Down On The Street

Whenever I ride through the north end of Solana Beach, my eyes always take in the cars sitting on the lot of California Import Auto. I've shot a number of cars in front of this shop and featured them here. Including this crusty VW Bus and this Renault R8S. Here's another rear-engined Renault that I captured with pixels on Saturday morning.

Even cooler than the R8S is this Alpine A110, semi-obscured by a wind-blown car cover.

This is only the second of these storied rally machines that I've laid eyes on. The first one I saw in person was last year in Stuttgart.

Tidy tail...

...with great vent scoops:

 Great gauges in an otherwise minimalist interior:

Only the French can pull off three-lug wheels:

 

But my favorite details were the vintage (or at least vintage-style) decals:

 Both would make great t-shirt art. Hint, hint...

 And two cars down was this Doka.

 Look familiar? I posted it back in Feb '11 when I caught it out at Elfin Forest. Pretty sure it's owned by an employee/owner of the shop as it's frequently out front.

Dinosaur Jr at The Belly Up Tavern, Again

Dinosaur Jr returned to the Belly Up to tour behind their terrific 1988 album Bug. The last time they played the venue, they were supporting the then-new Beyond album (one of my favorites from 2009).

Punk legend/super fan Henry Rollins interviews the band prior to the performance:

Being a quiet band of introverts who prefer to make loud sounds with their instruments, Henry did the majority of the talking.

Onto the music. After a couple of warmup tracks, they ripped into Freak Scene: 

Midway through the set and Budge:

And finishing off with their classic cover of Just Like Heaven by The Cure:

This time I wisely brought my earplugs along. So nice to feel the music without feeling pain in my ears from the sheer volume of the three guys pounding out the music onstage.

Ears Shredded, Yet Content

Indie rock superstars Dinosaur Jr. played the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach on wednesday night. Coming in on the strength of two fantastic albums over the past three years with the original lineup, I was eager to see J, Lou and Murph tear it up. Especially since this would be the first time I would be seeing the band as the original threesome - the last time I saw them was nearly 18 years ago (with an incredible My Bloody Valentine sharing the bill no less). Incidentally Allie also attended that show - we made small talk since we had met each other earlier at Illinois State and had a mutual friend, but it'd be another two years before we'd start dating.

J. Mascis
Murph and Lou Barlow

As expected with these veteran musicians, their performance was spot-on, playing some of their best material from their 24 (!!)-year career over a two hour set. I brought my point-and-shoot digicam to see if the tiny mic could handle the enormous amounts of distortion and feedback delivered by J's fender and Marshall stacks. Here's one of the results, "The Wagon" from Green Mind.



I'll upload a couple more to YouTube over the weekend. Unfortunately I ran out of room on the card to get "Freak Scene" or "The Lung". Once the show was over, I wandered up to the stage to check out some of the equipment.
And I even left with a nice souvenir - one of J's guitar picks, given to me by a roadie.