One place that I remember going when I was younger was over in Daytona Beach called “The Rat’s Hole”. I was so fascinated with these place, it had all sorts of neat stuff from a guy name “Big Daddy” Ed Roth, he was an artist and cartoonist who created the hot-rod icon Rat Fink and other extreme characters. This store was inspired from all his Rat Fink art work, I loved the grotesque caricatures that were typified by Rat Fink and they were depicting imaginative, out-sized monstrosities driving representations of the hot rods that he and his contemporaries built.
I remember buying a couple of patches with these caricatures driving hopped up hot rods. This was really the only thing my parents allowed me to buy when I was in the store. I remember seeing all the shirts and posters that he created, it was not a store a small kid should have probably been in at the time, I remember see some very seedy people roaming through this store.
I remember how much I loved that crazy art work and each time, we went to Daytona Beach, I wanted to go there. I remember seeing or touching something once that lead me out of that store and never returning again. I cannot remember what it was but my parents were yelling something at me and each other which ushering me out the door.
I would have never guessed how much of a real icon “Big Daddy” Ed Roth was back then until much later on when I older and could see his impact on the art world. He was and still legendary.
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