{"id":14083,"date":"2014-01-17T16:19:18","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T23:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=14083"},"modified":"2014-01-17T16:27:27","modified_gmt":"2014-01-17T23:27:27","slug":"a-day-with-the-car-nuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=14083","title":{"rendered":"A Day with the Car Nuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday I passed my annual tour guide recertification at the air museum. An evaluator watched over my performance in front of a group of visitors and I somehow managed to squeak by. To celebrate, I spent Thursday in Scottsdale, Arizona. What’s in Scottsdale? The Barrett-Jackson Classic Car Auction, of course.<\/p>\n

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Part of the midway, auction tent in the background<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This was my third Barrett-Jackson: I went in 2009 and again in 2012. The weather, as you can see in the photos, was blue-sky perfect with a high of just 75\u00b0F … it was almost as if the city of Scottsdale had made a deal with the devil. I wore long pants, a long-sleeved T-shirt, a floppy hat with a 4-inch brim, and plenty of sunblock. Except for strolling back and forth across the midway, though, I spent most of the day under cover inside the display tents, ogling the cars.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how long Barrett-Jackson has been holding these annual auctions. I assume they started small and grew over time. Ever since I’ve been going they’ve seemed more like state fairs to me … state fairs with cars instead of livestock. The annual Barrett-Jackson event is Scottsdale is, I think, the Big Kahuna: the largest collector car auction in the world in acreage, number of cars for sale, number of outside vendors, and sheer numbers of spectators.<\/p>\n

In 2009 and 2012 I went earlier in the week, before the auction itself had begun … the cars were there but the crowds weren’t. This year I went after the auction had kicked off, and the crowds were immense. My midway photos don’t do them justice. Inside or out, I couldn’t take more than ten steps before having to dodge someone else. I had to force myself to be patient when I saw cars I wanted to photograph … people kept stepping in front of my camera, some obliviously, some on purpose. Outside on the midway, a vendor was selling Cohiba cigars out of a trailer, and guys were smoking them everywhere (I have a theory about guys who smoke cigars in public, and that theory is that they are assholes).<\/p>\n

I never have done well with crowds, and I’m getting worse at it as I get older. Other than too many people, though, it was a terrific day. If you’re any kind of car nut, this event is not to be missed.<\/p>\n

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Another midway view, car tents on the right<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was going to say Barrett-Jackson is a man thing, but there were plenty of women there, to all appearances as enthusiastic as the men. Everyone dresses down in Arizona and you can’t tell the high-rollers from the hoi polloi … until you go into the auction tent, that is. The high-rollers are the slobby-looking folks drinking martinis up in the skybox. My people are the slobby-looking folks\u00a0drinking $10 beers in plastic cups down in the bleachers.<\/p>\n

My complete Barrett-Jackson 2014 photoset<\/a> is up at Flickr if you’d like to look. I’ll post a few thumbnails here to give you a taste; clicking on them will also take you to Flickr.
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Wednesday I passed my annual tour guide recertification at the air museum. An evaluator watched over my performance in front of a group of visitors and I somehow managed to squeak by. To celebrate, I spent Thursday in Scottsdale, Arizona. What’s in Scottsdale? The Barrett-Jackson Classic Car Auction, of course. This was my third Barrett-Jackson: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,555],"tags":[55,544,54],"class_list":["post-14083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-local-color","tag-classic-cars","tag-collector-cars","tag-old-cars"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14083"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14095,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14083\/revisions\/14095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}