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Draped in flowers and sashes, the ramshackle Sixties time machine had makeshift scaffolding, a ladder in back, and a traffic cone wrapped in colorful fabric in front to resemble a unicorn's horn.
The side was painted in rainbow stripes, the front fender in pink.
Atop the party bus was an easy chair, a cooler and a clutch of riders.
The customers might've considered it groovy, but the fuzz didn't dig it at all.
Turns out the group was headed from Brooklyn to the Mountain Creek Waterpark in Sussex County, Fair Lawn Police Sgt. Brian Metzler said.
That's roughly a 2½-hour ride, minimum.
How they made it more than halfway through busy Bergen County before authorities noticed is anyone's guess.
The same goes for why anyone would sit in the noontime sun on a day when the heat index pushed into triple digits -- or, of course, why anyone would risk roof-riding in the first place.
A reader reported seeing them on the West Side Highway in Manhattan 40 minutes before it passed through Paramus.
Paramus police radioed ahead to their colleagues in Fair Lawn, who stopped the jalopy on northbound Route 208.
The minibus owner/operator received a summons for riding on an area of a vehicle not intended for passengers, said Metzler, the Fair Lawn sergeant.
Police also told them not to do it again, he said.
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