Pomona is always a great way to start off the show season. Everyone has had a few months to prep their car and square away all of the little details that they've been neglecting, and the fact that Pomona is a primarily an indoor show makes people step up their game just a little bit more.
For my wife and I, however, GNRS is a show that pushes us to our limits. We vend at car shows and run a shop for a living, so while everyone else has been taking time off and vacationing, we are just a few days off of our busiest time of year when it's time to take on Pomona. Wiped out of merch from Christmas, and with me in my first week classes, our trip to Pomona is always challenging, to say the least.
This year was no different. With two stores open now, we spent the few days before Pomona arranging someone to be at each shop, and stretched the little inventory that we had to fill each location.
I'll spare you the intricacies of our loading, because I'm sure that it's as boring to read as it is to write. I will add, however, that because I had class during the day and we had to pack between two shops that are about an hour apart, we weren't loaded up until 10:00 at night.
We left the Bay in a hurry to make it down I-5 to hopefully outrun our exhaustion and push on pure adrenaline from the prospect of a fantastic show. I had been following the coverage on the HAMB, and was psyched for the opportunity to see such an impressive collection of famous and historic cars all under one roof. Pushing on through the vacant Central California, we drove all night through 100' visibility fog at a snails pace to get to Southern California. We got on the 210 at about 3am on Thursday morning, and exhausted, we checked into our quaint hotel in Claremont, a few miles down the road. For those who do car shows for a living, the goal in finding a room is to be close enough to get into the show in the morning, but far enough out to be anonymous and away from the party. Staying at the host hotel might be fun for a few hours, but those of us who get up early to work the show the next day need just a little bit of solace.
We crashed in the room for a couple hours, then rolled out to the Fairplex around noon on Thursday to go set up. After a few SNAFU's in line, we made it into the show, got to our building, and set up the booth as we always do.
Suede Room: Set-Up day
After a few hours, I couldn't take it any more, I absolutely had to poke my head into the History of Customs building. Josie and I ran in the building, and I took a quick inventory of what was there: A Larry Watson tribute, a few bubble-topped Ed Roth cars, a few Barris customs, and a handful of neat but unfamiliar customs. Dazed and overwhelmed, we walked through the room, scanning as quick as we could for my all-time favorite custom car of all time- a radical early sixties custom 55 Buick known as "The Busonic".
The room was completely overwhelming. At any area of my vision were cars that I could drool over for literally hours at any other venue, but here, the sheer volume of amazing cars forced you to limit your vision to take in only a few things at a time. At any other show, just one of these cars would make it worth any price of admission, but here I found myself brushing off historically and autobiographically important cars to me to find The Busonic. This car stands alone for me. I love everything about it's history, it's evolution as a custom, and it's eventual restoration. I love it in the original Bronze, and I love it in it's 1964 lime green. This car fucked me up since I first saw it in a magazine when I was in High School, and cemented permanently my love of Custom cars. Seeing pictures of this car back then is why I'm here today, working on ridiculous builds and loving the hell out of it.
I'd recognize it anywhere. Cadillac Wire rims, Distinct Home-made Nerfs/Bumpers, Busonic Bronze, Metalflaked Scallops.
And there it was. Hood popped, doors opened, trunk popped. No ropes were up yet, and with the same caution an archaeologist would use entering a newfound tomb, I approached it. I was awestruck. A familiar face was standing in front of it, a man who I've seen around at cars hows for the past several years, and have only known as "Chico Von Spoon". He was taking a picture of it, and so was I. He said something along the lines of "Yeah, I don't normally take pictures of my own car." I laughed a little, thinking he was making a joke. I asked if he new much about it, and he said, "Yeah, a little. You ever see how the door poppers work?" and hooked up the battery cable.
Holy hell. He wasn't kidding; this was his car. I was dumbfounded. "Chico", or Jimmy, as he introduced himself, has owned the car since the late 90's. He was totally cool about showing off all it's little eccentricities, like the original custom interior, the micro-switches in the side trim, and he even hit the Hydraulics for me. Keep in mind, this is one of the first cars to ever to have hydraulics installed. I was awestruck, I couldn't really say much. He offered to let me come out to San Jose and see the car in person, so look forward to a proper write-up on this historic custom in a future article. I was amazed.
Detail Shot on the Wheel- They didn't let one inch of this car go unfinished.
Look at the spacing on the perforated steel. That's hand drilled, not machine punched:
I've always loved the headlights, those are one-off, not just some chrome bezel from another car. Every bit of this was thoughtout and well executed:
Fully Chromed Nailhead:
Still sporting the original custom interior from 1962, with real fur:
The tailfin exhaust is fully functional:
We were able to snap a couple of shots in the room. Like I said, it was completely overwhelming. Imagine you were starving, and all of a sudden you walked into a buffet full of your favorite foods; there would be no way to take it all in.
The Trendero. Another one of my favorites, in as-found condition:
The Watson display was incredible. It was crowded, so I didn't get too many pics
Coby's van was incredible. I felt a little intimidated to take pictures of it because I knew that no matter what Coby would have better shots of it. For anyone unfamiliar, please click the Church magazine link on the side, it's a work of art:
Keeping on the "Van" theme, this awesome vendor's vehicle was parked outside the building:
Setup day came and went, I walked about in a daze after seeing my all-time favorite car in person. We went back to the hotel, starving from not eating at the fairgrounds all day. I went to a grocery store, and came back to the room to find a refrigerator only; no microwave, toaster, or any way to heat the frozen food that I bought. We improvised, and I had a veggie burger cooked on the room's iron. It turned out way better than one would think. If you find yourself ironing your pants in a Claremont hotel room someday and they end up smelling like Boca burger, now you know why.
One of the highlights of the show, the premiere of RJ Diaz's Riviera "The Mothership". Amazing candy work by the LBCC's Alex Valdez.
I loved the scallops on this 55 Chevy:
Who says they need to be street rodded to be cool?
Sweet Dodge:
Another highlight was Eryk Frias's amazing 1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass, "Hush Hush". Another breathtaking Alex Valdez paintjob. Eryk runs the LBCC message board, if you're not on it, check out the link on the side and do so.
Show pipes, candy panels, and Rockets. If this doesn't get you excited check your pulse:
Lots of flake in Building 5
While we were running the booth down in Pomona, Mike LaVella, the publisher of Gearhead magazine was running the Berkeley store for us up North. About half way through the day, he texted me a picture of himself hanging out with one of my closest childhood friends, so for the rest of the day I tried to one-up him by sending him pictures of me hanging out with his friends.
Me & Juan Espinoza, of Deadend Magazine:
And with Jesus:
And of course, I had to raise him Justice, one of the greatest kids in the world:
Josie had some fun harassing Vintage Klass
She joined it, raising the bar with Vern from the Burbank Choppers:
And then she put us all to shame with the dreaded "triple-up":
That's Scott Mugford of Blue Collar Customs, Von Franco, and Skoty Chops. Game over.
Jack Rudy recently did the awesome script logo for our shop, for which we will be forever grateful. We printed up some shirts with his logo, but made him a special "Beatnik Purple" shirt to say thank you. Jack is one of the nicest guys in the Tattoo world, and it is an absolute honor to have his art a part of our shop.
After the show, it was back to the hotel, I ate another "iron burger" and crashed on the bed, exhausted.
Saturday was great, there were even more cars there at the Drive-in portion of the show, but bound to our booth I didn't get to see much of it.
After the twelve hour show day on Saturday, Josie was beat.
I took her back to the hotel room, and I headed out into night to go meet up with some friends for a BBQ/after party. Goozgaz, the President of the Los Boulevardos Car Club, hosted in his backyard in El Monte, and it was a great time. I'm always amazed by the quality of the people that this car "scene" draws in. My sides still hurt from laughing, and while I didn't take many pictures from the BBQ, the few that I did are priceless. Bretto, from Canada, decided to mark his trip to LA permanently on his ankle, and a very drunk Stoney apparently decided he was up to do it, prison style in Gooz's garage.
The LA tattoo turned out better than one might think. In exchange, Stoney decided it was only fair to have Bretto tattoo him back, and someone, Eryk I believe, convinced him that getting a Maple leaf would make sense. Stoney said do it, and here's the result:
Everyone would stop in and check the progress of the prison ink and drop their best insult/joke, leave and refuel, then come back to fire again. My personal favorite:
"Dude, is he really doing it?"
"Yeah man, they just started."
"What's he getting?"
"Staph infection."
I had a blast, these guys are the best. I got back to the hotel around 12:30am, and woke up at 8am the next day to return to the show. Sunday is always slow, Awards in the Suede room (where we're at) are Saturday, so things die out in our building pretty early. As it turns out, Albert Hammond was wrong, and it rained pretty heavily on Sunday. We snuck in a couple more shots as the day went on, but not a hell of a lot. I have a ton of respect for anyone who has the guts to show their car in the rain, so these guys deserve all the credit for sticking it out.
Here's some random shots from Sunday:
Dig the striping on this Galaxie wagon:
This was on the wall of the Womens room. I hope it was a joke:
We packed up at around 6pm, and eventually I lined up at the gate to pull in. If if wasn't raining, I would have hand-trucked our stuff out to the parking lot, but wanting to keep our merch sellable, I waited. The thing that sucks the most about this show is move out on the last day. It's a predominantly indoor show, and there are a TON of inclosed trailers that want to get in and pick up their car, so we all have to wait together. It's always a clusterfuck, and I'm suprised that no one has ran down a security guard yet. I waited for about an hour in line to get in, and finally things got moving. I had thought I was in a parking lot, but once my line started moving, all of the other vans/truck in the "lot" fired up and started moving too.
We packed it all up and were out of there by about 9:30, back on the road to get home to the East Bay. I drove like a bat out of hell, well, at least like a bat out of hell might in a fully loaded cargo van. I fucked up my voice screaming through our AFI playlist, and was goddamn happy at 3 when we rolled down the Altamont. There's nothing quite like the warm glow of the Livermore Valley after a trying weekend in Southern California. We were back to Oakland around 4am, and I was up at 7:30am running to catch the BART train for school Monday morning.
I'd like to give a tremendous thank you to Axle and Celeste for putting our Suede building together, and to Luke Karosi for helping make the History of Customs display the SINGLE BEST collection of cars I have ever seen under one roof. An extra thanks and everyone from the Los Boulevardos Car club for being great people and awesome hosts at the after party, it's an honor to prospect for you guys. Last but not least, a tremendous and honest THANK YOU to Mike LaVella for being a stand-up guy and helping out while we were gone.
Thanks for reading.
-Nic
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