A truly cautionary tale: Ludlow Brown’s Jetta pops out of gear, rolls down our fairly steep street, avoids cars, and winds up midway up our neighbors ivy filled yard. This really happened!

Set your parking brake

and put your car in its lowest gear!

I arrive home in Silverlake around 1AM to find a concerned, dejected Ludlow sitting on the front stoop, his car was down the hill, and sort of up another — into the neighbor’s yard, where it had come to rest after a quick backwards roll and jump over the curb. That it didn’t go any further is the amazing and fortunate part: houses and concrete walls lined the remainder of the street and the bottom of the hilly street (Ivanhoe Drive, if you’re familiar with Silver Lake in Los Angeles).

Oh, and the neighbors? What did they do? After our walking around on their porch for several minutes they finally pulled back the curtain, waved and smiled a sort of knowing, "gosh, we’d love to come out and help but we can’t stop laughing" shit-eating variety of smiles, before just going back to sleep.

The tow truck driver (there would eventually be three) — after an hour of walking around the Jetta tsk-tsking finally strapped himself into the car (it teetered real nice and scary like) and with the other trucks as safeties, drove it off the hill.

Not a scratch on the car, though the undercarriage was stuffed with ivy.

Oh, excuse the photos; I didn’t want to get out a tripod and it was very dark — so they are a bit grainy and blurry. And no — I didn’t perform any manipulations to present the scene as more precarious — it was that on its own. Though clearly I did comp (poorly) a shot of a fake street sign in with Ludlow in one shot for a card.

Note: We're cleaning up the Photo Galleries; please excuse the messy layout it'll be better soon. - Mgmt.

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• I really appreciate how this makes Ludlow's Jetta, Superfast, appear to be pulling a Dukes of Hazard
  
• A better view of how comfy the Jetta is
  
• Looking down from the neighbor's front porch
  
• From below -- this view unfortunately flattens the street
  
• OK -- couldn't resist photoshopping this one a bit
  

Monday, March 10th, 2003PhotographyLudlow