As the longest tenured photographer working for the National Basketball Association, 57-year-old Andrew Bernstein has seen his share of playoff action.

But before assuming his current position as director of photography for Staples Center and Nokia Theatre, Bernstein took a memorable trip to Europe in summer 1994 with NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal, two years before the all-star center signed with the Los Angeles Lakers.

“I used to fly around the world with him on these Reebok junkets and go from one city to the next,” Bernstein said.

One leg of the breakneck tour involved flying into Athens, Greece, late in the evening. Even though O’Neal had to be up early for a press conference the following morning, he and his entourage, including Bernstein, decided to hit the town.

“Needless to say, none of us got much sleep,” Bernstein said.

Everyone made it to the event at 9 a.m., but O’Neal probably regrets not brushing up on Greek history beforehand.

When a local reporter asked him what he thought of the city’s famed Acropolis, O’Neal turned to his bodyguard and asked, “Is that the club we were at last night?”

“There’s always something with Shaq,” Bernstein said.

Dream Car … With Bed

For five years, Dave Hall has driven his art car around Nevada’s Black Rock desert for the annual Burning Man art and sculpture event.

Hall, 47, who builds furniture from antique aircraft parts as co-owner of MotoArt Studios in El Segundo, first brought the art car to Burning Man as a bed that he made from two DC-9 passenger jet wing stabilizers and the wing flap of a C-130 military aircraft. He hoped to sell his Mile High bed for $35,000.

It didn’t work. While others there loved the bed, no one would pay the hefty price, he said. So Hall turned it into a drivable bed by fixing the bed on top of an old golf cart and installing a steering wheel up through the mattress. Hall then drove it around as an art object.

“People say it looks like something out of ‘Star Wars,’” Hall said, because of the highly polished chrome that reflects the desert when he drives it.

But this year, Hall has decided to forego Burning Man and has set his sights on one of its offshoots – AfrikaBurn – in South Africa.

“We’ve gotten all this press and we never sold one,” Hall said. “Everyone loves it, but who can afford a $35,000 bed?”

Staff reporters Omar Shamout and Carol Lawrence contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].