The Iron Horse is great to wander through, cars were tucked into every nook & corner. Every turn and under every shady overhang had another great car. We wandered, visited with friends, sampled homemade rum from an unnamed source, and did a little shopping. I bought a cool DeTiki "Tiki Gardens" purse. Tiki Gardens was a South Seas Polynesian Theme Park over on the west coast on Indian Shores Beach in the mid-sixties. Sadly, like many other fantastic shrines to tiki it is no longer standing. However, this purse feeds my love of vintage Florida kitsch. Also pictured is the absolutely amazing freshly carved tiki I won in the raffle. It was a bountiful day for this Metiki Gal.
Slip & The Spinouts provided live rockabilly for most of the afternoon. Hats off to them for performing in this heat. I haven't seem them play in over a year - they are a tight trio with a great line-up of rockabilly classics and a little Johnnie Cash thrown in. On a side note, Slip has the best sideburns in the state - truly a work of art.
After enjoying the music and shopping, we really dug into the cars. We were an hour and a half from our home turf. The array of fresh cars we had never seen was fantastic. I love to see all the custom touches on these rides. An abundance of automotive genius was put into these classic rides. The crowd favorite was The Matador, a 50+ year old custom that was recently refreshed. It had so many groovy space age mods. The seat rests looked like rockets.
One of the highlights of the show was watching all the cars drive in. It's so neat to see a row of hot rods sitting in traffic. The custom bikes were also a treat. I can imagine the Iron Horse is truly a house of debauchery during Bike Week.
I found many tiki items on the cars but this was my favorite, the spark plug metal smoking tiki. I looked at those metal tikis at a swap meet in Daytona and passed them up. Now, I could kick myself.
The flat black militia of hot rods was running very high at this show. Love the old school look; flat black, a little chrome, white walls and a little bit if red on the wheel. Classic formula that works every time!
We finished out afternoon watching the awards and Pin Up Girl contest. All the gals did a great job on stage. Loved hearing about the dream vacations, although I did chuckle a little when listed hers as North Carolina. I guess to each her own.
This was a great show. I've been to all the Rumbler's shows for the past several years, I remember it at Cowboys & Bruce Rossmeyer's in years past. The Iron Horse was by far their best show yet. The quality of Hot Rod & Custom shows in this area is sometimes lacking. If we could have a show like this every few months, I would be in heaven.
This was an A+ car show day - a little alcohol, some tiki, great rockabilly music and a heavy dose of good old hot rod lovin'. Keep those tiki mugs filled with high octane fuel and be on the look out for The Metiki Gal.
