Lenny's Garage - Short Documentary On A Brooklyn, NY Car Collector

"Lenny Shiller is a lifelong Brooklyn resident and classic car collector. He has amassed a staggering 58 rare classic cars, while he also owns hundreds of vintage bikes, motorcycles, and memorabilia. Lenny spends his time restoring and maintaining his collection, with the intention one day to pass them on to the next generation. The walls of his 12,000 sq ft garage in Gowanus are stacked with car parts he has collected over the years, the space resembling part working garage, part museum."

Filmed and edited by Peter Crosby
Music by Salomon Lighthelm

petercrosbyphotography.com
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Meet Allan Hill, The Man Who Lives In Detroit’s Abandoned Packard Auto Plant

Beauty comes in many shapes, sizes and forms but what Alan Hill has found, is his own personal utopia. We can be quick to think on all the things we want and need, but what is the ultimate price that we will pay to get it? Not to wax too poetic or dive too deep philosophically, but take a gaze around your humble abode. Is this exactly where ya want to be or could you change up the setting to fit more into your ideal conditions. He truly has one of the largest live work spaces on the planet, damn cool in my mind. The running water might be a tough one to get around though.

Link to original article on Yahoo Autos

Alan Hill in the abandoned Packard factory he calls home

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of Detroit "ruin porn" is it inherently ignores the very real people who still live in the city. Now there's a convergence — the amazing story of Allan Hill, the man who legally lives inside the city's abandoned Packard Auto Plant.

What's most surprising about this moving mini-documentary is Hill's "quality of life" doesn't look as terrible as you'd imagine, nor does his reasoning for choosing to stay in the largest abandoned factory in the world seem so unsound.

The whole creation is a huge gut-check to our biases. Yes, the Packard Plant is so giant and empty and strange they shoot Michael Bay movies there. And, occasionally, kids push a dump truck out a window.

Yet, Hill has power, Internet access, a welding setup, and a small kitchen. He even maintains a webcam. The owner apparently gave him his blessing so long as Hill works as a custodian of the property.

He reminds me of the Prophet Amos, whom God appointed to tell the Israelites to stop letting the wealthiest few prosper at the hands of the poorest. This was not a popular message as it came at a time when Israel was doing fairly well. Amos also told them to prepare themselves for judgement, especially from a foreign nation.

Amos 9:13-15

"The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills, 
and I will bring my people Israel back from exile.

"They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; 
they will make gardens and eat their fruit. 
I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them," says the LORD your God."

This video is part of the series This Must Be The Place. The title, of course, is taken from that other great prophet David Byrne. He of the many heads talking.

1937 Packard Sedan made at the factory where Alan Hill calls home

The Legacy Of The Porsche 911

The legacy of Porsche lost one of its greatest innovators today in Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, who designed a legendary ride, in the Porsche 911. With a purity of vision in clean lines and rounded shapes, matched with a robust powertrain, the 911 would become iconic in the innovations in compared to the American auto market.

Link to original article on Yahoo

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche and his famous car design

For a rich kid kicked out of design school, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche created one of the greatest legacies in automotive design with the Porsche 911 — one that will survive far beyond Porsche's death today at the age of 76.

The son of company founder Ferry Porsche, F.A. or "Butzi" as he was known spent most of his career at his eponymous firm Porsche Design, where he oversaw the styling of thousands of products from watches to yachts, many with the tag "Designed by F.A. Porsche."

But it's the 911's emergence in 1964, when Butzi Porsche was just 25 years old, that made him a historic figure. While his father and grandfather had been famous German engineers — the original Ferdinand Porsche engineered the first Volkswagen Beetle — F.A. Porsche chose to study design. A year after enrolling in a prestigious school, Porsche was in his own words "kicked out," and took at job at his father's fledging car business in 1957.

At the time, Ferry Porsche had created the successful Porsche 356, but needed a follow-up model. He set the car's basic layout —a rear engine, a short wheelbase for agile handing — but pushed the designers and engineers to fashion a more sporting look than the men who built the Beetle had produced so far.

Porsche 911 GT3 Cup, photo by Nino Batista

Prowling the auto shows of Europe, F.A. Porsche formed an idea of how the car should look as a smooth, curving fastback, rejecting the flat angles popular in American cars of the era. "I just think you start creating edges when the body of a car is bad…they are lines that support something that ties the designer down," Porsche would say years later.

The new car's design spurred a dispute with the older designers in Ferry Porsche's shop, to such a degree Ferry went around them, taking his son's blueprints to the body fabricator. The first production-ready model, called the 901, appeared at the Frankfurt Auto Show in September 1964, and after Peugeot objected to the name, Porsche changed it to 911. Despite the timelessness of the 911's shape, F.A. Porsche believed his greatest design came a few years later, with the Porsche 904 race car.

When the company went public in 1971, the Porsche family withdrew from management roles — although F.A. Porsche would remain a presence on the company's board and in its design studios. "He established a design culture in our company that has shaped our sports cars to this very day," said Matthias Müller, President and Chief Executive Officer of Porsche AG. "His philosophy of good design is a legacy to us that we will honor for all time."

The "Well" Of Death From Jamshedpur, India

So ya got some skills and you want to test them out as you fear nothing. Death is breathing heavy over your shoulder with a recently sharpened scythe and still you ask someone to hold your beer as you surmise your plan of attack. With the courage of Kenny Powers, driving skill of Ricky Bobby and the will to succeed, hop on the next flight to India and prove that you can turn left with the best of'em. Let the sound track of Fu Manchu's, Hell On Wheels guide your way...

King of Cool, Kenny Powers

Sign up sheets to be a carnie in India are not needed, put your balls on the chopping block and just show up to see if you can hang. Go to about 1:50:00 or so into the video to watch the real gnarly begin.