Some Things Work Out For Some People

August in the Sacramento area is hot; and I don’t mean in a cultural sense.

So Leslie and I tend to get in the car and spend some time on the California Coast where it’s cooler; not necessarily in a cultural sense.

Last week we found ourselves in Santa Barbara, part-time home for Oprah and other Big Names. The last time we were down there we drove around Montecito and looked at the snazzy mansions. They, most of them, had a sign in the main driveway pointing towards a smaller drive with the sign “Trade Entrance”. When Leslie and I got home we put a sign in the driveway pointing to our front door with a sign “Trade Entrance”.

Facts matter, and sometimes they surprise even me.

I guess I’m lucky in that I didn’t know Bankruptcy Court was actually a physical place. I had thought it was just a term for something that went on in a regular courtroom.

But when we found a parking spot on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara and I got out of the car and looked up, there it was. And they offer free parking, plus a Job Hotline.

After walking around town for a bit we returned to pick up our car and I noticed another car parked in front of the Courthouse. So I decided to take a picture “for the record” as they say in the legal biz.

Bankruptcy Is For The Little People

It’s perhaps appropriate that we would find a Volkswagen sitting there by the Bankruptcy Court. What’s not perhaps appropriate would be the particular marque of VW. Specifically that would be a Bentley.

Bentley Motors Limited is a British manufacturer of automobiles founded on 18 January 1919 by Walter Owen Bentley (known as W.O. Bentley or just “W.O.”). Bentley had been previously known for his range of rotary aero-engines in World War I, the most famous being the Bentley BR1 as used in later versions of the Sopwith Camel. Since 1998, the company has been owned by the Volkswagen Group of Germany. The firm is based in Crewe, England with their Central Production Facilities being based there.

Not being even close to a car afficionado it’s hard for me to identify the specific model, but it seems to be a Continental GT which goes for something like $150,000. Each.

Even more surprising is that nobody had ‘keyed’ that puppy.

Probably a cultural thing.