If you like your music angry, your women tattooed, and your beer, uh, Pabst, you belonged at the 2011 Greaserama car show at the Boulevard Drive-In in Kansas City, Kan. Sure, there were a bunch of--how can I put it delicately--freaks there. But they were nice freaks, and certainly seemed to know how to have a good time.
Of course, I've been there several years in a row, and as it turns out, I know a lot of people there, so perhaps I'm a bit of a freak myself.
One thing is for sure, my crusty, original, paintless '63 Chevy pickup fit right in. There had to be 20 trucks like that out there. There were also lots of rat rods, low-buck hot rods, skull heads, and primered '60s cars with Spider Caps. Some of them were very nice. Some of them were very awful. But all of them were interesting in one way or another.
Host club Los Punk Rods bills this as a "traditional" hot rod show. I guess that's more-or-less true. I mean, I didn't grow up in the late '50s/early '60s, but I've been the custodian of my dad's
Car Craft/Hot Rod/Rod & Custom collection for the past 30 years. And while some of these old high-boys and '40 Fords are spot-on, I don't know how many '59 Edsel four-door sedans with plastic skulls glued to them were traditional when traditional was contemporary.
The fact is, the cars might be an excuse to get together, but they are not the reason. These folks are just here to have fun. And they manage to do it regardless of the conditions.
For example, when we showed up on Saturday evening, the theatre was packed. I mean, there were cars in danged near every spot, from right up next to the screen to the very last row, and along every edge surrounding the lot.
I started taking pictures for the slideshow, and got about 60 in the memory card in my camera ran out of room. You see, I had been at the Goodguys show earlier in the day, and I guess I took a few more pictures than I thought. So while I was standing there deleting pictures, the battery went dead. I've never had either one of those things happen before.
Obviously, I wasn't carrying a charger around, so I had to switch to Plan B, and figure out how to take pictures with my cell phone.
That's when it started to rain. A lot.
So there I was, clicking away with my phone, watching that damned little red circle slowly spin around and think after every picture, getting drenched like a rat, in a parking lot that had turned to mud, hoping to get as many shots as I could before it got completely dark. The lengths I go to for my readers ...
Surprisingly, the pictures came out pretty well under the circumstances. And there were less people standing in the shots, because most of them were smart enough to sit in their cars or go under a tent. As it turned out, there are about 450 Saturday night pictures down there, and I'm not totally embarrassed to share them with you.
But I wasn't done--oh no. This is a two-day event, and I was back again Sunday afternoon. This time, I brought my seven year-old son BHo, and left my freshly charged and picture-free camera in his hands. And he took another 274 pictures, all from a better perspective than I ever could.
Sunday was quite a bit different than Saturday night. There were understandably fewer cars, because that's just what seems to happen on these two-day events. But the weather was fantastic, and it brought out a few nicer cars that you wouldn't expect to see sloshing through the rain and mud.
In addition to the car show, they had an art show, live music, Butch Patrick (the guy who played Eddie Munster on the
Munster's TV show--BHo caught him chuggin' a beer), movies after dark on the big screen, several vendors, and much more. This really is unlike any other car show we go to.
Check out my Saturday night slideshow, and BHo's Sunday slideshow below. And mark your calendar for next year, when you can come celebrate your inner freak with the rest of us.
Craig's Saturday slide show:
BHo's Sunday slide show:
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