{"id":1409,"date":"2009-01-15T14:47:40","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T21:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=1409"},"modified":"2009-01-16T09:02:39","modified_gmt":"2009-01-16T16:02:39","slug":"photoblogging-barrett-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=1409","title":{"rendered":"Photoblogging Barrett-Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Steel<\/a>
Steel and wood (Plymouth)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So how’s Barrett-Jackson?\u00a0 About like it is on TV, only keener.\u00a0 I was there all day Tuesday.\u00a0 That night in Phoenix I bored my daughter Polly to tears watching B-J live on Speed, saying “I saw that car,” and “Oh, that one too!”\u00a0 Wednesday night, back in Tucson, I did the same thing to Donna.\u00a0 So far none of the cars I photographed have come up for auction, so they didn’t have to hear me say “Look! I took a shot of that one!”\u00a0 That’ll probably happen tonight . . . ah, I suddenly understand why Donna felt it was so important to go visit friends tonight.<\/p>\n

Donna probably would have enjoyed walking around the B-J grounds, and next year I’ll try to talk her into going with me.\u00a0 The venue \u2014 Westworld in Scottsdale \u2014 is enormous, the size of a respectable state fair or small military base.\u00a0 In addition to the auction hall itself, which contained three display wings packed with cars, vendors, food & drink courts, even boats and aircraft, there were five football-field-plus-sized tents covering the cars and trucks up for auction, not to mention outdoor vendors, food stands, and displays.\u00a0 A miniature Las Vegas for car collectors and gearheads.<\/p>\n

\"Barrett-Jackson<\/a>
Barrett-Jackson tent city<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

B-J caters to boomers.\u00a0 My fellow gawkers were old, flabby, under-dressed . . . I felt right at home.\u00a0 Except for not having any money.\u00a0 Which you would need to buy anything at B-J, down to and including bottled water ($4).\u00a0 I didn’t see any famous people \u2014 no Jay Lenos or Orange County Chopper guys \u2014 but I saw Amy Whats-Her-Face, the semi-famous and attractive B-J bidders’ assistant (B-J’s secret weapon, deployed only when high rollers start to bid) from a distance, and heard her sing the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of the auction.\u00a0 I was obscurely disappointed to discover she has a twangy Texas accent.\u00a0 I used to love Texas and Texans, but a series of sucker punches delivered by Bush, Enron, Halliburton, and Big Oil have left me rather short of breath.<\/p>\n

I was happy just to be near all that beautiful machinery.\u00a0 I had hoped to see some restored orphan cars<\/a> \u2014 Nashes, Kaisers, Hudsons \u2014 but there were only a few Studebakers and Packards mixed in among all the Big Three iron.\u00a0 The collectors are buying up muscle cars from the 60s and 70s, and the tents were full of them, but I’m interested in older stuff.\u00a0 I’ll start with a few radiators, nameplates, and radiator caps:<\/p>\n

\"Pontiac\"<\/a>
Pontiac (with the Chief himself on the radiator cap)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Austin\"<\/a>
Austin (a boat-tail Bantam, not much larger than my Goldwing)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Cadillac\"<\/a>
A pre-General Motors Cadillac<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Dodge<\/a>
Dodge Brothers (did 1920s fundies go after Dodge over that occult-looking emblem, like modern fundies went after Proctor & Gamble?)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over time, radiators and radiator caps evolved into grilles and hood ornaments:<\/p>\n

\"Packard\"<\/a>
Packard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Packard\"<\/a>
Another Packard (with a better view of the "Goddess of Speed" hood ornament)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Pontiac\"<\/a>
Hot-rodded Pontiac (the Chief lit up at night . . . how cool is that?)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Cadillac<\/a>
Cadillac (wi' great tracts o' land, aye)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Plymouth\"<\/a>
Plymouth (a stylized Mayflower, headed for the Rock)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of the most memorable features of 1950s cars included . . .<\/p>\n

\"Woodies<\/a>
Woodies with acres of real wood (Packard)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Non-plastic<\/a>
Metal death-on-impact dashboards (Pontiac)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Portholes!<\/a>
Portholes (I think they were actually called "ventiports," and higher-end Buicks had four per side while lesser models had three)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"And<\/a>
Fins (DeSoto)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A couple of other things that caught my eye:<\/p>\n

\"Flathead<\/a>
Flathead V-12 in a Lincoln Continental (the "Hot Rod Lincoln" of song was a stripped Ford Model A with a Lincoln V-12 engine)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Vendors\"<\/a>
Vendors (not real antiques, but reproductions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"More<\/a>
More vendors (also reproductions, but I wouldn't mind having one in my garage)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I spent the evening sneezing and blowing my nose at Polly’s apartment in Phoenix (she has two cats and a parrot).\u00a0 Here we are at a restaurant near her place:<\/p>\n

\"Dinner<\/a>
Dinner in Phoenix<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sure, Barrett-Jackson is over-hyped, arguably evil: by driving prices of modest antiques, the kind once collected by middle-income enthusiasts \u2014 old motorcycles, Ford Model As, Cold War-era Bulgemobiles<\/a>, even humble milk vans and utility trucks \u2014 up into Donald Trump territory, B-J and its clones have ruined the collector car hobby for regular people.\u00a0 But the cars themselves, even though I can’t aspire to ever owning one, are still there, and B-J is a great place to see them.\u00a0 I’ll be there next year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So how’s Barrett-Jackson?\u00a0 About like it is on TV, only keener.\u00a0 I was there all day Tuesday.\u00a0 That night in Phoenix I bored my daughter Polly to tears watching B-J live on Speed, saying “I saw that car,” and “Oh, that one too!”\u00a0 Wednesday night, back in Tucson, I did the same thing to Donna.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409","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=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1442,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions\/1442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}