NEW SHIRTS

Take a look at the HoL store when you get a minute (I know the sexual tension between Steven Tyler and J-Lo is soaking up much free time these days) –– I've got a few more shirt designs that I'm working on with some old speed shop names you're gonna really dig, but I won't be able to get them made till I move more inventory.

Got a few questions about 3X and 4X sizes. You caught me off guard with that, but if you want 'em, I'll get 'em. Just drop me a note (houseofloads@gmail.com) and I'll "Larry-The-Cable-Guy" that shit and git 'er done...

WAY LOW-RIDING

18th and Mission Streets in San Francisco. Mid-Seventies. I forget where I found this shot -- I think it was on Javier's Royal Jokers CC page -- but it is just really fucking cool. When most people think about the glory days of lowriding, I don't think they automatically think SF's Mission neighborhood...usually it's East L.A. or the Southwest. Which is good and bad, I guess.

Bad because there's lots of good lo-lo history in this Latin neighborhood of SF. Good because it remains slightly hidden and a little more special that way. Maybe it needs to stay kinda underground...

DON'T KILL DOLPHINS

My LORD. I can think of two good reasons to bring back the Dolphin shorts and tube tops. Feathered hair wouldn't be bad, either. But not the Reno kind of feathered hair where it's on a dude and the wings meet in the back and he's 52 and dancing at the tiki lounge to Tone Loc in Mexican fake 'gator boots with the little eyes on either side of the foot. Not that kind of feathered hair. But tube tops and Dolphin shorts; that's where I'm at right now.

BACK IN WHITE

I'm back after a few months off. OK, like, six months. But I've got a few new t-shirts done--check 'em out in the HoL store. These are all long-gone speedshops from the San Francisco Bay Area and I've been tracking down more and more of these little mom-and-pop shops, as well as some of the greats, too. The shirt designs are all on speed-shop-white, no black or blue or taupe or any other bullshit colors. White. Just like it used to be, dad. Dig on it.

Some of these old shop owners are still alive, some are dead and some just disappeared. Which makes it even better when I find an old ad or whatever from them.

When you order, gimme a few weeks to get it to you –– every dime I get goes back into more designs and shirts and if the old shop owner is still around, they get a piece of the action, too. So, it'll take a little extra time to get the orders completed and shipped. Not a big deal, just sayin.'

Whatever happened to car clubs putting on matching t-shirts and building a dragster to actually make a few passes at the local track? I see dudes sportin' the club shirts and even trying to be all Bucky Badass in "prospect" shirts at car shows and shit, but I never see them at the track in those shirts, gettin' dirty and gettin' DOWN. Hmmm. Maybe if they spent less time selling "support" t-shirts and more time building a race car, the rest of us wouldn't laugh at them so hard...

Linda Vaughn's shirt of many temperatures

This "LOVE" shirt has to be one of the most famous in all of hotrodding. Probably didn't even know what that screenprint was on Linda Vaughn's t-shirt, right? I mean, hell – it doesn't even matter, but I dig that kind of shit.

I talked to Linda – aka Miss Hurst Golden Shifter – about this photo a few years ago and I didn't get the feeling that she was too happy about doing the shoot, looking back on it. Say what you want, but I'd give my left one to recreate this shoot with her right now. Seriously.

Milodon and the lightness of being

Check this shot of Ron Winkel in his Milodon t-shirt, next to none other than Kent Fuller – builder of the one and only "Magicar." GAWD, this car was bitchin.' And a real game-changer, to boot.

This is probably the mid-Sixties in Southern California...probably around '64 when the Fuller's Magicar first stomped all over everybody at the dragstrips.

That Milodon print on Ron's shirt is about as big as I'd like to ever see a logo on the chest. May be even pushing it a little. Really interesting to me how the dichotomy of a cartoon illustration for a speed parts company spent so much time in the company of a 1400hp mankiller. The speeds and the equipment of the day was a lethal combination and it was kinda REAL SERIOUS when shit went wrong. But hell, if you knew that back then, maybe a little levity was what you needed to be able to do it every weekend. I think that might be part of it.

But I'd kill for an original one of these – racer's coffee stains and all. Ah, if Winkel's shirt could only talk...