Slight Detour – June 2022
Trucking may be cool again, while tiny electric cars are puttering around making fart noises.
Welcome to the June installment of Slight Detour, where fart jokes are allowed, unlike in traditional news stories.
Trendy truckers
Around the turn of the century, trucker hats skyrocketed in popularity thanks to Ashton Kutcher and fashion brand Von Dutch. Like most trends, that one faded away. Also like many trends, it is being resurrected.
A recent Google search for something somewhat related to the trucking industry revealed a trucker hat being sold by Ciele Athletics for the low price of $55 (yes, USD) or four interest-free payments of $13.75.*
With the catchy product name TRKCap SC-Century – Halo and TRK
Cap SC-Century – Elemental, kids and young adults will get to experience the benefits of a cap with a breathable mesh back and be trendy at the same time. At only $55, that’s a steal!
Other companies are cashing in on the craze, including the “OG” of truck culture appropriation, Von Dutch. For $89 (or four interest-free installments of $22.25), you can own the newest Von Dutch Classic Trucker 51. In addition to all the benefits of a standard trucker hat, Von Dutch’s version does literally nothing else functionally different.
Trucker hats coming back into fashion is the last thing drivers need right now. With inflation rapidly increasing across the board, having TikTok stars ramp up demand for truck stop gear is probably not good for your bottom line. However, if you have a hat collection, you might be able to cash in on this second wave of a Beanie Baby-like value hike.
It costs money to acquire the illusion of being cool. Since your “cool factor” is real and not perceived, capitalize on someone else’s marketing scheme.
* If you need to make payments on a hat, we need to have an intervention.
Hop into this trailer for $91 a night
Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper that the overwhelming majority of Land Line readers had probably never heard of (including this reporter), is offering fans an opportunity to spend the night in his tour truck trailer via a partnership with Airbnb.
On the outside, the standard 53-foot black trailer looks like it is probably hauling some consumer goods. However, guests will open the trailer doors to a custom Hello Kitty/Pee-wee Herman hybrid-influenced living space. In other words, it’s pretty cool and worth the less than $100-per-night price tag.
You may not have heard of Bad Bunny (and likely do not care for his music), but you may like Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, the man behind Bad Bunny. Ocasio comes from a family of truckers and continues to carry that torch into his entertainment career.
In addition to embracing the trucking lifestyle by living in a truck while on tour (albeit inside the biggest sleeper you have ever seen), Ocasio also made headlines by performing a live concert on a flatbed trailer being hauled through New York City.
Ocasio has also been seen wearing a fisherman-style sun hat. What’s the significance? Ciele Athletics has a similar hat (also with a catchy name: BNDCKHat RVT gry©) for the totally reasonably price of $185.
Slight Detour to a fart note
A telltale sign of life nearing the prepandemic “normal,” Elon Musk is back grabbing as many international headlines as possible in any given week.
Before deciding to pull the ultimate flex of wealth by buying one of the most visited websites in the world, Musk got our attention in another way. What better way to do that than through fart humor, and what better place to talk about it than Slight Detour?
Earlier this year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recalled nearly 600,000 Tesla vehicles because they were making fart noises. That is not a typo. Land Line Associate Editor Chuck Robinson is good at his job and likely went through that one sentence with a fine-tooth comb.
Specifically, NHTSA’s recall affects Tesla vehicles with the Boombox function that “allows sounds to be played through an external speaker while the vehicle is in motion, which may obscure the pedestrian warning system sounds.” This is the fanciest way of stating that the vehicles literally make fart noises.
Apparently, certain Tesla vehicles were able to broadcast noises to the outside world. Many newer cars have this feature to warn pedestrians that they are approaching. This is necessary nowadays because electric vehicles are remarkably quiet. Pedestrian warning systems are a feature with blind people in mind.
Most cars have a simple beep. Tesla cannot not allow such pedestrian sounds (pun totally intended). Rather, they included fart and goat sounds in the Boombox music rotation.
That did not sit well with regulators. Boombox has since been disabled while the vehicle is in drive, neutral or reverse. Continued use of the feature in inappropriate ways will result in a citation from the fun police – and the actual police. LL