Car Culture ruined my favorite car show

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The one car show I look forward to most is the yearly car show at The Steelyard in Providence. I’ve been going for a while(pics from ’13 here), and it has been a really nice show full of an amazing selection of cars in a great setting.

Last year it was so popular I showed up 15 minutes after it started and had to park the truck down the street.

This year I didn’t bother bringing the truck (motor is acting up and I haven’t gotten the new motor together yet), so I parked a block away and we walked up. I took the picture above and turned the corner, to find this:

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It is hard to see, but the crowds around the entrance are so big they have filled the sidewalks and parking lanes and are spilling into the street. Nearly every person had a beer in their hands, and they were shouting at every vehicle to “do burnouts!” As we walked up a ratty Camaro obliged and started doing a burnout on a public road while big crowds pressed in on it from both sides. As soon as he moved on they started shouting at the stanced BMW behind him to do a burnout. When he didn’t they kept yelling at him until he drove away.

I looked at the drunken mob and realized there wasn’t going to be room for me to look at and photograph the cars without getting crowded on all sides. I decided not to bother going in, and we turned around to walk back to the car.

When we got back to the xB I was standing alongside it unlocking the door when a F250 brotruck pulled alongside and intentionally “rolled coal” down the length of my car, engulfing me & it in a black cloud.

So instead of wandering under the gantries of the Steelyard looking at amazing vehicles I am sitting at home with a bad taste in my mouth(literal & figurative).

The Steelyard Car Show 2013

Every year The Steelyard here in Providence puts on a car show, and every year it is filled with amazing cars. The Steelyard also makes an amazing backdrop for these beautiful classics.

A big surprise for me was my old ’62 Comet “Emily” was there(this car is in some of the header images on this blog). The current owner is treating her well and has continued to customize her. It made me nostalgic to see her again, and I was glad she was being treated well.

For more pictures, see my Flickr set from the Show.

The Iron Guild’s Halloween iron pour

 

Every year the Iron Guild does an “Iron Pour” at The Steelyard here in Providence. I’ve managed to make it a few times, and it has always been an awesome event.

 

 

They set up a couple furnaces, as well as props or molds relevant to that year’s story. This year the story was a group of vikings battling a dragon. There is also music, either live or pre-recorded, to go with the event.

 

 

 

I’ll be honest though, as great as the story concepts are, they aren’t the best part. The best part is just people doing insane things with molten metal.

 

 

 

 

Pouring molds is a tiny part of it. They splash it around, fling globs of it at metal cutouts of men, pour it into wooden molds, and generally set everything in their arena on fire by the end of it.

 

 

 

And it is amazing. In addition to being really cool and really pretty it also grabs that bit of your brainstem that is still a monkey terrified and fascinated by fire and holds on nice and tight.

 

 

 

 

This is molten metal, the hard unyielding stuff our modern world is made of. And here, under the gantry cranes of the Steelyard courtyard there are humans playing with it.

 

I’m already looking forward to next year.