Money can't buy you taste

As I walked through Soho last week, I saw the most ridiculous car parked on Elgin Street. I paused, performing a genuine double take, then went back to the flat and got my camera, so I could prove I'd seen this:

(That was no trivial undertaking in itself. I had tired legs from running, four flights of stairs to climb, and one of the heaviest cameras Canon have seen fit to make.)

You may wonder why somebody buys a Porsche in Hong Kong. It's a place of bumpy streets and stop-start traffic, where driving a sports car is closer to Purgatory than pleasure. Sensible people use taxis or the escalator to travel. Who buys a Porsche? Somebody who wanted to park a Lamborghini outside 7-Eleven on a Saturday night, but couldn't afford it, that's who.

I'd say it was just men that are stupid enough to do this, but you see plenty of women driving Porsches too in Hong Kong. The government may not be democratic, but stupidity is.

However, as political theory will teach every one of us, you may start with an equal distribution of stupidity, but given a free market economy and rights of transfer, and you can be sure sooner or later somebody will be more stupid than those around them.

So it is with the owner of that particular Porsche. What goes through somebody's mind that makes them think air-brushed flames on a car are a good thing? I suppose the same genius that says "yes, I need a badly drawn skull on each door and the bonnet of my car." And was it not Einstein who wrote "hell, if I'm going to paint a skull on my car, it better have an eyepatch too"?

There's no excuse for this. Unless you're an eight year old. And there's no excuse for eight year olds to have their own Porsches, and certainly not to be allowed to choose the paintjob. (Curiously, the interior was standard incredibly-boring Porsche black. No teenage heavy metal/yuppie Hell's Angel adornments at all. Was that a lack of follow through?)

My contempt for this automobile idiocy was only ameliorated by the hope that the owner was nearby. I imagined he (or she) would be looking out, thinking "yeah, I do have the coolest car in Hong Kong. Look at that dishevelled man photographing it. He must think I am amazing." Perhaps he (or she) will wander around, burbling in this cloud of self-deceit. And perhaps one day he (or she, but let's face it, it's odds on a male) will somehow Google for "one eyed skull flame Porsche Hong Kong" and find this page, and
realise I think that he's a wanker.

After all, all the cool kids have Ferraris with My Little Pony painted on the doors.