Kiwi Tinbender and I went to the Portland Roadster Show on Saturday. He introduced me to several club members from the Slo Poks CC and the Estranged CC which was cool, since relocating back to the PNW from Montana, I moved away from that solid group of friends built up over a couple decades. I don't spend as much time on the HAMB or take as many pics as I used to....
Really appreciate the pics. Couldn't make it down this year. (I was there a couple or three years back when there was a gun show next door. Cost a lot more to get into the Roadster show.)
Looks like you got shots of some of my favorites this year. Cruised through Friday night after work and had the Kindig boys sign a shirt for my son. That Cheetah tribute looked like a blast! Sent from my XT1585 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
The show was well worth the price of admission for me, an indoor show with a nice selection of cars and relatively close to home is a treat. I really liked the Slo Poks group of cars, the way they give each other a good-natured hard time and lack of ego reminds me of my friends back in Montana.
I missed it. Me and Kitten were chasing down a gas pump for our collection. I was very pleased to hear Mama Joyce Johnson and The Cherry Bomb get inducted into the Portland Roadster Show Hall of Fame.
Am I the only one who's gonna put a negative spin on this year's show??? The second and third buildings were half full.... and half full of ____ at that. First building = exactly what I expected....sort of. The photos above captured my favorites (the white 34 OMG!!!), but.... The 40'x80' display of literal shit rods I could have done without - my two favorites of which had: first - 5' tall zoomie headers made out of 1"x2"x0.120" wall rectangular tubing (may have been 3/16" wall, I didn't spend a lot of time looking)...welded together by someone that made my welds look like the best in the business.........no header tube braces, no shielding gas, just 60lbs of structural steel tubing dangling off the engine in several 45* arrangements, several feet up in the air and outward from the car.......... and second - the roadster contraption thing sitting on a deeply Z'd Model A frame....which they decided to fashion a triangulated gusset in the kickup from expanded sheet metal??? (photo for reference on what this stuff is) I believe this car also had round tube radius rods butt welded to square steel, butt welded to a nut for adjustment of the heim joints... Just... How? Naturally, the display of shit rods drew the largest crowd of the Portland people admiring how cool and artistic and badass and whatever other words I heard everything was. Sigh.... Moving on... Second building = huh? ATV dealership crap and a T shirt booth the size of my apartment sitting next to a semi truck....semi truck was nice, but I question why it was at the roadster show. I realize not everything at the show should be HAMB friendly, but nothing in this building made me stop and look. Third building = literally a ghost town. There were about 6 cars all the way in the back corner, the Slo-Poks cars (which I enjoyed thoroughly, don't get me wrong) right in the front as you walk in, and a line of daily driver type beater pickups on the back wall. The rest of this room was empty, unless you want to count the 396 yards of red carpet all wadded up all over the place... SO... make a lap around the Slo-Poks stuff and... done. Was there when they opened at noon on Friday, and I was home sitting pissed on the couch by 2PM. Honestly I have never been more disappointed at an indoor show in all my life. Last year and the year prior were excellent. The sad thing is there are so many local cars that are awesome, but they don't make it into the show... Anyone care to comment on this? Why is there hoards and hoards of history squirreled away throughout the PNW and the roadster show is at 1/2 capacity? A friend of mine made it to the Salem Roadster Show this year and said it was excellent - cars from SoCal all the way up into Canada, and by invite only. What's the deal with Portland?
I can honestly say that I went through the show and thought that I had missed a room somewhere. It's great that a wide range of cars made it under the roof to keep some interest in the craft but some definitely should have been registered in the different strokes for different folks class. I skipped over the "rat rod" section myself and I have my doubts that Lonnie Gilbertson would have allowed a late model Lincoln Town Car with some sort of motorcycle front end stick welded to it inside the building had he been running the show. Cool that the entrant participated with his club and has desire but Portland's Saturday Market may have been a better venue for the rig. Always good to see interest from the high school kids that were in the 3rd room and the competition between the schools. We all had to start somewhere, there's plenty thread entries here on the HAMB showing just that over the years. I hadn't been in a few years, it was a good way to kill a few hours after work while waiting for my girlfriend's flight to arrive from NYC late on a Friday night. I took the show in to be entertained. I had my favorites and enjoyed it for the most part without dwelling too much on why I was scratching my head over a certain entry/effort. I simply moved on Sent from my XT1585 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Thanks for the pics. Appreciate it that you took the time to post and share.It's good for us guys from O.S. to see what is going on. Thanks again.
Hey Tim! You O.K? Break another Skateboard deck on the way in? Yeah, I get it. I went with no expectations this year, and so I was pleasantly surprised that there were about a dozen or so cars that I really liked. With my discounted admission, I figure I was in for about a buck a car. Good Enough. I just blanked alot of stuff out, I guess.......as usual...... Had fun seeing people I like, though. Scott (Verbal Kint) and I had fun, got to hang with my bud Guy for a while, and made it work. Even ate a bowl of Ice Cream!
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