Fat Hack
08-22-2004, 10:53 AM
Should you find yourself in the Detriot Metro Area on the weekend of the Great Woodward Yuppie Cruise, there ARE actually ways to enjoy yourself without getting too close to the insanity!
First...do your actual cruising a few days BEFORE Saturday...you know...while traffic is actually MOVING and shit! You'll see one or two cool rides hidden amongst the droves of generic 'old cars' sporting really bad fresh red paint jobs and lane wandering yuppies in oversized SUVs...and you won't be locked into a dead crawl on a four lane road!
Friday night starts gettin a little crazy...but if you drag a buddy from Florida to The Blarney Stone bar and wait for your usual cohort to arrive there after work...you can get a few beers into ya to take the edge of and help deal with the crowds.
Next, the tree of you drift up (down?) Woodward to the...ummm...place where more bars are, and have a few MORE beers. You'll be feelin' good about now!
Soon, you may find yourself in a bar as a cover band takes the stage and launches into a myriad of 70s, 80s and 90s pop/rock tunes. They'll be infatuated with their rigs, of course...and will spend half of each song fiddling with the lights and soundboard while the Boy Beater rips through some Rhondstat and Madonna.
The band's sound doesn't actually change as they fiddle with the slide switches, and the chase patterns run by the multi-colored lights do little to augment the music, but they're still decent as cover bands go.
(Besides, the waitress looks hot and freely talks of threesomes...and there'll be a token Crazy Homeless Guy there trying to dance on the floor in front of the stage with the band member's girlfriends...so it's quality entertainment worth at least two beers!)
Onward!
Fleeing Woodward entirely at this point, you shoot Westward and find yourself in search of classless dives, and the interesting types that inhabit them. There's the Copper Door over on Inkster, and it's ordianrilly a decent watering hole, so you stop in with your comrades for a drink or two. They actually serve PBR in bottles (a genuine oddity in Detroit), but the only girls in the joint this night are going home with each other...and there's some really aggravating guy flanking DirtyT and spewing nonsense about his three second S10 or something...so it's back to the car in search of more stimulating action.
I may have mentioned elsewhere that cowboy hats are natural chick magnets...and this was true all night...even before they were being PAID to be into the hat. Dirty found a cowboy hat in the back of 4t64rd's borrowed wheels, and donned it early in the evening. Couldn't pry the girls' eyes off him all night...he was sorta like John Travolta in a cross between Urban Cowboy and Grease...the girlfolk were all over him!
Ever been to Henry The VIIIs??? Likely not, unless you reside in the picturesque community of Westland known affectinately as "Shacktown"...but it's the place to find some uhhh..."friendly female companionship" for about ten bucks a minute or so. I wondered if Dirty was EVER commin back outta that little room?!?
Hard to top that fun and frollic, so by 2am, we were ready to call it a night.
Saturday, we all piled in the car and headed to Charlotte, Michigan to visit the Brimm Reaper, aka "Kustombuilder" at his sprawling rural complex for a while en route to The Ionia Hot Rod Shop. The trip involved a few typical wayward Fat Hack creative navigational errors while trying to find a "short cut" around the traffic jam on I-94 due to the NASCAR weekend here, but after a few dirt road excursions and pleasant roadside chats with tractor riding old dudes, we were back in the game, AHEAD of the traffic snarl, and off to Kustombuilder's. Mike had a few projects in the works for us to check out, and was a cool host as usual. 4t64rd wasn't in Detroit but a few hours before he engaged in a proud urban tradition known as garbage picking, and he scored some HUGE outdoor lamps that he handed off to Kustombuilder for his shop. After scoping the F'nA, Donzie's Chevy, Levi Classic's Model A chassis, and a few other cars and projects on site, we headed off to Ionia to rendezvous with HotRodDrummer.
Man...if you EVER get the chance to visit Denny and Matt at the Ionia Hot Rod Shop, you've GOT to go. Seeing a few pictures of their work here and there on the HAMB and in the odd magazine clip now and then is one thing...but to check out their craftsmanship in person is just unbelievable! Their RPU project sports more interesting, subtle and trick little innovative touches than any ten cars at most other shops alone! I don't know how much they want revealed to the masses, but their work is simply mind blowing!
(Also present at the shop were a few other chassis for customers, and each exhibited the same meticulous attention to detail and drive for quality as their own projects. The amount of work they put into getting one little part "just right" puts most builders to shame...and the only sad part is that too much of their hard work will be covered by a body when the car is done. But, of course...the customer will have a car that they can DRIVE for decades without worry!).
After we drooled and fussed over all the cool stuff at the shop. Matt (HotRodDrummer) invited us to his local drinking establishment for a few "sendoff beers", and we naturally accepted! Met up with Charlie again (Matt's buddy who came down to Detroit with him LAST Summer for Denise's party), and we had a good time gabbing and trying to out-piss Cousin Billy Bob for a quarter! All too soon, it was back towards Detroit.
We arrived at Hillbilly Deluxue's (I think!) house just as the police were sweeping everyone off of Woodward and the surrounding streets. We nearly got run over by banzai motorcycle cops who verred their bikes up onto the sidewalk and tried to order everyone into their homes! The motorcycle cops were soon followed by cops on bicycles and even a cavalry of Boys In Blue on HORSEBACK! (Glad it wasn't MY street...someone's gonna have a mess to clean up!). After the flagrant Show Of Horse (err, I mean "Force"!), the cops left, and we snaked our way back through the leftover cruisers doing burnouts in front wheel drive ricers and headed home.
Soon, I'll be giving our own 4t64rd a lift to the airport, safely sending him off back towards real SUMMER weather in Florida, and DirtyT and I will score the NEXT Unholy Creation to rumble forth from the Hack & Dirty Shop!
I hope Mike (4t64rd) had a good time while re-visiting his childhood home and meeting some Michigan HAMBers...I appologize if I left out any activities you may have wished to indulge upon...hope your visit was a memorable one, at least!
So...with a little effort, ALOT of driving, some strategic stops, and ample quantities of beer, it is entirely possible to have a damn good time on the weekend of the Yuppie Cruise in Detroit! You just gotta know where ta go, who ta see, what ta drink and which dancer...oh well, you get the idea!!!
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif
First...do your actual cruising a few days BEFORE Saturday...you know...while traffic is actually MOVING and shit! You'll see one or two cool rides hidden amongst the droves of generic 'old cars' sporting really bad fresh red paint jobs and lane wandering yuppies in oversized SUVs...and you won't be locked into a dead crawl on a four lane road!
Friday night starts gettin a little crazy...but if you drag a buddy from Florida to The Blarney Stone bar and wait for your usual cohort to arrive there after work...you can get a few beers into ya to take the edge of and help deal with the crowds.
Next, the tree of you drift up (down?) Woodward to the...ummm...place where more bars are, and have a few MORE beers. You'll be feelin' good about now!
Soon, you may find yourself in a bar as a cover band takes the stage and launches into a myriad of 70s, 80s and 90s pop/rock tunes. They'll be infatuated with their rigs, of course...and will spend half of each song fiddling with the lights and soundboard while the Boy Beater rips through some Rhondstat and Madonna.
The band's sound doesn't actually change as they fiddle with the slide switches, and the chase patterns run by the multi-colored lights do little to augment the music, but they're still decent as cover bands go.
(Besides, the waitress looks hot and freely talks of threesomes...and there'll be a token Crazy Homeless Guy there trying to dance on the floor in front of the stage with the band member's girlfriends...so it's quality entertainment worth at least two beers!)
Onward!
Fleeing Woodward entirely at this point, you shoot Westward and find yourself in search of classless dives, and the interesting types that inhabit them. There's the Copper Door over on Inkster, and it's ordianrilly a decent watering hole, so you stop in with your comrades for a drink or two. They actually serve PBR in bottles (a genuine oddity in Detroit), but the only girls in the joint this night are going home with each other...and there's some really aggravating guy flanking DirtyT and spewing nonsense about his three second S10 or something...so it's back to the car in search of more stimulating action.
I may have mentioned elsewhere that cowboy hats are natural chick magnets...and this was true all night...even before they were being PAID to be into the hat. Dirty found a cowboy hat in the back of 4t64rd's borrowed wheels, and donned it early in the evening. Couldn't pry the girls' eyes off him all night...he was sorta like John Travolta in a cross between Urban Cowboy and Grease...the girlfolk were all over him!
Ever been to Henry The VIIIs??? Likely not, unless you reside in the picturesque community of Westland known affectinately as "Shacktown"...but it's the place to find some uhhh..."friendly female companionship" for about ten bucks a minute or so. I wondered if Dirty was EVER commin back outta that little room?!?
Hard to top that fun and frollic, so by 2am, we were ready to call it a night.
Saturday, we all piled in the car and headed to Charlotte, Michigan to visit the Brimm Reaper, aka "Kustombuilder" at his sprawling rural complex for a while en route to The Ionia Hot Rod Shop. The trip involved a few typical wayward Fat Hack creative navigational errors while trying to find a "short cut" around the traffic jam on I-94 due to the NASCAR weekend here, but after a few dirt road excursions and pleasant roadside chats with tractor riding old dudes, we were back in the game, AHEAD of the traffic snarl, and off to Kustombuilder's. Mike had a few projects in the works for us to check out, and was a cool host as usual. 4t64rd wasn't in Detroit but a few hours before he engaged in a proud urban tradition known as garbage picking, and he scored some HUGE outdoor lamps that he handed off to Kustombuilder for his shop. After scoping the F'nA, Donzie's Chevy, Levi Classic's Model A chassis, and a few other cars and projects on site, we headed off to Ionia to rendezvous with HotRodDrummer.
Man...if you EVER get the chance to visit Denny and Matt at the Ionia Hot Rod Shop, you've GOT to go. Seeing a few pictures of their work here and there on the HAMB and in the odd magazine clip now and then is one thing...but to check out their craftsmanship in person is just unbelievable! Their RPU project sports more interesting, subtle and trick little innovative touches than any ten cars at most other shops alone! I don't know how much they want revealed to the masses, but their work is simply mind blowing!
(Also present at the shop were a few other chassis for customers, and each exhibited the same meticulous attention to detail and drive for quality as their own projects. The amount of work they put into getting one little part "just right" puts most builders to shame...and the only sad part is that too much of their hard work will be covered by a body when the car is done. But, of course...the customer will have a car that they can DRIVE for decades without worry!).
After we drooled and fussed over all the cool stuff at the shop. Matt (HotRodDrummer) invited us to his local drinking establishment for a few "sendoff beers", and we naturally accepted! Met up with Charlie again (Matt's buddy who came down to Detroit with him LAST Summer for Denise's party), and we had a good time gabbing and trying to out-piss Cousin Billy Bob for a quarter! All too soon, it was back towards Detroit.
We arrived at Hillbilly Deluxue's (I think!) house just as the police were sweeping everyone off of Woodward and the surrounding streets. We nearly got run over by banzai motorcycle cops who verred their bikes up onto the sidewalk and tried to order everyone into their homes! The motorcycle cops were soon followed by cops on bicycles and even a cavalry of Boys In Blue on HORSEBACK! (Glad it wasn't MY street...someone's gonna have a mess to clean up!). After the flagrant Show Of Horse (err, I mean "Force"!), the cops left, and we snaked our way back through the leftover cruisers doing burnouts in front wheel drive ricers and headed home.
Soon, I'll be giving our own 4t64rd a lift to the airport, safely sending him off back towards real SUMMER weather in Florida, and DirtyT and I will score the NEXT Unholy Creation to rumble forth from the Hack & Dirty Shop!
I hope Mike (4t64rd) had a good time while re-visiting his childhood home and meeting some Michigan HAMBers...I appologize if I left out any activities you may have wished to indulge upon...hope your visit was a memorable one, at least!
So...with a little effort, ALOT of driving, some strategic stops, and ample quantities of beer, it is entirely possible to have a damn good time on the weekend of the Yuppie Cruise in Detroit! You just gotta know where ta go, who ta see, what ta drink and which dancer...oh well, you get the idea!!!
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif