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I was driving my car the other day through Beverly Hills. I came to the light at the corner of Sunset and Beverly with the world famous Beverly Hotel just off to the left. All of a sudden my car was making a weird sound. I turned down the radio to figure out what it was. It was a low, muffled sound. My first thought was, “How could this be? I just brought my car in for service, and it’s only about two years old.” I put the window down to hear better. That’s when I figured out the problem wasn’t my car at all. Sitting on my left side was a black two-door BMW 3 series. The car had been tricked out. The whole body of the car had been lowered to resemble a low rider. The rims were after market, shiny chrome that hung out past the fenders. As my eyes took me past the wheels, I looked through the passenger side window. The noise became louder. It was rap music, but I couldn’t hear the lyrics over the droning bass. The driver had on a shirt that resembled the Los Angeles Dodgers jersey. It was an exact replica of what the team wears but it was open in the front. I noticed a couple of gold chains. As I continued to move my eyes up, I noticed the driver had on a cap. It had letters and words that I couldn’t understand. The brim was perfectly straight. It was the anti-thesis of the way a country boy would wear his hat with the beak bent down on both sides. The driver slowly turned to give me a stern look. The music continued to drone. As soon as our eyes locked, I began to laugh hysterically. It was another Beverly Hills white kid wannabe from the mean streets of Rodeo Drive. I told you that to tell you this. I recently left Los Angeles to head to Tempe, Arizona with my friend Caroline. She was in her first Ironman Triathlon. You may want to refer to the blog 59 Inches of Inspiration. I like Caroline a lot. She’s easy to get along with. When we get together it’s like a Sunday meal in an Italian household. We tend to talk over each other. It’s part of the fun, at least for me. But I digress. As we drove toward Tempe, we began to pass other cars that had either tribikes on the back or on the roof. Each time we passed a car, we did what humans do, and looked to see who was inside. That’s when Caroline and I started a conversation about “The Look.” We both agreed that you can spot a triathlete from a mile away. They always seem to wear a visor. Their T-shirts have sponsors all over them, though they’re not sponsored by anyone. They always wear sport-specific sunglasses, like Oakley and such. For the uninitiated, these are glasses that aren’t necessarily attractive unless you’re doing the sport you’re doing. My feeling is, if you’re not doing the sport and you’re wearing the glasses, you look like a fat security guard at a mall. Both Caroline and I agreed that we didn’t have that look. Generally because we’re too cool for the rest of the room. Either that, or we’re too old to care. Is there a point to this blog? No. It’s simple rhetoric. Does the look bother me? Not particularly. But it tells me one thing. People like to follow trends. Soccer mommies drive soccer mommy vans. Lesbians like plaid flannel. Italians from Jersey love gold chains. It’s all a fact of life.
