I spent a pleasant afternoon helping some friends get a new art car ready for it's maiden voyage. Topsy Turvy is an art car built by Tom Kennedy and a host of other people. It is a school bus with another school bus welded on top.
The bus is a statement on the US Military Budget. If you just look at the money spent on nuclear missiles and cut the number in half, we would still have enough warheads to wipe out everything on the planet, plus we would be able to save $65 billion dollars. Seeing how the budget deficit is around $500 billion, the bus might be a good tool to at least get people to discuss how to reign in the US budget to something a little less obscene.
The bus was commissioned by Ben Cohen, better known as the Ben in Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream. It's mission, to drive around the country for the next two years to provide a visual tool regarding the budget in the 2008 Presidential race.
But first, in celebration of getting the bus up and running, we neeeded to go out and celebrate. With ice cream.
After we navigated the East Bay Bridge Toll Plaza. A few hours later this same roadway would be closed for months after become a smoking crater after a gasoline tanker truck exploded.
We headed to a place we knew would be open late and would like to see the bus up close. So we went to Ben & Jerry's in the Haight Ashbury for a few scoops. I had the Cherry Garcia. It was delicious.
After that we thought we'd take it and show it off to show it to the Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who just happened to live a few blocks away. This is after all, the 8th District.
Nancy wasn't home, so we decided to take the bus to it's very first stop at a City Hall. This will be the first of many stops at city halls around the country.
We then brought the bus back to where it was born and where it will sooon leave on a topsy turvy journey across the USA.
