Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Possibly, They Hold the Truck Together

What is it with old pickup trucks and bumper stickers, and the artsy folks who drive them?

I recently saw these two examples in St. Paul. Each one has at least one sticker indicating support for the arts and artists, but that's not all:

Red Ford pickup with two dozen bumper stickers
The owner of this one is clearly into science fiction movies and television. Not to mention roller derby. Although I have no idea what BrownCoat means or what a hypnotoad is.

Green Dodge Ram pickup with about two dozen bumper stickers
While the owner of this one is more into co-ops, local food, and other progressive causes.

The red truck definitely belongs to a woman. I get the feeling the green one may also, but the stickers are not as revealing on that count.

I have mixed feelings when I see this many stickers on a single vehicle. One part of me thinks it's good to express yourself. But more of me wonders if there's not at least a bit of pathology underlying the need to put signs of our interests and beliefs all over our vehicles.

9 comments:

Barbara said...

The hypnotoad is a Futurama reference, and the Brown Coats are from Firefly (the TV series) and Serenity (the movie).

Daughter Number Three said...

Thanks. I've seen Serenity and watched about a third of Firefly but I don't remember the Brown Coats.

Barbara said...

The Brown Coats fought for independence from the Alliance and lost. Mal and Zoe were Brown Coats.

But I see now that there is an active Firefly fan community called Brown Coats. The bumper sticker may refer to them. (http://www.browncoats.com/index.php?ContentID=42e7e88e69ab5)

And I've been thinking about the whole bumper sticker thing. I usually have one, and never more than three, but I do hesitate to put my most personal self out there on my car. And my current single bumper sticker was directly responsible for a recent weird encounter in the grocery store parking lot, so I'm not going to add any more for a while.

Still, I love to read other people's cars and invent back-stories for the owners based on the stickers.

David Steinlicht said...

Interesting that one person put stickers everywhere but on the truck name and the other person has stickers right on top of the logo.

Carmella said...

We love Firefly at my house...how could you only watch 1/3? That's like only eating 1/3 of your dog food in the morning. Who does THAT?

Carmella said...

sar

Daughter Number Three said...

DN3.1 and I started watching them on DVD last summer, but when fall came around, we didn't get back to them. I feel guilty every day.

ScienceCarlson said...

My wife and I have a hypothesis that we'd like to test, which basically states:

With each bumper sticker you have on your car, the likelihood that you will add another one grows.

In other words, you rarely see a car with just ONE bumper sticker. Usually its two, three, four, five, or ten thousand - it grows exponentially.

Daughter Number Three said...

I have an alternate hypothesis, which is that there are lots of cars with 1 - 3 stickers, but not many with more 4. Because after you have 4 you might as well have dozens; people will think you are crazy either way.