Today was a day of tragedy. It was a day of heartbreak. It was a day of joy. And it was a day of triumph.
If you couldn’t figure out what was what, tragedy struck in Oslo, heartbreak occurred when the talented Amy Winehouse succumbed to a never-ending drug addiction, joy came to the Yinzer faithful and city of Milledgeville, Georgia when Ben Roethlisberger married his girlfriend and solidified an end to his search for love. May sorority sisters everywhere sleep better at night because of it.
And triumph occurred. Triumph. A full-circle conclusion to a six-week-long search for one car. Pft, that sounds ridiculous with so much going on in the world of more importance, but this actually meant something, if ever-so-trivial to me, a realization of what I thought LA was.
I finally saw a Ferrari. Well, three actually.
Last night, I posted on the excesses of Los Angeles. I know this city is as superficial as Las Vegas in many respects, sans the fact that people have real jobs here and the architecture doesn’t look as gauche. But there’s a vibe of lots of money and trying to hard to spend it in much of this city. Today, I finally got to go to Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and the parts with more money than sense. I got the tour from my friend, Joe: “Oh, that’s the hotel where Lindsay Lohan went for her coked-out binges,” he explained among other factoids you’re just not going to get on the Star Tours.
Beverly Hills is excess turned up to 11. It solidified my opinion of it as a fairy tale world, one $30 million, er, $60 $85 million house at a time. Aston Martin, Bentley, Lamborghini, Maserati, AMG Mercedes, BMW M, Porsche — being honest, Beverly Hills, as well as LA in general, has taken the glamour out of seeing so many of them on the road. I’m sure my opinion will change when I have the opportunity to drive some of them, and I still hold all of them at dream level, but they’re pretty much like the idea of wrapping Mila Kunis in a burqa to me — what’s the point of looking gorgeous if they’re homogenized to the point of anonymity? To the people who can afford them, I say this: Buy a Noble. Buy a Lexus LFA. Buy a Spyker or a Morgan. Buy something with a little less “me-too”-ness to it.
Rarer than any cars I had seen — and likely intentionally so — are Ferraris out here. You wouldn’t think that’d be the case, but with two-year waiting lists and $100,000 fees to jump to the front of the line, a 458 Italia suddenly looks overpriced when you can get a Lamborghini Murcielago roadster for the same kind of money — and the Murci is an open top. You know, see and be seen: the motto of Beverly Hills.
The Hills was the last place I had not been that could possibly see a Ferrari. So we went there. I’m really digging this urban exploration thing if you haven’t figured it out.
I saw the usual round of uber cars. I thought that there could be a chance that today would once again not be my lucky day after seeing an Aston Martin V8 Vantage and a Vanquish back to back. But then I saw a 599. Wow, the first one I had ever seen of those. And shortly after cruising the roads leading up to the Playboy mansion, I saw a 355 Spider.
And all good things apparently come in threes, so when we stopped for dinner, out cropped a 612 Scaglietti to complete the cycle right across from Hollywood’s favorite Starbucks. Ah, what a great end to the day.
So to all of you annoyed to the point of insanity from my incessant “Ferrari Watch” ranting, fret no more. I’ll find something new to obsess about now. Come on, my longest-standing worry since I landed here June 9 has been to see a Prancing Stallion on something from Modena. I saw one, er, three tonight.
I’ve got to say that if that was my biggest worry, I’m now through with it. Thank goodness. Life’s pretty good right now.
Things That Rhyme with 'Cars' 