Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Car show with bikes

Yesterday I entered my 03 TBA and my restored CB 125S in a local car show. Although it was a car show they welcomed bikes. Turns out there were only 7 bikes... two of them mine. Anyway, they had trophies for all kinds of categories including one for motorcycles. And I think... my pretty little 125 will earn a trophy if not my totally, majestically beautiful Triumph. But NO! A HD with custom paint won runner up, and a rat bike... a welder's nightmarish 84 Honda turned ch(b)obber won 1st place. Huh!? I mean okay... the HD had a fantastic paint job but the aged hacked up Honda rat bike with gold spray painted cables and twisted wrought iron hand rail pieces stuck on here and there and enough tackiness to last a millennium won top prize? Does this say something for the town I live in?

No, it says don't enter your bike in a car show. I went to a "Bike Show" near here
a few months ago and it turned out to be a combination bike and car show. I was
looking forward to that show for months and when my guys and i got there it was
a colossal disappointment.

Well, that and sometimes a rough looking bike that looks awful to you can look
just ugly enough to have the type of character that someone else finds attractive.
The good old days, that I didn't live in, when everyone wrenched on their own
bikes and fixed it by welding on scrap pieces to hold the thing together because
there were either no OEM parts to be found or no money with
which to buy them.

ahhhhhh, twisted metal parts (footpegs?). It's a classic, like adding a cowbell to a rock n roll tune

But now, Trail, BC seems like a nice place to me.

jh

Well, rat bikes are all the rage these days. This too, shall pass...

Depends who was judging. I've won shows I shouldn't have won and lost ones I should have won. In the end you're there so that the people who attend can view your bikes. If some mongoloid judge gives the trophy to someone else's bike and you don't show up next year, they may wonder why they have a whole bunch of salvage yard lookin' junk parked at their show and only 2 spectators with seeing eye dogs. I'm not saying don't give them another shot but human nature will dictate your choice in the long run.

Don't feel too bad, Keith.

Last year there were a number of bikes entered into the "Custom" category at a local vintage motorcycle show here in SoCal. Most of the bikes entered in that category were shiny Custom V-Twin Choppers(yawn), BUT there was an absolutely beautiful "NorVin" cafe racer(a Vincent engine stuffed into a Norton "Featherbed" frame) among them.

I would've bet that the NorVin would've won goin' away, but nope. One of the V-Twin Choppers with a wild paint job on it won, and the NorVin only took third place.

Yep! It kind of reminded me of what the New York-based journalist H.L.Mencken[1880-1956] is famous for saying: "Nobody ever went broke under-estimating the taste of the american public."

But, wait a minute here! You're up there in CANADA, aren't ya???

(well, I guess British Columbia is just too dang close to Washington State, eh?!)

car shows are like surveys bike shows are like surveys you know the outcome befor you ask the question

Thanks Dwight... ya made me feel better. I can appreciate a pretty gal when I see on and I took two with me to that show last Saturday. I guess our bikes can be compared to a good book. People with bypass a good book at the newsstand just to read National Enquirer. That's kinda what happened at the car show the other day.