Local artist Spy Emerson tells the story of The Hook-Up Truck, her controversial venue for mobile safe-sex adventuring. The Hook-Up Truck is exactly what it sounds like: a four-wheeled, short-term rental space for sexual trysts on-the-go.
After a feverish year of news coverage from to , Emerson took a hiatus from the Hook-Up Truck for the next two years, turning down two offers from production companies wanting to option reality TV shows about her life. A career Bay Area artist of the absurd, Emerson is lauded in the underground scene for her vaudevillian, burlesque-esque performance series Happy Forever and her conceptual art projects, like Dystopic Horizons Realty, dealing with greed and the housing crisis, and Gutterbunny in Chinatown, a spiritual performance about a rabbit that escapes a Chinatown butcher.
Her inspiration came from the stories her friends told her about their experiences using dating and hook-up apps.
Emerson created a website pretending that the truck was already running, and within hours she was being contacted by CNN and Time. Emerson embarked on a frantic hunt for the perfect hook-up-ready vehicle. Soon, she found the perfect one: a decommissioned U.
Postal Service mail carrier. She offered to trade Hopkins her Volkswagen Bug in exchange for his postal truck, which she transformed inside and out. Emerson hit the road, though it would be a bumpy one. Word about the truck spread quickly in after the idea made the rounds on social media.
