Greenport Native’s 'Peace Beetle’ Enhances Her Life

Karen Lieblein says she refuses to "live life in a fishbowl."

And, driving around as she does in the true spirit of a late-1960s hippie in an elaborately painted 2001 green Volkswagen Beetle, she really doesn’t have a choice.

Lieblein, 38, is a native of Greenport, a mother, a preschool teacher and a customer service representative for Positive Promotions in Hauppauge. But most people know her as that lady with the flower power car.

“I’m a Deadhead from way back,” she said. “You’d always see cars covered in stickers at Grateful Dead concerts, so one day after I got the car, I said ‘What the heck?’ and started painting it.”

Lieblein said that she’s painted different scenes on the vine-and-butterfly-covered car whenever she’s been inspired by local scenery.

“I’ve painted at the end of Rocky Point Road, at , at — whenever the moment had moved me,” she said.  “It’s just regular oil paint on a canvas — it’s just a very different canvas.”

Now a resident of Mastic Beach, Lieblein said she still takes her 12-year-old daughter, Maegan, out for drives to the North Fork in the "Bertha Bug" — named so after a Grateful Dead song. Patch caught mother and daughter this week filling up the peace bug at the BP gas station in Peconic and couldn’t resist an interview.

We weren’t the only ones. Lieblein loves the attention.

“I can’t stand fishbowl syndrome,” she said, referring to the way most people go about their daily lives with blinders on to other people. “Everyone waves to me or acknowledges me in a positive way most places I go — it’s amazing how many positive people I’ve met because of my car.

“We all have bad days, but this car pulls me right out of the trivial things that make us mad,” she continued. “I want to write a letter to Volkswagen and tell them about how happy this car has made people.”

Go to the car's Facebook fan page here.