Sparkling street rods at the ASRA Cruisin' KC Car Show in Riverside

BHo played a basketball game in Riverside Saturday morning, so we decided to try and catch the American Street Rod Association (ASRA) Cruisin’ KC Car Show, which was held right next door to the basketball complex at the E.H. Young Riverfront Park.

When we drove to the entrance of the park, a nice gentleman walked up to my window and asked for $7.00 per person to go check out the show. I glanced over at my wife, who had absolutely no interest in being there, and decided to take her home instead of paying the extra seven bones. I’m not saying that I’m cheap, but, well, I’m cheap. It takes like a month for these line ads to add up to $7.00 on this blog. I’m not wasting the money on someone who doesn’t want to do it.

I’m actually kind of glad she didn’t want to go, because when I came back to the show to look around, I learned that there really weren’t that many cars there. That’s a little bit of a puzzler, because you see more street rods at local car shows and cruises than you do trucks, for example, but they can fill this same park from stem to stern with trucks during the All-Truck Nationals show later in the year.

It seems like there was quite a bit of promotion. I ran across the listing everywhere I looked when I was putting the weekly calendar together. And there were signs and posters all over the dang place.

I guess cost could be a factor. It’s $25 or $30 to enter a car. ASRA membership is $25. I was a little bent out of shape because I had to pay the seven bucks. But heck, for as bad as the turnout was, I’m surprised they were able to pay the rental fees on the park.

The thing just has a “feel” of some outside organization trying to make money as opposed to a fun, locally centralized event. I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe they could work with a local charity, or get some heavy cooperation from a local car club. I know these types of events need to charge fees to make them possible. Sometimes the presentation just needs to be tweaked to really make them successful.

I really shouldn’t complain that much, though. There were some pretty nice cars among the ones that showed up. Pete & Jakes had a couple of great cars in their commercial display, including a very cool ’37 Ford woody wagon. There was a bright red ’47 Ford convertible that cast a pretty shadow (although I think I caught the owner with his cranky pants on when I tried to talk to him), and I really liked a certain black ’40 Ford coupe, complete with Flathead V8, black tires, and Deluxe Ford hubcaps.

For the lovers of all things rustic, there were a couple of pre-war Ford pickups, and if you like original, there was a very nice ’40 Mercury. Normally I’m not a huge fan of fender skirts, but ’40 Mercurys have such weird rear wheelwells, I actually think they were a nice addition to that car.

I managed to squeeze out a cool 150 pictures from the Cruisin’ KC Car Show, and you can see them all in the slideshow below.