Greenwood Car Show Seattle 2013

  I wanted to go to the Greenwood car show this year (for my first time). It is a huge event and I usually avoid Seattle crowds, but I knew a couple of cars there this year so I decided to brave it from 10am to 1pm.  I heard there were going to be over 800 classic, vintage and custom cars parked over 1 mile along Greenwood Ave.  I was told we were going to have to walk a ways from parking as Greenwood is an old neighborhood with minimal accommodation for this kind of event.  But I go there a lot to drop off film at Moon Photo so I knew just the right spot to find parking.

  We started at 81st and went East. This street was nearly the center of the event. Our first impressions of the show were low riders and BIG RIMS. You might as well paint rubber on those rims and call it done. The rest of the cars didn't seem to be organized in any particular way. There was a group that showed up in numbers like some 20+ European micro cars that took up nearly one side of the block. I was hoping to see a Studebaker group. I did see a cream colored Avanti II, and a black Champion. But a real treat was discovering a 1955 President Speedster that was/is everything right about Studebaker style, sans fins.  I had a nice chat with the owner - Bill Brough - who loved to talk about his car. I asked him if I could look at the door to the gas cap as I'm trying to adjust the springs and hinge on mine.  Somehow we got on the subject of engineers and he had to admit he was an Ergonomist. He was playing with us as we were trying to figure out what that was. Turns out, it's the applied science of equipment design; it makes sense this car would appeal to him, but, that's my bias speaking.  He gave me a nice printout about the car with specs and a website to see more pics:     

www.waergo.com/stude/stude.html.  

Thanks Bill, you're awesome.

  My neighbor Steve, restored a 1936 Dodge he calls Olive.  We found his car but no sign of Steve. After a few returns we decided he must be hanging out at the beer tent, or perhaps the "Seattle Medical Marijuana" truck parked down the street, just kidding, Steve. We did finally catch up with him at home.

  My son got a kick out of the Scooby doo "Mystery Van" complete with Fred and Scooby, but he had his dream realized with the presence of two Morgan three wheelers, an older one and the new one with the 2 liter, fuel injected "V" twin by S&S bike engine of Wisconsin, go USA/GB.  I could tell that my son has been watching me take photos. He got down and close up to the car/bike for lots of interesting pics.  Taking a lot of photos of something is a good way to learn about it.  I'm glad he is interested in these kinds of concept cars.

 We decided it was time for lunch then to head home.  We stopped for street side Pizza. While my son and sister ate their pizza, my daughter and I were targeted by a slight little man who claimed he was from Vietnam. He sputtered on and on through what was left of his teeth about someone named "Badang".  Since I was waiting for Jim to finish eating I just stood there trying to make any sense of what he was saying.  The fellow was kind enough, just maybe a little shell shocked or something. He was actually really sweet, just really off that day. I have a family member like that, I hope other people are kind to him sometimes too.  We finished our lunch then headed back to our car. It seems that once we had gotten our fill of cars we could look up and see what else was going on.  The street had gotten packed and we didn't get to see the rest of the cars, but we had our fill, and really enjoyed it.