Stan’s Obligatory Blog

3/29/2003

Yank Tanks

Filed under: — stan @ 2:39 pm

We saw “Yank Tanks” today. This was a documentary about the old cars in Cuba. The economic embargo after the Cuban revolution left a lot of pre-1960 American cars on the roads in Cuba. The filmmakers interviewed owners about their cars, and also visited the shops where the cars are maintained. Because of the embargo, parts are unavailable, so they have to make everything by hand. There is a whole cottage industry in making everything from windshields and chrome, right down to hand-made brake shoes. The audience was aghast when we got to watch Ito sifting the asbestos by hand for his home-made brake shoes, but we were all glad to see that the filmmakers gave him a mask to wear in the future. Overall, this was a tremendously entertaining film. About the only bad thing we could say is that it was shot in motion-sickness-inducing hand-held video.

Afterward, we had lunch at Zeke’s Smokehouse in Montrose. It was pretty good barbecue, although the service was a bit slow.

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