I post photos from the Tucson Classics Car Show every October. Looking back at older posts, I see most are simply titled “Car Show Photoblog.” Which makes it hard to tell car shows and years apart, since I also post photos of two other annual car shows, the Barrett-Jackson Auction in Scottsdale and the Collector Car Show on the golf course at Tubac. I’ll try to do better on titles, starting with this post.
This year’s Tucson Classics Car Show was held, as always, on the grounds of the Gregory School in Tucson. Every year the show seems more crowded. Now I have a touch of crowd agoraphobia anyway, but I can suck it up when I have to. It is irritating, though, when people keep wandering into my viewfinder, blocking the objects of my desire.
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Worst are the clumps of old coots who insist on standing right in front of this or that car while swapping long stories about the days when they drove similar ones … look, Nostalgia Man, every swinging dick in his 70s drove a 1950s car back in the day.
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Except for thoughts like that, which I keep to myself, I’m polite and patient. Eventually the rubberneckers will move on and I’ll get my photo. Others are not, like one guy who was actually barking at the lookie-loos: “Can you move? Trying to get a photo here.” Jostling and shoving is not a problem, as it is at Barrett-Jackson … but it’s getting there. For room to breathe, the car show at Tubac is my favorite; Gregory School is second, B-J is utterly hellish (so bad I actually skipped it last January).
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Over the years I’ve lost interest in identifying cars I shoot at these shows, unless they’re of particular interest to me. So the photos here, and in the main collection on Flickr, are unlabeled. Hardcore types will know what they’re looking at anyway. I don’t need to know the specific year and model of a car, or the horsepower and displacement of an engine. I appreciate the art of these beautiful old automobiles; that’s enough for me.