It’s an election year, so that means pro and con messages about presidential candidates will abound on Route 66 in the coming months.
That includes at the famed Cadillac Ranch along Route 66 in Amarillo, where pop megastar Rihanna — the one with 250 million records sold in her career — spraypainted a message on one of the cars that disparaged President Donald Trump, who is running for re-election.
According to a report from one Amarillo television station, Rihanna left the message about 10 p.m. Friday. Below are a couple of Instagram images she posted, one which shows the message that contains an expletive a lot of grown-ups use.
A quick look over Rihanna’s Instagram feed reveals no other Route 66-related content, in case you’re wondering.
According to a follow-up report Sunday by the same station, Trump supporters painted those nose-down Cadillacs with their own messages.
Regardless of which side you’re on, any message painted on the Cadillacs has a few hours of life, at most, before it’s painted over by someone else. The online stories about Rihanna’s message and the Trump supporters’ responses will far out outlive their ephemeral spraypaint.
The late and now-disgraced local tycoon Stanley Marsh 3 (details about his downfall here) remains best-known for setting aside land near U.S. 66 in 1974 so the Ant Farm art collective of San Francisco could plant 10 vintage Cadillacs nose-down into Texas soil.
Marsh eventually encouraged visitors to spraypaint the rusty Cadillacs. When Amarillo’s sprawl began to encroach on the installation, Marsh in 1997 had the entire thing moved two miles west.
Save for the possibly the Big Texan Steak Ranch, Cadillac Ranch remains Amarillo’s most popular tourist attraction. It’s embedded into popular culture, including the “Cadillac Ranch” song by Bruce Springsteen. It became an inspiration to the Cadillac Range mountains in the Disney-Pixar movie “Cars” and has been featured in countless videos, photographs and television shows.
(Image of Cadillac Ranch by David via Flickr)
I am less interested in what Rihanna thinks than I am in knowing how many blades of grass are in my lawn.
There shouldn’t be politics on Rte 66