Ah! The front cover gives a pretty good explanation: "All of us have to reveal our inner selves once in a while - Sometimes that just might mean smiling at a stranger for no reason - or whistling - A rarer breed likes to dress up as cabbage leaves or sunflowers - or wear Hawaiian leis or diapers - But there are few authorized times for that - What do you do when you have a full Samurai outfit and no place to go - Or a bird's-eye view of Sydney tattooed above your kidney - How do you say - I am alive - if you are a sixteeen-year-old ghetto kid - That's only the beginning - California has always had more than its share of - grand eccentrics".

A great, GREAT bk. Kinetic sculpture race, 'outsider' architecture, costumes, murals, folk sculpture, graffiti, neon, church fronts, shaped buildings, giant donut signs, art cars, homemade ads, all sorts of fascinating signs of creativity largely done outside of the art world. Oddly, my copy has rubber-stamped inside: "NOT FOR RESALE DISTRIBUTE THRU BALTIMORE CITY HEALTH DEPARTMENT". ( )