CARPARTS:BRAINSTORMING

Here is what I got from our brainstorming session in class. Apologies if I butchered/missed any of your ideas.

AMERICAN AUTOBAHN. THE LIFE OF CARS IN AMERICAN SOCIETY....

Dirt track racing culture

Red Neck truck culture. Soup them up to be as loud and as large as they can. Go mudding. Social aspect of it.

A car club that meets in town.

Demolition derbys.

Small non-commercial garage. Gets customers by word of mouth.

Lesley’s service center. Small town gas station that takes cash only.

At Athena/Mini-mart/parking lot across street: guys congregate and show of their souped up cars, moved to Phillips66 and take-over parking lot on Paris Rd. and College Ave.
- could check out lights and do a portrait series of the guys with their cars
~even include the friends and spectators
- could do a series with this
How can we take it to another level?
Cars as the center of the social structure?
ACCESS: how laid back would they be about it? Illegal activities going on around it? It’s about the way we approach it: Just try it and see what happens.

What do people without cars do? Buses, bikes…

Break it down to car parts- what’s utility and what’s not utility?

Gender: how people identify differently with cars? Do cars have genders?

Couples with their boats down at the lake, the community on the lake. Maybe portraits and their stories.

Carshop by Midway. Middle aged men- a vehicle as an escape. Car shop where about 30 men (that run with the optimist club crowd) gather to work on their cars. Tension with wives, women not really allowed there. Credit card debt because of all the money they spend on their cars/the shop.

CAR AS A WAY TO FREEDOM:
Getting a license; learning to drive; parents; freedom
Teens relationships with their cars: how it affects them socially?
Cruising, hot spots→ small towns

Teens making their transition into driving. Social/class differences.

Driving and the law. Traffic Court. DUI’s. Designated Drivers. Taxi company in Columbia: the length of time/use of cabs.

Seeing someone that lives out of their car. Broadcast students…kind of like a metamorphosis/transportation that takes place in the cars- from off tv to on tv. What is on people’s floorboards?
Busy, messy people that live out of their cars.

Limousine in town. Rico.

People who make their living off of cars: Truck Drivers/Driving for a living: delivery drivers, pizza guys, taxi drivers, shuttles, MoEX, Tow truck drivers
Even fireman. Meals on wheels. UPS. Postmen. Security people that just get paid to drive around. What do they do in their cars?

-Small car dealership in Columbia
-Drive-Thru everything: prescriptions, laundry, food, alcohol, dry-cleaning

John M.-→Custom Rock Crawlers. Hanging out in his shop, which he owns. Friends come over and kill time, work on stuff for fun. Go around and test it in the parks around town. March 9 competition.

Towing/Impounding cars. Repossession of cars. Stealing cars.

People who buys old cars for cheap, fixes them up, and sells them on Ebay for a lot more money

10-12 year old kids that build and race RC cars.

Farmers that soup up their tractors fro tractor pulls, competitions.

Tailgating. Lance Edwards & the group of guys that wants to start tailgating for the MU baseball games.

Cars on TV. Advertising. Auto magnets: public personalities.

Alternate energy and cars. People her building a prototype. Solar car. UMR: used to win competitions to build alternate energy cars. Engineering school building a hydrogen car(story ran in the Missourian)

Junk-yard/recycled cars. Process story: what does a car become?

Car Angel. Salvation Army car donation.

WHAT CONCEPTS DO WE WANT TO INCLUDE?
• envy
• survival
• freedom
• obsession
• status
• community
• livelihood
• ubiquity
• socialization
• risk
• recreation
• fashion/consumerism