Car Culture

This Auto Zone ad is one for the ages. The dark ages.

Display of Georgia progress at the Welcome Center on I-85, near the South Carolina border

Given the New Jersey Nets' lackluster season (34-48 record, no playoff berth), the franchise is taking a page from another under-performer to unload tickets for next year. That's right: buy 2008-2009 season tickets and the Nets will return 10 percent of the cost in the form of "free" gas, which fans will presumably burn up on the way to all those home games. 'Cause with the Nets, it's not about winning or losing, or even how you play. It's about the free gas.

New light rail in Denver, Colorado

It's easy to tut-tut at the auto-dependent from the transit-rich confines of New York City. So, to get a taste of what it's like out there as the era of cheap gas seemingly draws to a close, Streetsblog sent me on a road trip. My destination was Athens, Georgia, where I checked on the state of bike-ped infrastructure in what could be a model small city for the future of American mobility. I'll be filing more Athens reports soon. In the meantime, here are some quick hits from the road.

From the way back machine comes this remarkable essay, "The Last Traffic Jam," about the blind spots that plague the motoring mentality. The anonymous author, writing for Time Magazine in 1947, delivers observations about road rage and the endemic violence of driving that still apply today.

Like media outlets everywhere, CNNMoney.com is reporting with greater frequency on rising fuel prices, with headlines like "Six fixes for pricey gasoline" and "Bad news for Detroit: Miles per gallon." In a recent online poll, the financial website asked a question that is surely on the minds of many Americans: "The next vehicle I buy will be...?" In the non-random sample of 42,275 respondents, more people said they are leaning towards a bike than a truck or SUV.

With Detroit increasingly desperate to unload inventory, one Missouri car dealership seems to have struck gold with a special promotion: Buyers get a $250 coupon towards either a gun or gasoline. The offer comes from Max Motors, a small dealership south of Kansas City that has slapped the image of a grimacing cowboy wielding two pistols all over its website.

We posted yesterday about proposed legislation by State Senators Eric Adams and Jeff Klein to increase summer driving by suspending tolls on bridges and tunnels, thereby leaving transit riders to pay for their largess. Soon after, Adams constituent Carrie McLaren picked up the news on her neighborhood blog, Hawthorne Street. Now Adams wants to hold a kitchen cabinet meeting about the bill: