Beetlemania, now and then.  Some principles you learn in school, some you learn from your parents, some you learn by experience. One that I learned by experience was this: when you find a really good product that you like, buy more of it if you can because the next generation or version of the product probably won't be as good. Because of this principle, when my twenty year-old alarm clock lost a button recently, I was able to replace the clock with a duplicate that had been sitting "on reserve" for nearly two decades. Also because of this principle, I found myself, some years ago, the proud owner of a mini-fleet of three Volkswagen Super Beetles, one blue -- my main "squeeze" -- one white, and another white one that had been painted turquoise by its original owner.

My blue beetle, seen in the photo at right, probably had more fenders, bumpers, and bumper-guards replaced than most cars have oil changes. Of course, any car that racks up close to 200,000 miles is likely to do so at the expense of a few bruises. But its propensity for new body parts probably had more to do with the habits of Manhattan parkers. Folks bumper-parking invariantly crunched the Beetles', which at a cost of $45 a pair could be bent in half by a person of average strength -- before breakfast. And folks parallel-parking behind or in front of a Beetle had to be very careful not to reorganize its fenders, which extended almost two feet beyond the body line.

At the time of the photo, the blue Beetle was on its second engine, and had had its carburetor rebuilt so often that I kept a spare for it. Unfortunately, the last replacement wasn't executed with proper precision and the fuel filter leaked, setting the engine on fire (click on the photo for more details). In the photo, the blue Beetle is waiting on the apron of the Long Island Expressway for the tow truck ahead of it to hook up and take it back to the garage.

All of this came back to me in a flash as I emerged last weekend from a photographic foray into Central Park and came upon the spanking New Beetle in the photo at left. It was a beautiful day and I shot many frames of folks ogling this "retro" vehicle which its owner had parked outside 875 Fifth Ave near the corner of East 69th Street. All kinds of folks were digging it -- residents, doormen, tourists and just plain New York passerby. This bright red New Beetle with its engine up front and its frame suspended on a venerable Golf chasis was a sensation beyond prediction! I used my photos to create a web page for Bayside Volkswagen, a former client.

As I said, this Beetlemaniacal digression occurred at the close of a splendid afternoon spent in Manhattan's Central Park. Let's go there now.