Good afternoon, friends. I want to start by thanking the readers who alerted me to the new play by Jonny Lieberman’s wife, which, according to Lieberman, is based on when “12 years ago our neighbor walked into our home, stuck a pistol in my wife’s face, and pulled the trigger. It jammed.” I have never believed a story less than this one, by the way; it was probably a threesome gone wrong. Without Jonny, of course. On the other hand, having had a few online interactions with Mrs. Lieberman, including a memorable one where she wrote “If you haven’t had your balls all the way in someone’s mouth, I feel sorry for you1,” I’m not entirely unwilling to believe that her neighbor was just driven past the point of rationality. Anyway. Jonny would like his readers to donate $12,000 to make this thing happen, because neither he nor his wife believe in the play enough to fund it themselves. Amazingly, they are one-third of the way there. Here’s the link, if you literally have money to burn. The photo of the ensemble chosen to act out this fantasy is remarkable; I didn’t think people like that existed outside of a “Babylon Bee” joke post.
I know it’s an anti-gun play, but if only they/them were a little less enthusiastic about the right to bare arms... Anyway. Maybe Porsche will pick up the rest of the tab, in exchange for Jonny agreeing to never go near Pikes Peak again. Go support the arts, why dontcha.
The eternal battle of Leclerc and talent vs. Lewis and VSC timing
What a weekend! It truly had something for everyone except, ya know, the 300,000 Dutch people who came to see Max finish a whole race. It was an entirely avoidable error that put Verstappen in the wall, but also an entirely understandable one: he was driving at the absolute limit in an attempt to make something happen for the fans. My FanDuel bet on Lando to win the Sprint did not come through, to my immense sorrow. Notes:
Yuki was fantastic. In the Sprint, he was clearly more comfortable in the Racing Bull than Lawson was in the senior team car. He qualified within a whisker of Lindblad then finished ahead of him. The only reason he didn’t finish in the points was an absolutely indefensible “strategy” from RB that had him drive the same set of soft tires for… 40 laps? I think Yuki looks better in this generation of car than he did in the previous one. It would be nice to see Lance Stroll retire to management and hand his Aston Martin Honda seat over to Tsunoda. Speaking of Aston Martin…
Forza Alonso! The man is 45 years old and he drove a tractor into the points. If he had Hamilton’s seat he would be 13 points behind Antonelli and the heavy favorite going into the second half.
The luckiest driver in F1 is… Lewis, of course. Leclerc spanked him in the sprint and made quick work of him in the race to the point that Ferrari just let him circulate against a potential safety car… which of course arrived just when he needed it. This is the third time this year that Lewis has been promoted ahead of the competition due to a VSC or full safety car. And of course, Ferrari obligingly put Leclerc in the pitlane to make it easier for Sir.
George Russell is your #2 driver at Mercedes, it’s official. Mark your calendars; this was the weekend that Toto Wolff decided he was willing to let George finish behind both Ferraris in order to extend Kimi’s lead to more than two full races’ worth of points. I couldn’t believe it at the time. George had a little VSC luck of his own, but he fought like the proverbial lion to keep his podium. Sometimes I honestly think the team is sabotaging his car. He was so much better than Sir Lewis in their last year together. Is he really getting toasted by a 19 year old? Maybe.
The most self-effacing champion in history. During an interview this weekend, L:ando Norris basically said, “I’m making things tough on myself, I’m not doing a good job.” Frankly, I don’t see it. What I see is a driver who has matured by leaps and bounds in the last eighteen months, finally driving up to his much-hyped potential, making big moves and being smart with tire management. He has completely seen off the challenge from his mercurial teammate and he looks like a champion when he drives. I don’t think you can entirely count him out for this year’s crown.
Bread and circuses
Preservationists and conservators had raised concerns ahead of the contest, leading me to imagine creaking sculptures and rattling ceramics, all because the president wanted a race around the National Mall. Seeing the National Gallery of Art’s huge black Alexander Calder sculpture outside, surrounded by wood boards as if the poor thing were hunkering down for war, didn’t help.
But it turns out that playing art patrol is rather difficult at an IndyCar race, especially when you find yourself crammed into a sweaty crowd as blurs of color whiz by.
You know a Trump event is a winner when even the Atlantic and the NYT have to tip their caps in respect. By the way, I think the author here is referring to Gwenfritz, seen below in its original installation:
Rather than discuss the race itself, which was the typical Spec Vintage Dallara Bump N’ Run Fest, I want to talk about the idea of Gwenfritz and the “Freedom 250” co-existing in Washington DC.
Once upon a time, the purpose of “public art” was to recognize heroism and inspire the public. Think Nelson’s Column, or the Lincoln Memorial, or even Stone Mountain’s relief carving. The Soviets were big on a concept of public art that glorified the worker, thus all their huge murals of progress and whatnot, but they also had plenty of Lenin statues.
Gwenfritz is nothing like that. It’s a “stabile” by Alexander Calder, paid for and named for the wife of a DC real-estate developer. You would need to read and internalize about six art history books before you saw it as anything other than a random jumble of metal; some people read the books and still see it that way. The purpose of the sculpture was the celebrate the rich woman who paid for it. I have no belief that the general public enjoys or understands it.
For most of the past seventy years, “public” art and “public” culture has basically amounted to “stuff rich people like, or pretend to like, paid or facilitated by the American taxpayer.” The Trump Kennedy Center is the perfect example of that. Every year it showcases a full calendar of artists who are a complete mystery to 99.9% of Americans. The people who defend this stupidity will blather on about “bringing culture to the masses”, carefully ignoring that the masses cannot afford to live in the area and they can barely afford to visit. There is zero chance that some family from Poughkeepsie will stumble into a contemporary-dance performance at the Kennedy Center and become, I don’t know, enlightened.
In other words, “public” art and culture are a massive subsidy to America’s wealthiest art and culture enjoyers, and it has been this way since before I was born. The upper class has grown entirely too comfortable with the situation, which explains why they get so upset and snippy about UFC events and IndyCar races held in Washington, DC. Why… this is our town, not some white-trash circus!
You can dislike Trump all you want, and you can accuse him of doing everything from buying votes (for someone else?) to creating Commodus-style distractions from the more pressing issues of the day, but I find it absolutely wonderful that we are having these “lowbrow” events in DC. Newsflash: America is lowbrow. It is a country that, prior to its recent forcible reimagination as a dumping ground for the worst people the rest of the world has to offer, was resolutely middle-class, plain-spoken, and uncultured.
There should be events like the Freedom 250 continuously. If nothing else, holding such events might accidentally and/or occasionally expose our legislature to their constituencies.
Also, Gwenfritz sucks balls. It makes the Jeff Koons balloon dogs look like the David. If only Romain Grosjean could have somehow jumped a barrier and destroyed it. The French built the thing, they should also be tasked with its elimination.
Pronouned “Seh-leek-ah”
Everyone’s saying that the Celica is coming back as a 2.4-liter turbocharged AWD coupe, possibly with hybrid power. I would upgrade “possibly” to “certainly”, by the way. The obvious powertrain here is the Crown-grade, 340-horse Hybrid MAX four-banger. The enemy is equally obvious: Honda’s Quaalude, which is meeting its admittedly modest sales goals in the States while significantly exceeding projections back home in Japan.
It’s also commonly agreed that unlike the BR-Z and Supra, this is an entirely in-house vehicle. Which means it should be a little less exciting to operate than its badge-engineered showroom mates, but much, much better to operate in the long run.
If the Celica shows up and does well, perhaps Nissan will be tempted to do a smaller sporting car as well — although right now, you can get a base six-speed Nissan Z for just three grand above the price of a Prelude. The Z has literally twice the power. You gotta be a real Honda homer to buy a Prelude. Happily for the firm, such people exist, and they have their checkbooks out. Let’s hope the same thing happens at Toyota dealers.
For the record, I would happily put myself further into monthly-payment purgatory for any Celica with more than 299 horsepower and a clutch pedal.
The Sweden That Can Say “No”
When I first heard about Sweden deporting everyday Brits, I had to laugh because I figured it was some sort of ultra-ultra-ultra-leftist thing where they cheerfully bring in 150,000 machete screamers a year but focus maximum attention on old white folks. Turns out it’s a little more than that.
In perhaps the most clear-cut demonstration of large-scale suicidal ideation since Jonestown, the Swedes have willingly made the country about one-third foreign-sourced in the past twenty years. Some of the numbers are hilarious: Thai immigrants are 78% female, while 65% of Afghan immigrants are men. Huh. 163,000 people were let in during 2015; approximately 500 of them were arriving to work a pre-arranged job.
The voters have finally had enough so there’s been a sea change in migrant policies. It’s becoming far more difficult to obtain Swedish citizenship, and the country is offering $26,000 to anyone who will leave. (The fact that Sweden sees that as a net economic win should tell you something about the real effect of immigrants on an economy.) So-called refugees are now limited to temporary residence only. Under a new “informer law”, most state agencies are required to cooperate with deportation proceedings and to report the presence of illegals to the Swedish equivalent of ICE.
And yeah, they’re deporting British citizens who no longer qualify for residence under EU reciprocity laws.
I sometimes think we will look back at the years from 2000 to 2024 as an era in which our would-be overlords simply boiled the frog too fast, particularly with regards to open borders. It takes a lot to destroy a high-trust, completely placid country like Sweden. Had they, I don’t know, just brought in one-sixth of the population during those years, instead of one-third…
Man, they have really gone wild on the sex crimes, haven’t they? Maybe they haven’t handed out enough anti-rape migrant pamphlets or interracial sex cartoon guides?
The market for $29,000 e-bikes is one fat journalist and no one else
We’ve been covering the Harley LiveWire disaster here at ACF as long as there has been an ACF, and the latest news offers no hope of a reversal. The company’s stock is venturing dangerously close to sub-one-dollar territory. The firm has done two things to try to help this situation. The first was to buy another e-bike company, and the second was to further cut the price of their premium product to $13,999 from the original sticker of $29,799.
The acquisition of Dust Moto, known for their upcoming super-Surron e-dirtbike called the Hightail, shows that Livewire understands the future of electric motorcycles. That future, by the way, is also the present. There is just one e-bike that sells in serious numbers and makes money:
The Surron Light Bee, which sells for between four and seven thousand bucks depending on power and configuration, has become wildly popular because it is perfectly compatible with modern American anarcho-tyranny. It has no title or license and no one is quite sure where it’s legal to ride, so it has proliferated in cities and suburbs where the cops are too busy, or too lazy, to chase, catch, and impound them. If you had to title, insure, and plate the thing like most people do with a street motorcycle, the demand would drop to zero.
That number — zero — is also the actual demand for the LiveWire, whether the price is $29,799 or $13,799. This is not a fast motorcycle — it runs 110 in the quarter, like a Ninja 650. By the way, a Ninja 650 costs $7,599. This is not a motorcycle with a particularly long range — 70 miles at speed and you’re done diggy done. For perspective, my Super Blackbird needs about a gallon and a half of fuel to go that far, out of its 6 gallon tank. The Ninja 650 gets 50mpg and 200 miles from a tank.
Years ago I rode a LiveWire back to back with a Sportster S and my professional opinion was that you would have to be a raging moron to buy a LiveWire instead of a Sportster S. I cannot imagine who the buyer for a LiveWire is. Someone who lives in Brooklyn and commutes to Manhattan? But why not just get a Surron and have the ability to jump a curb? It has a 30 mile range in everyday use.
The other e-bike outfits — Zero, LAND, CSC — hardly even qualify as going concerns. Who knows if they’re shipping anything? You can’t find their product most places and when you do find it, there are cobwebs on the seats.
It seems obvious to me that in order for people to take electric motorcycling seriously, the electric motorcycle needs to be in relation to real motorcycles the way the Tesla Model 3 stands in relation to real cars. So:
Price has to be under ten grand, because there are plenty of great bikes brand-new under ten grand.
Performance has to be higher than that of the average ten grand bike. Which means it has to be higher than the performance of a LiveWire.
Range has to be 200 miles. Period, point blank, no excuses. Not because every motorcycle trip is 200 miles, but because a motorcycle you have to charge between trips starts to feel like a chore.
It should be reliable. Which most e-bikes kind of are, but the LiveWire has had a few problems.
Don’t expect any of the above to happen — but that’s what needs to happen. In the second quarter of 2026, LiveWire captured a robust 76% of the adult e-motorcycle market by selling 267 motorcycles, losing nearly $19 million in the process. You’d be a fool to buy a LiveWire now — but in that respect, today is no different from any other day.
All of the above being said, I am ready to buy a new LiveWire when the price hits $3,000. At that money, it would be an easy way to go into my local town for lunch. Chances are I’d ride it three times then go back to my SV1000 — but I am always ready to make a bad decision! Ask anyone! I mean, there are worse things to do with three grand than spend it on an electric motorcycle. You could, I don’t know, fund a play in Los Angeles!
certainly a few people have tried, which is all I will say on that.
"The man is 45 years old and he drove a tractor into the points. If he had Hamilton’s seat he would be 13 points behind Antonelli and the heavy favorite going into the second half."
Wherein I repeat my plea to Toto Wolf, whom we all know faithfully reads ACF under a nom de guerre:
Trade Princess George for Alonso and let him and Kimi race with no team orders and full parity of equipment. that will give Kimi a worthy mentor, Fernando one more shot at a WDC, and Mercedes no end of positive press and goodwill among fans. Even Sky Sports would stop it's 24/7 fellating of Hamilton and give the Silver Arrow some love.
Toto, this is a no-brainer. He has driven in one-third of _all F1 races in history_ and has a long history of dragging dogs to a better finish than they deserve. he's hardworking, loyal, and doesn't air dirty laundry or bitch and moan unless the team does something epically stupid. (Alonso whines less in an entire season than George does in a single race weekend.) He also has zero fucks left to give and nothing left to prove, so there'd be no ego and no bullshit.
OT:
I’m gonna be in Maine between Portland and Acadia/Bar Harbor for the next week to celebrate the wife and I’s first anniversary.
Anyone have any recommendations for things to do, places to eat, places to drink, or things to see?