down on the street
Welcome to
Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Alameda is definitely a VW Transporter sort of town; you can find all the major Transporter-loving groups here, from original-owner curmudgeons to
Spicoli-grade surfers. Yes, even though Alameda is inside San Francisco Bay and thus gets waves better measured in inches than in feet on its beaches, we still have plenty of surfers here. Windsurfers and kite surfers, that is, crazies who think nothing of braving the 50° water, howling winds, and vicious currents on their boards. And when they're done flirting with death for the day, they need a proper vehicle to
store their bongs haul their gear back home.
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custom cars
UK-based
JustKampers.com teamed up with habitual car midgetizer
Andy Saunders to build the worlds shortest VW Bus at Bug Jam '08, a celebration of all things people's car. The build and event took place last week, with a live audience watching the transformation from a standard issue T25 bus to a chopped, sectioned, and lowered bus measuring in at a scant three feet tall. So short, in fact, that a sunroof had to be cut out for the driver's head to poke through while driving. More construction shots and the completed vehicle gallery below.
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novelties
Pardon us for still trying to wrap our brains around this whole
Vespa modding trend, but here is another Vespa-style (it's actually a Lambretta, but details, details) scooter mutilation worthy of noting. Not only is this person driving scooter, but it's a scooter with a sidecar, a sidecar that is modified to look like a Volkswagen Bus. So, Jalopnik faithful, which would you
least want to be caught in: the scooter or the sidecar? At least in the sidecar you could possibly duck down low enough to not be seen. [
Presurfer]
down on the street bonus edition
After I was caught in a camera-challenged condition when spotting the
'70 Fiat 500 near my office in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood and was forced to use the 640x480 so-called camera in my cellphone, I resolved to start carrying a real camera at all times. Naturally, I totally spaced on the camera thing when I caught sight of this 21-window Transporter while out for some
Bánh mì on my lunch break last week, and once again we all get to look at blurry, wide-angle cellphone shots. These things didn't fare too well around here, because the sun and smog tend to eat up the seals around all those windows, which lets rust gain a toehold it generally never relinquishes. But here's a very original black-plate example that (if the window stickers are to be believed) has been damn near everywhere.
Jalopnik
