out 5 times as much power as anything the FCC would allow in the (land of the free, home of the brave) USA., The Wolfman was the renegade DJ on a border blaster that could be heard in New York City...
Society couldn’t legislate what you listened to in your car.
Imagine you’re a black kid living in segregated St. Louis, if you listened to the Grand Ole Opry of the old, weird America, you might grow up and not become Chuck Berry.
The Wolfman after midnight put on jazz, soul, rhythm and blues, and of course, rock. Why? Poodle skirts and sock hops in Disney cartoons caused push back, and the greasers, the rebels without a cause, the bikers, etc etc ate it up. Elvis made jailhouse rock, for a reason. It was hip to be counter culture, like Roth, the Munsters, and the Beatniks.
The thinly disguised sexual innuendo coupled with a diverse format of rich and new music enhanced Wolfman Jack's popularity in a time of extreme censorship.
Ultimately, Wolfman Jack left XERF and ended up speaking through 50,000 watts out of Tijuana, Mexico.
Ultimately, Wolfman Jack left XERF and ended up speaking through 50,000 watts out of Tijuana, Mexico.
Born in Brooklyn in 1938, parents divorced while he was a child. To help keep him out of trouble, his father bought him a Zenith Trans-Oceanic radio, and he became an avid fan of R&B music and the disc jockeys who played it in Philadelphia, New York and Cleveland.
XERB was the original call sign for the border blaster station in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, which was branded as The Mighty 1090 in Hollywood, California. The station boasted "50,000 watts of Boss Soul Power".
That station also had an office in the rear of a small strip mall on Third Avenue in Chula Vista, California just 10 minutes from the Tijuana–San Diego border crossing. The Wolfman was rumored to actually broadcast from this location during the early to mid-1960s.
Wolfman opened an office on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in January 1966. He recorded his shows in Los Angeles and shipped his tapes across the border into Mexico, where they would then be broadcast across the U.S.
In 1971, he moved to station KDAY 1580 in Los Angeles, which could only pay him a fraction of his former XERB income. So Wolfman capitalized on his fame, by editing his old XERB tapes and selling them to radio stations everywhere, becoming one of the first rock-and-roll syndicated programs. He also appeared on Armed Forces Radio from 1970 to 1986. At his peak, Wolfman Jack was heard on more than 2,000 radio stations in 53 countries.
Hertz has apologized after a Louisiana employee denied a Puerto Rican customer a vehicle they'd already reserved, on the mistaken belief they needed a passport.
During the encounter with the customer at New Orleans’s Louis Armstrong international airport, the Hertz employee also waved over a law enforcement officer who allegedly threatened to turn the man over to immigration authorities
Marchand recently traveled to New Orleans and ahead of his trip paid to rent a car from Hertz at the Armstrong airport. After arriving, he went to the Hertz counter and presented his Puerto Rican driver’s license, which contained text in two languages spoken on the island: Spanish and English.The clerk there then purportedly said to him: “We will need a passport.” Marchand told Begnaud that after he asked the woman what she meant, she made remarks that suggested he was from another country and therefore needed a passport.
“You’re denying me because I have a driver’s license which is a valid ID?” Marchand said in English. “It is a valid ID.”
Holding a clipboard and pen as she walked away, Karen turned around, pointed away, and four times said: “I need you to go about your business.”
Marchand replied: “It is a valid ID. It is a prepaid reservation.”
The Karen then said, “Would you like me to call the police?” Marchand told her, “Yes, please, call the police.”
The woman pulled a cellphone out of one her pockets and called out an officer who told Marchand that he needed to leave. According to Marchand, as the officer then left, he threatened to “call border patrol” if the mistreated customer didn’t leave, too.
Marchand interpreted that as a remark that he was in the US illegally.
Follow up May 19th:
Buick made 2122 "KX" code dual quad 425, high compression, 360 hp 465 ft lb "Super Wildcat" Rivieras, about 800 Wildcats, and at least 1 Electra, a four door, in 1964 (the Wildcats had stick shifts, did the Rivs or Electras?)
https://www.uniqueclassiccars.com/vehicles/1314/1964-buick-riviera-425-360hp-dual-quad
The Electra is analyzed at https://forums.aaca.org/topic/321875-1964-dual-quad-electra-production-numbers/
In 1964, there were 26 convertible Wildcats with the Hurst 4 speed https://www.v8buick.com/index.php?threads/1964-super-wildcat-4-sp-dual-quad-convertible-62-500.345148/
In 1965, Buick only made 617 dual quad 425s
617 for all series 8000 (1965)
14 8237 (2 Door)
13 8239 (4-Door Hardtop)
16 8269 (4-Door Sedan)
91 8437 (2-Door Custom)
314 8439 (4-Door Custom Hardtop)
123 8467 Convertibles
46 8469 (4-door Custom Sedan)
from Daily Car Report, Buick Motor Division, 08-24-65, pp 230-269
Sunday, May 14, 2023
Sly Stone rode this chopper in the early 70s, it found it's way to Japan
If you want to learn more, or get a memory refresh on Sly and the Family Stone https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/08/sly200708
Or, wait around for the memoir that is supposed to be published this year in October: "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)"
and you might not know, but Sly and the Family Stone were a big effing deal at Woodstock, and their music paved the way for rock/soul/funk fusion. As a songwriter, Sly penned some of the most iconic anthems of the 1960s and ’70s, from “Everyday People” "Dance to the Music" and “Family Affair"
Drugs and fame, or vice versa, caused one of the greats to face plant and nose dive simultaneously - and though it wasn't entirely self inflicted, Sly was the cause of even the sabotage that plagued him from others that found they could profit from his fuck ups - as he was such a chronic no show to his own concerts, (missed 26 of 80 in 1970) that he had to put up bonds of as much as 50k, in case he didn't show - and the promotor split that with the guy that drove Sly to the events:
"Stone's unreliability was increasingly a problem to concert promoters. The no-show subject remains a sore one with Stone, who says he wasn't as bad as he was made out to be. "I got tired of going to concerts where I'd have to pay a bond, pay money in case I didn't show up," he says. Stone claims that some of his missed dates weren't his fault but acts of collusion between promoters and transportation people, who cynically exploited his reputation for flaking out. "I later found out that they had a deal going between the promoter and the guy that was taking me to the gig," he says. "So I would put up the $25,000 or the $50,000. The guy with me would help me be late, and I didn't realize that was what was going on until later. Then they'd split the money."
