Destination: Ray at Night, a monthly art gallery opening here in San Diego. The weather was perfect (tit-freezing as Richard likes to say) for a night of drag racing and figure 8’s. The course: a blocked off section of road, about two blocks, complete with slalom pylons already in place – well, actually they were plastic garbage cans but they served the same purpose. Equipment needed: charged batteries, warm socks, a bonny for the head, and a bit of manual dexterity. At the finish line, nothing but fun.

I’ve been living here close to 2 years now and have gone to Ray at Night perhaps a couple dozen times. Trust me; you don’t need to go every month. Let’s be honest, there’s not a whole helluva lot that goes on down there except for the changing monthly exhibits – yes I know that is what is supposed to happen, but the variety and quality of the work being shown is rather lacklustre and boring. Ray at Night typically draws a pretty good crowd of young wine drinkers and pretzel eaters. There are of course exceptions to every rule, and Planet Rooth Studios does a pretty good job of keeping things interesting – thanks in large part to Poor Al who introduced Planet Rooth to a whole new extraterrestrial group of hipsters, graffiti and tattoo artists and Low Brow painters with a street savvy and discipline unmatched by a large group of artists currently showing here vying to be the same. At Planet Rooth you can almost always anticipate a radical décor, spray painted walls and compelling art. So, what were a couple of guys like us, vivid memories of childhood slot car racing days dancing in our heads doing here, with radio controlled cars in hand and a couple of chairs? Performing.

Richard has for the most part, lived his life here in San Diego and knows as well as anyone the gallery and Ray at Night experience. One of many observations over the years led him to witness the amount of open yet “dead” space available to any passer-by willing to conquer and perform. This dead space, in actuality the cornered off street, is nothing more than a thoroughfare to one side of the street or the other and the occasional fast-food wrappings being thrown into our beloved pylons. It was ripe for the taking. Richard has had an interest of parallel worlds, of mundane events, actions or circumstances wilfully placed into seemingly unfamiliar, unlike contexts and unrelated content, which somehow magically neither disrupts nor changes the two separate entities. They neither feed off nor drain the energy from one another but seem to make a stronger more coherent, logical whole. You can also find this in the works Richard produces as a “plasticien.” Our goal, Richard’s goal was to introduce fun and play into an art spectacle “opening” for the masses by providing a parallel spectacle of innocent fun not typically offered nor sought out in the art world.

The plan was quite simple: bring two folding chairs and place them on opposite sides of the street facing one another, turn on the radio-controlled cars, set them on the ground and let them pirouette their way through the slow moving crowds.

Well, I pretty much sucked at any driving skill let alone any eye-hand coordination to prevent my Shelby from running into the curb, garbage can, chair, parked car, even driving straight seemed a daunting task. Richard had no problem out of the gate and was literally driving circles around my stuttering race car. There must have been more than one curious anxious spectator awaiting deft manoeuvring and synchronized Blue Angels choreography along with death defying close encounters but helas, there was none, at least for my part. There was however, a good time to be had by all with bit parts spontaneously played by dogs barking and kids unwilling to give up the remote. The performance ended, and we packed up once the batteries ran down and the Shelby refused to climb out of the gutter.