Goliath, That Laugh You Hear Is David’s
For those of us who still believe that the only people who really need SUVs are National Geographic journalists and members of Doctors Without Borders, it was a delicious moment. While attempting to navigate the Trader Joe’s parking lot on Hyperion in Silver Lake, an SUV on the larger end of hugeness--an Expedition or an Incursion or a Coastal Invasion, one of those--was finding it difficult to moor, er, park. And so it decided to back out of the parking lot.
Or, rather, its driver did (assuming there was a driver; none was visible, the windshield being slightly mirrored and so very, very high). Never mind that there was a car behind him (or her). And not a tiny car, a Volvo station wagon, the deposed ruler of the automotive veld. As the SUV reared back, the Volvo sounded its horn. Repeatedly. But to no avail. Back the SUV came, while onlookers shouted and pointed, while the Volvo bleated and roared and the mindless sky burned on. Back against the front end of the Volvo, bump, back and over, bump, scrape, until the SUV’s rear was wedged onto the Volvo’s hood like a fat man in a child’s chair. Oh, said the SUV peering over its shoulder. Oh, that is what all those tiny people are waving about.
Jaws were dropped among the crowd, and groceries. There were a few long, low whistles and a fair amount of sympathetic swearing. And then there was laughter, disbelieving yet somehow not all that surprised laughter. Even the driver of the Volvo, as he got out of his car and shook his head, did not seem all that shocked.
Just another scene from SUV Nation.
Even as gas prices break the $2 mark, SUVs seem to reproduce with rabbit-like alacrity, growing bigger and shinier and scarier by the day--the one that sat on the Volvo looked like a cross between the space shuttle and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man who terrorized New York at the end of “Ghostbusters.”
It is so easy to hate SUVs that it is hardly fun any more. Just three days ago, traffic on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles was stopped for five full minutes, during rush hour, while a stretch SUV, yes, that’s right, a stretch SUV, made the 15-point turn required for it to get on the 101 on-ramp. It was white, and with its bulging multi-paneled midsection, it looked like one of those horribly engorged queen ants on the Discovery Channel, pushing out billions of eggs.
In certain circles, SUV-bashing has replaced political debates. Every car owner has his favorite tale of Those People banging around parking lots or side streets and then complaining about how small and cramped everything is these days. Everyone has just experienced a narrow miss on the freeway when that silver Explorer cut through three lanes of traffic leaving mayhem in its wake, or that characteristic stop sign oblivion, or the strange sense of being buried alive one has when surrounded by cars whose doors open at the height of your windshield. For the love of God, Montressor.
Paradoxically, the proliferation of SUVs makes this kind of testy discourse a bit more difficult. All of these vehicles are owned by people, after all, and often good people, smart, loving and kind people. People who deserved to be loved and respected. So like bipartisan families in an election year, we smile uneasily around the parking issue, around the gas price issue, around the emissions issue, each side viewing the other as unfortunate eccentrics--the vegetarians and the carnivores, the eastsiders and the westsiders, the Calistogas and the Mountain Dews.
A friend of mine who was one of the first Range Rover-owners of my acquaintance recently, and quite decently, told me she forgave me for all the nasty things I have said in the past about SUVs. Which I very much appreciated.
Of course, these days, I’m not sure a Range Rover even qualifies as an SUV. It’s kinda small, isn’t it?
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Mary McNamara can be reached at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.
