It seems this column has become enamored with chickens of late. Previously we wrote about chickens raised in Chicago’s backyards; this week it’s a ’73 Volkswagen Beetle with an identity crisis.
“Chicky” is owned by comedian, painter, and Hideout barback Amy Gard. She got the spray-painted Bug in LA, where she was living in an arty neighborhood up till about a year ago. There she knew a semifamous graffiti artist called Cache, whose oeuvre, if you can call it that, was painting stoic, Angry Birds-esque chickens on mudslide-preventing sidewalls around town. “We’d both spray-paint with our bandit masks on in the middle of the night,” said Gard, explaining that’s sort of how they knew each other.
Cache was packing up to move to Central America when Gard called him. She’s an amateur mechanic, and Cache was looking to give the car a good home. He gave it to her. Gard eventually moved back to Chicago, and a few days after she arrived, she heard from Cache again. His daughter had just gotten a text from a friend in the city that read, “You gotta look at this car, it’s fucking crazy!” It was Chicky, of course.
Cache and his daughter are attached to the car, so Gard plans to give it back whenever she’s done with it—bad news for the dozens of people leaving notes asking if they can buy the unique car.
Well, almost unique. Gard had spray-painted her first car, back in Missouri, too. The design? A fried egg.