a line of yellow carsRolling Through Temescal with the Yellow Car Parade

By Matt Dibble


Paul Allen walked up to his ’83 Volvo sedan one day and found a card stuck under the wiper blade. You have a yellow car, the card simply stated—a fact that Allen was already aware of. Flipping the card over, he found an e-mail address and an invitation to join others of his persuasion in a groundbreaking event: the Yellow Car Parade.

The address belonged to Shane Montgomery, a 35-year-old Oakland artist who has sought out yellow cars and their owners for the past two years.Through flyers left in cafés and laundromats, Craigslist postings and newspaper articles, he hoped to filter from the chromatic chaos of the Bay Area roadscape an instant community all vibrating to the same hue.

“Everyone wants to be in a parade,” says Montgomery. “This is their chance to say ‘I’ve got a yellow car, so I better step up and do it.’ ”Though he has no yellow car himself, Montgomery is “curious yellow”to see who turns up, and how they do or don’t resemble one another. “I want to celebrate individuality through this arbitrary collision of something they have in common.”

It’s 11:30 a.m. on parade day, and the artist and his team of yellow-clad helpers are busy erecting a makeshift reviewing stand and stringing a banner across 49th Street. “Things are kind of crazy right now,” says Montgomery. “I hope some cars are arriving.”

Three blocks away, at a staging area appropriately next to some famous Golden Arches, yellow cars begin to materialize like the first daffodils of spring. As parade staff members circulate with clipboards, car owners—many of whom wore yellow clothing for the occasion—stand proudly near their vehicles and admire each new one as it arrives.

Herman Jacobsen is used to drawing attention with his canary-yellow ’62 dune buggy.“I drive it three or four times a week. I go to the store, and by the time I come out, there’s always a few people looking at it,” says Jacobsen, who epitomizes the aging hippie look. Riding with him today are daughter Karen and granddaughter Tabitha, who both like the way the car seems to make people happy. “This is actually his third yellow car. All his life he’s had one,” says Karen.

Tony Sousa, dressed entirely in black with a Raiders wristband and an ancient bulldog at his side, is showing off the ’67 GMC pickup that he completely restored. “It was a dairy truck from the San Joaquin Valley.When I found it, it had been up on blocks for seven years out behind a barn. It was originally yellow, so I wanted to keep it that way.”

“My car is the star of the neighborhood,” says Kristie, whose VW Beetle is named “Lola” and sports a pink boa. “My neighbor came running one day and said, ‘I’ve been waiting to see you for three days. There’s going to be a yellow car parade and you have to go!’

“I used to have a little gray Prism, and it was a depressing car, and I was in a lot of accidents. Once it was in the shop getting fixed, and I had to rent a car, so I rented the happiest car I could find, and it was a yellow car.That’s why I got this one.”

A vintage Volkswagen Dasher is here with owner Nik “The Greek” Zeritis, who bought the car new in 1974. Nik, who is 90 years old, came at the urging of his new bride of two months, Isabel, who says, “That little car survived better than his wives. I’m the third.”The Dasher has also survived some crashes and now sports several shades of yellow. But Nik is in luck, because Isabel’s family is in the auto body business.

Impresario Montgomery announces that it is time to begin, so I hitch a ride with Nik and Isabel as the cars form a line along 45th Street. There’s a Lotus, a mini-bus, a Corvette and a yellow Harley. Everything from “runs good” to cherry classic is on parade today. As each car reaches the reviewing stand on 49th Street, MC Jon Brumit announces it to a small audience. “Next up is Danielle, driving a ’98 Mustang GT. She’s a Leo, likes bananas and collects ducks.”

The parade route is roughly the perimeter of the Temescal neighborhood. Nik is driving, and Isabel assures me that he got a 100 percent on his driving test this year. He is doing great, but we all feel stressed when a light turns red and we are momentarily separated from our flock.

One can almost see thought balloons emerging from the heads of pedestrians stopped in their tracks: Coincidence? Event? Why? As we roll past Broadway Auto Row, car salesmen emerge and scratch their heads.

The parade is over all too soon, and now every yellow car must fend for itself to find parking on the crowded city streets, because at the end of this yellow brick road there is a barbeque. “I was pretty terrified that no one was going to show up,” says a very relieved Montgomery. “But it worked: For the bystanders, it was an arbitrary rupture of the norm, and the participants enjoyed each others company.”

There is heady talk among the Yellows of another parade next year, or perhaps a cross-country trip. But Montgomery himself is not sure how long his Yellow Period will last. “To be democratic, we might have to pick another color next year.”

E-mail Matt Dibble at beingthere@oaklandmagazine.com