We were in Liverpool on Monday, the last Bank Holiday until Christmas. It was a warm sunny day and while we were strolling through the Liverpool One shopping centre we spotted this rather jazzy Beetle.
Liverpool never misses a chance to take a collection of objects, paint them up with different designs and leave them in strategic locations around the city – all starting with the 125 two-metre-high Superlambananas during Liverpool’s Capital of Culture celebrations in 2008. So this looked like it might be another series.
Not quite. In this case there were only 3 VW Beetles that had been decorated to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, when 100,000 musicians, artists and hippies flocked to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Three artists had been commissioned by Liverpool One to create images on the cars. The first one we saw, on Thomas Steers Way, was painted with a psychedelic design by Kieran Gorman from Zap Graffiti.
The other two cars, both on Paradise Street, were painted with Beatles related themes by Krishna Malla .
One based on the Beatles song, Penny Lane, selected following a vote for the Liverpool public’s favourite song from 1967.
I lived near there for a year when I was at University. I loved the green Liverpool Corporation buses – but they all went when the “deregulation” was enacted by the Thatcher regime. Now all the local colour of municipally owned bus companies has gone, replaced by the 2 or 3 national monopolies with their uniform liveries across the country.
And the second Beatle Beetle, celebrating the Sergeant Pepper LP that was released in 1967
Here’s the Fab Four
and a list of the songs on the LP
Down by the Dougie 