Felix. Ektorp. The Green Merc (from October)

Felix and the Merc

This photo fires many neurons for me. First, the understated presence of felix – a seriously cool and mellow fellow colleague at west 8. i almost slept in his bed without knowing him (without him either), but found a warm floor somewhere else instead. He lives in rotterdam noord, which i am still ignorant of but got to know a little better on my epic chain guard journey. More on that later. BUT.  The coolest thing i DID learn about rotterdam noord was that the gemente rotterdam and a developer have turned the arched areas under the decommissioned elevated hofpleinlijn into artist studios. Now Felix has new neighbors. And the shadows of an elevated line are filled with tailors painters and designers – not scary people. Except for the scary artists.

Courtesy of Citycorp.nl

Back to the Merc.

I haven’t sat in a 70′s mercedes since high school, and MAN are those cars cool. My sister used to carpool us to school in one of those. I can remember the white leather smell every morning, after scraping the chilly san diego frost off the windshield. There’s something so classic and always pleasing about their form,  their tasty 70s colors, matching hub caps, big happy radiator grill, and unforgettable gluuug glugglugglug glug.

Cool and the Dutch Road Tax

And felix is SO COOL, that he runs the thing off liquified petroleum gas , not diesel glug. 1/2 the price. Same mileage. Kilometerage.  more or less. AND he’s beneftting from netherlands’ tax credit for 25+ year old cars. Booyah! Which I’m still wondering about. Is the state so committed to being retro that they’re endorsing more air pollution? If I had power, I guess I’d want my pollution to look good too. Let this be the first installment in the “if-the-dutch-are-so-cool-and-practical-why-the-hell-do-they-do-this” series (thank you Jason).

luscious german vinyl

So, based on my sources (my many many sources), there is a sales tax, vehicle tax (based on weight and cost of car), AND a road tax (based on weight and fuel-type) on cars in the netherlands – at least there were in 2005. The tax break is on just the road tax, I believe.

Living in America (I mean Sweden)
Back to the pic. The wood slats in that car can only mean one thing…we’re at IKEA!!!! My 2nd road trip outside of Rotterdam. And guess what…it’s EXACTLY THE SAME as in the US!! IKEA=IKEA, by the reflexive property of IKEA. See mom and dad, I’m NORMAL! I do the same things here. Lykesele. Ektorp. Meatballs. Put those worries back in that Motorp!

A store favorite. Ikea, Delft. (Source: Adriaan Bloem, http://flickr.com/photos/bloem )

Did I mention how cool 70s Mercedes is? Thanks Felix!

Advertisement