Crowns in cars
Matt Agnew
Several cars around where I live (Burlington, VT) are now sporting crowns
(yeah, like a king would wear) on the rear deck. Anybody know if this is
some gang thing or something?
Jes wunnerin'.
Matt
Oliver Wendell Jones
In message <322651...@together.net> - Matt Agnew
<mag...@together.net>Thu, 29 Aug 1996 19:27:12 -0700 writes:
:>
:>Several cars around where I live (Burlington, VT) are now sporting crowns
:>some gang thing or something?
Y'know, I thought that too for a while... then I thought maybe they
were a give-away from Crown Royal or something... but I finally found
out that their just some new commercial car-air-freshener type thing.
Sorta the 90's version of the pine tree on the rear view mirror.
Bricklayer
They are all over Charlotte, NC. I think it is a "Black" thing as well.
I've seen no whites with these in their cars.
Kenichiro Tanaka
> Several cars around where I live (Burlington, VT) are now sporting crowns
> (yeah, like a king would wear) on the rear deck. Anybody know if this is
> some gang thing or something?
They're air freshners--you see them a lot in Pittsburgh, too. They seem to
be popular among older black people.
> Jes wunnerin'.
>
> Matt
| Kenichiro Tanaka -- tan...@maya.com |
| http://www.maya.com/Local/tanaka/ |
Joseph S. Allmond
Oliver Wendell Jones wrote:
>
> In message <322651...@together.net> - Matt Agnew
> <mag...@together.net>Thu, 29 Aug 1996 19:27:12 -0700 writes:
> :>
(snip)
Where have you'all been? These were popular a few years ago in the
Delaware area, and are pretty much passe at this point.
Seemed to be sort of an urban thing - available at your local friendly
Pep Boys store, K-Mart etc.
Never heard anyone talk about how well they worked, they just looked
cool, I guess.
Regards,
Joe
Lee Rudolph
For your edification, here's some research done by an AFU hearty
a little over one year ago, with a useful newspaper reference
a little less than two years old.
Lee Rudolph
--begin archived post--
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 10:02:47 -0500
From: Steve Patlan <tex...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>
Message-Id: <1995081515...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Actual *data* on Car Crowns
Okay, I went looking for the "fist" freshener last night, but the stores
near my condo are too snooty to carry it. I'll drop by a more bohemian
area of town tonight to verify that they are made by the same company.
In the meantime, I can report that the Crowns I *could* find are made by
the Allison Corp, Livingston, NJ.
Verification - An article by Susan Gregory Thomas in the Sep 16, 1994
Washington Post (Wow, September), excerpted below, (c) 1994, The
Washington Post.
======= Begin Quote =======
[ SNIP! ]
To some, however, the aesthetic theory is a bit simplistic, even naive;
no one, they argue, would buy those crowns just for their looks. Which
brings us to the second theory: The crowns hold special significance for
particular ethnic, religious or cult groups.
'I heard some bad things about that crown. I heard the KKK makes them,'
says an employee of a District automotive store who did not want to be
identified. He points to the laurel wreath emblem printed on top of the
boxes containing crowns. 'See that? The Klan wears those.'
'I think it's Jamaican,' suggests a cab driver, who wishes to remain
anonymous.
'Those crowns? Oh, yeah, I've seen a lot of Pakistani guys with them,'
says another.
'Oh, you see those everywhere in Chinese cab drivers' cars.'
'It's very, very Catholic.'
So, what is the answer?
Fact No. 2: They're mass-produced in Taiwan.
[ SNIP! ]
Fact No. 3: The crowns, which run between $4 and $7, are distributed by
Allison Corp. in Livingston, N.J. -- the company that brought you fuzzy
dice and beaded car seats.
'We've sold over a half-million of them since we started marketing them
a year ago,' says sales manager Mark Solis. 'And I would say that with the
crown, we're looking at a whole new generation of car air fresheners. It's
beating fuzzy dice.'
======= End Quote =======
The KKK and "African Tribe Identifier" rumors have obviously been around
almost as long as the product itself.
Additional Information, courtesy of the American Business Disc and the
Thomas Register:
Allison Corp
630 W Mt Pleasant Ave
Livingston, NJ 07039
Founded in 1960, has 300 employees, and exports to Latin America &
the Caribbean, the Middle East and Western Europe
Tel: (201) 992-3800
Fax: (201) 992-3095
Toll Free: (800) 526-2572 [ I assume this is a customer service number ]
President: S.M. Seltzer
Sales V.P.: S. Dennison [ Might be a different person now, this ]
[ listing is older than the WP article ]
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to call the Allison
Corp and ask them them if they wear pointy hoods in the office, do their
products make black men sterile, did they president of the company
appear on the Donahue show in a Nazi uniform, etc, etc. Maybe they will
start printing a disclaimer on the box or something if enough people
call them and ask the same question.
Steve "But *I* didn't tell you to do it" Patlan
--end archived post--
SJF 36
<<They are all over Charlotte, NC. I think it is a "Black" thing as well.
I've seen no whites with these in their cars.>>
Funny, I saw it first in the cars of various Latina/Latino people I know.
My first assumption was that it was some sort of car shrine.
Regards from Deborah
(a/k/a fin...@a1.tch.harvard.edu)
Soon to be SJF37. Please don't say I didn't warn you.
edwin utermohlen
my bet is that those crowns are actually air fresheners.
curt...@airmail.net
Believe it or not, those are air fresheners. .And you thought it
was somew kind of conspiracy.
Matt Agnew <mag...@together.net> wrote:
>Several cars around where I live (Burlington, VT) are now sporting crowns
>(yeah, like a king would wear) on the rear deck. Anybody know if this is
>some gang thing or something?
>Jes wunnerin'.
>Matt
Daniel P Tasman
(reprinted without permission)
A Crowning and Mysterious Achievement
by Michael Keating
March 1995
American Demographics
Crown Air Fresheners have been mistaken for Catholic icons and symbols of
gang membership. But even the manufacturer doesn't know why this product
has caught on.
What are those crown things on dashboards all over America? You may have
seen the bejeweled, softball-sized crowns in taxicabs in New York City or
in trucks in Kentucky. The Crown Air Freshener has breathed new life into
the $370 million air-freshener industry, which has been stagnant since
1990. American Auto Accessories of Corona, New York, the Crown's
manufacturer, sells more than 10 million of the dazzling diadems a year in
the U.S., Canada, and abroad.
"A lot of cabs in New York City use them because the drivers say the Crown
looks like a religious symbol," says Jayme Kowalsky, assistant general
manager of American Auto Accessories. "In fact, we have church deacons
buying the Crown by the case so they can pass them out to their
congregations for car or washroom use."
Yet the Crown's maker has done little to target the air freshener to
religious people or other consumers. Since the product was introduced four
years ago, American Auto Accessories has relied on word-of-mouth
advertising, dealer magazine ads, and trade-show exhibits to spread the
word. The Crown isn't designed to appeal to a specific age, race, ethnic,
or income group. "I've seen them in new Mercedes and VW Beetles from the
1970s," says Kowalsky. "We've never marketed the Crown toward one
particular group of people or geographic area, even though it sells very
well in the South."
Test marketing Crown models isn't exactly a big-budget process either. "We
show the new models around the office and ask employees what they think of
them," Kowalsky says. "We are a multicultural company. If a new model
appeals to [people here], it will probably sell elsewhere."
Is this approach the equivalent of marketing roulette? Hardly, says Bill
Sharp, president of Sharp Advertising in Atlanta, an agency that
specializes in minority and urban advertising. "It sounds like they've
rifle-shot their message to the exact target audience that's likely to
give the greatest response for the lowest investment," he says.
Yet the popularity of the Crown remains somewhat of a mystery. Some
consumers say it serves to remind them of the crown on the Catholic
Church's Infant of Prague statue; others peg it as a Christmas
decoration. Still others believe it represents the dark side of urban
life--gang membership and prostitution.
For a young adult interviewed by The Courier-Journal newspaper in
Louisville, Kentucky, it symbolizes the "kings that African-American men
come from, [and] the kings that we can be." And it smells good, too.
Sales of the Crown should continue to grow, according to John Battle,
managing editor of the trade magazine Aftermarket Business. Americans are
keeping their cars longer before trading them in, and "as cars get older,
they get mustier," he says. "This air freshener can also help disguise
cigarette smoke."
Perhaps it is the Crown's openness to interpretation that makes it so
popular. What signals "king of the road" to one driver can be another
car's tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. Now if American Auto Accessories
can just get the Pope to endorse the Crown...
--
Dan Tasman tas...@acsu.buffalo.edu http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~tasman/
UB School of Architecture and Planning http://www.arch.buffalo.edu/
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. |
| indeed, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all." |
| Odgen Nash, Song of the Open Road |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Daniel P Tasman
> Several cars around where I live (Burlington, VT) are now sporting crowns
> (yeah, like a king would wear) on the rear deck. Anybody know if this is
> some gang thing or something?
In Buffalo, the crown thing started about three years ago. At first, they
were displayed mostly by blacks - you would often see three or more crowns
on a dashboard. The UL then - it identified gang membership, and the
number of crowns signified rank in the gang heirarchy. I predicted that
the trend would be over in about a year, because some rumor would emerge
that the things cause sterility in black men or that they're made by the
KKK, in the same plant where Liz Clairborne and Troop fashions are
produced. No such luck.
About a year later, they became popular with the "guido" crowd, and you
spotted them in a lot of IROCs and Monte Carlos (they probably replaced
the Playboy air fresheners that those cars were previously known for.)
Now, you're seeing them in cars owned by Asian Indian immigrants, and
occasionally, next to the Infant of Prauge statues on dashboards of cars
owned by older Catholics. (If you haven't been to Buffalo, the car Infant
of Prauge statue is a sight you'll never forget - it looks like a little,
standing baby Jesus in a wedding dress, and it's _immensely_ popular.)
However, the great majority of crowns are still seen in cars with
African-American drivers.
I've heard rumors that there's now similar air fresheners that look like
fists and guns, but I haven't seen them myself. Tomorrow, I'll head
down to an auto parts store on Buffalo's East Side and see if I can hunt
one down.
My thoughts - it's just urban auto kitsch, like license plate frames that
look like they're made out of chains, excess gold and chrome trim, 1962
Thunderbird-like s-shaped thingies placed besides to the rear side
windows, and those wing-shaped radio antennas. I wonder, if in some
predominantly black newsgroup, people are posting "What's the deal with
white folks and those "NO FEAR!!!" stickers they all have on their cars?"
SummaWine
These royal air fresheners have been popular in the Bahamas for at least
four years. We first thought they were a vehicular talisman, used by cab
drivers as protection against bad tourist vibes!
PaulWalto
From American Demographics via Daniel P Tasman:
<<The Crown isn't designed to appeal to a specific age, race, ethnic, or
income group. "I've seen them in new Mercedes and VW Beetles from the
1970s," says Kowalsky. "We've never marketed the Crown toward one
particular group of people or geographic area(...)">>
Thus proving that people from all walks of life can have no class.