Though they're just for show, hubcap replacement is brisk business after winter weather

This is the season when birds sing, raindrops lose their winter sting and the rhythm of the roadways becomes thump, clunk, cha-ching.

The birds and showers you recognize. The thump comes when your tire hits a pothole, the clunk comes when your hubcap pops off and hits the curb, and the cha-ching follows when you visit T.J. McCann.

"Pothole season is hubcap season, and this year those holes are killing them," said McCann, the hubcap man whose "Almost New" wheels, tires and hubcaps emporium glistens with chrome on New York Avenue near the old Hecht Co. warehouse and the nightclub LOVE. Like neckties, hubcaps once served a purpose that has generally been obscured by the passage of time. Now they are an adornment and an expense. Potholes are to hubcaps as ketchup is to neckties.

The abundance of potholes after an egregiously cold and snowy winter is no surprise. More than 9,400 have been filled in Northern Virginia, where the populace has been enlisted in the fight. In Maryland, state road crews have patched 2,500 yards of potholes on numbered highways in Montgomery and Prince George's counties so far this year. A square yard of pothole patch can fill several of the smaller critters.

The District has filled more than 1,300 since launching "Potholepalooza" on Friday, providing a daily Internet update on progress.

Potholes are a hot-button political issue, right up there with snow removal. Local candidates have been known to build their campaigns around promises to fill them, so even in these fiscally challenging times, elected officials are eager to see asphalt flow.

This apparently was not lost on a company in Miami that sells asphalt. It launched a clever marketing campaign called "The Spoken Wheel" about two old adversaries: potholes and hubcaps.

The Web site trumpets headlines like "Deceased Hubcaps Found Across Northeast." They followed up by mailing pizza-sized boxes containing battered hubcaps to newsrooms. Each one came with a coroner's toe tag attached, relating the pothole encounter that led to its "death."

Better roads could save millions of hubcaps, said a release in the box. A plea from the dead hubcap said, "My fellow hubcaps crashed and burned into a small molten pile of aluminum."

Truth be told, most hubcaps these days are plastic made to look like chrome or brushed aluminum.

They once served a purpose. The first cars rolled on converted wagon wheels. Wheel spokes connected to an inner hub that rotated around the axle. That hub had to be amply greased, and to keep the grease from escaping, the hubcap was born.

Before long, quieter, smoother rubber ruled. The steel wire-spoke wheels also required hubcaps, which grew larger and more fancy, often with the manufacturer's name stamped on them.

Wire wheels made a weird whistle, so hubcaps were expanded in size to cover and quiet them. Bigger than mere hubs, they were called wheel covers, a fancier name still favored by many a car salesman.

Hubcap collecting soon followed. McCann has an impressive collection on his fence beside the business he opened 11 years ago.

"A hubcap is going to run you $20 to $75, depending what it is," he said. "That's a lot cheaper than what you're going to pay at the dealership."

McCann is a second-generation hubcap merchant. His dad had a place at Florida Avenue and North Capitol Street.

All caps are not equal in encounters with potholes, he said.

"Some manufacturers don't make them as well as others," McCann said. "We sell a lot of Toyotas and a lot of Crown Victorias -- that police-car type vehicle."

He drops a worthwhile factoid: Factory hubcaps are held on by more vulnerable plastic clips, but after-market replacements usually have sturdy metal clips. McCann says he gets some new hubcaps from wholesalers and buys "almost new" ones from people who walk in his front door.

"A lot of times somebody will come in looking for a cap I don't have," he said. "So, I sell them a set of after-markets and they trade in the three old ones."

Kenny James, Washington native and Upper Marlboro resident, came to McCann's lot with a common and more vexing problem. His 1988 Buick had popped a hubcap on a New York Avenue pothole, but he needed a special hub-lock wrench to replace it.

"Not only did he save me," James said, pointing to McCann with his newly purchased wrench, "he trained me in how to use it. There still are some huge [potholes] out there, so I'm holding onto this."