Crosstown Traffic

Unlike most memories that come and go
with a permanent blink or wink goodbye, however, the vestige of those
hot-rod, supercharged glory days can still be viewed with the naked
eye. Don’t believe it? Then visit the Syracuse Nationals, cruising into
its 10th anniversary at the New York State Fairgrounds on Friday, July
17, and Saturday, July 18, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday, July 19,
7 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Last year more than 7,000 antique, classic, muscle and Kandy-Kolored
hot-rod cars parked across the fairgrounds’ 375 acres, with more than
75,000 spectators checking out the scene. That’s a far cry from the
smaller-scale tally of the 2000 inaugural event, although there were
telltale signs back then of the full-tilt rod carnival that would
eventually emerge.

“We ended up putting in 4,300 cars the
first year,” recalls Bob O’Connor, president of Right Coast
Association, who along with his son Rob as director (pictured above),
run the company that organizes the Syracuse Nationals. “Many vendors
said that type of turnout was unheard of and a lot of them didn’t want
to come because they thought it was a first-year show and it wouldn’t
be much. We only rented the end of the State Fair toward Chevy Court
and really didn’t think we’d need the entire fairgrounds—but we did.
Luckily there was nothing going on at that end so we were able to open
the gates and let cars go down toward the other end.”

O’Connor got the notion for a Syracuse
Nationals after he noted that a 1995 classic car show, organized by the
Memphis, Tenn.-based National Street Rod Association (NSRA), nearly
filled the New York State Fairgrounds. When O’Connor traveled to other
Northeast car shows over the next four years, people would see Syracuse
on his windshield sticker and chat about the NSRA-sponsored 1995 event,
with frequent remarks such as “we really enjoyed the show in Syracuse
and I hope they do it again.” The NSRA told the Syracuse car clubs that
they would indeed be back, perhaps on a four- or five-year
rotation—until the association signed a long-term contract in 1999 to
stay in Louisville, Ky., and organize their show.

A friend joked during a Pennsylvania car
show that O’Connor should fill the NSRA’s void and start his own
“Nationals” show, so O’Connor decided to act upon this whim. “I had a
meeting with the people at the State Fair and just asked them some
questions about a car show,” he recalls. “The next thing I know I was
at the Chamber of Commerce sitting around a table with about eight
people saying, ‘Here’s what we’ve got to do to get this going.’ We then
set up a news conference just before the State Fair opened that year to
announce it was actually going to happen. 

“We traveled all
over the country to different cities and every weekend we were at car
shows all summer, fall, winter and that next spring,” he continues. “We
were promoting it all over the Northeast, at shows in Canada and all
the way down to Daytona, with stops in Baltimore, Detroit, Charlotte,
Boston, Buffalo and many more. And because of that, we ended up putting
in over 4,000 cars that first year.” 

Hot Rod Thinkin’

The dawn of hot rodding can be traced
back to the tail end of World War II. As Tom Wolfe described in his
1965 essay “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby”, which
focuses mainly on the before-they-were-legendary car customizers Ed
“Big Daddy” Roth and George Barris, he observed how Detroit was
producing automobiles that infused a Mondrian principle in design:
straight edges, very tight and Apollonian, to evoke Nietzsche. The
youthful rebel rousers were left to balance the artistic seesaw and
fill the Dionysian void to create fanatic forms and break with standard
conventions.

Since no automobiles were being produced
during the war, cars and parts were scarce and the kids were raiding
junkyards for the accessories they needed—much of which did not always
fit their cruisers—which led to custom-built cars and a lot of
hopped-up motors. The first independently produced and designed V8
engine was the Ford Motor Company’s “Flathead,” used in its production
years between 1932 and 1953. These were the popular favorite of the
aboriginal rodders, as they were the fastest engines on the street at
the time, with a then-whopping factory 125 horsepower. (That’s most
likely what was in James Dean’s infamous 1949 Mercury he drove in the
1955 flick Rebel Without a Cause.)

It took another decade for Detroit to
cash in on the underground hot-rod phenomenon. Although typically not
observed as muscle cars in the modern era, the Ford Thunderbirds and
Chevrolet Corvettes of the mid-1950s were specifically designed for
maximum speed coupled with sleek, stylish design. The trend for bigger,
faster and stronger engines continued throughout the 1960s and was
epitomized by Chrysler’s 426-cubic-inch “Hemi” engine. In production
and available for street cars between the years 1965 to 1971, the Hemis
rolled off the assembly line with 425 horsepower—radical even by
present-day standards.

As he’s done with presidential
elections, leave it to consumer advocate Ralph Nader to spoil the fun,
as his lobby for automotive safety and more environmentally sound cars
led to emission standards instituted by the government that prevented
the production of such vicious Hemi-esque machines. By that time, the
auto industry was abandoning the trend of designing autos as wild as
Salvador Dali chasing a peacock, returning to the more streamlined
Mondrian “electric shaver on wheels” concept, the effects of which are
spilling over to this day.

At the Syracuse Nationals, these
post-World War II hot rods, the cruisers of the 1950s and the muscle
cars of the 1960s will all be on display, alongside pre-war automobiles
dating back to when Henry Ford rolled out the concept of four-wheel
motorization to the masses and everything else that fills the blanks of
exotic automobiles. With more than 7,000 cars expected to register for
the show, there’s literally something for everybody, which means even
non-car enthusiasts will find items of interest to occupy their time.

Cruising, Catwoman And Coachmen

“There’s so much stuff going on,” crows
O’Connor, “such as tech seminars for the guys, the ladies’ building
{located in the McNeil and Co. Art and Home Center, the complex next
door to the Empire Room}, the model car show, coloring contests for the
kids and five buildings full of exhibits.” Celebrity appeal will also
be prevalent, as Adam West and Julie Newmar—Batman and Catwoman from
the 1960s campy TV show—will sign autographs in the Verizon Center of
Progress Building on Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and
Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

O’Connor estimates that more than 300
vendors will be on hand trumpeting their products, and puts it in
perspective that you wouldn’t have enough time during the event’s three
days to spend even two or three minutes talking to each vendor—let
alone ogling the cars on display and consuming the food and drink
available for purchase. And what’s cruising without the proper tunes:
Live music on Saturday, noon to 5 p.m., on the Verizon Wireless Stage
in Chevrolet Court, includes a 2:30 p.m. performance from the fabulous
Coachmen, featuring Syracuse New Times photographer Michael Davis on the Hammond B-3 organ.

“We try to put something in the
fairgrounds for everyone to see and do and enjoy themselves,” says
O’Connor. “We say it’s the best deal around ever for a day of
entertainment. You can buy advance-sale tickets either at Advance Auto
Parts or Nice and Easy grocery shops for $12 and can come and enjoy 13
hours of entertainment for that price. I don’t know where else you
could go and spend that much time for $12.” (Tickets at the gate cost
$17 for adults and $8 for kids ages 6 to 12; children ages 5 and
younger are admitted free.)

Another element that’s not technically
affiliated with the Syracuse Nationals, but an unofficial auxiliary
happening associated with the event, are the “cruises” that occur
outside the gates of the fairgrounds. Every Tuesday night throughout
the summer months, the classic cars and hot rods meet in the evening
hours at the Regional Market, 2100 Park St; on Wednesdays, the hot spot
is Wegmans on Route 11 in Cicero; Thursdays it’s Longbranch Park in
Liverpool. During the week of the Nationals as out-of-town participants
arrive early and locals with hot rods come out of the woodwork, the
attendance at these “sock hops” increases tenfold. Even as the sun goes
down, people still have that itch to keep cruising around town a la American Graffiti.

The same thing occurs even as the
Nationals closes its gates after the fireworks display both Friday and
Saturday nights. During the initial years of the event, hordes of
people lined up on both sides of Erie Boulevard East in DeWitt and
Seventh North Street in Liverpool, as literally hundreds of classic
cars would be cruising both main streets at any given time—surely
giving those who remember the days when these types of cars were the
only ones on the road a flashback in the highways of the mind and
letting the younger generation put themselves in a time and place
they’ve only heard about.

But over the last five years or so,
there’s been a serious cruising crackdown. People on the sidelines
would yell “Light ’em up!” when the hot rods were at a red-light
standstill. This action would cause eager drivers to perform a
“burnout,” in which the engine’s RPMs are redlined as the gas-pedal
gets kicked down to the floorboard with the intensity of a Bruce Lee
roundhouse, followed by the sound of the rear wheels’ revolving screech
as smoke from the tire rubber billows overhead like a supercharged
religious offering.

But cars have a tendency to fishtail if
an amateur is behind the wheel, because some people don’t know how to
handle all that torque in the rear end. In 2007 in Selmer, Tenn., four
people were killed during a charity parade when a muscle car performing
a burnout lost control. Because of situations like that, local police
have cracked down on post-Nationals cruising, closing down all but one
lane on both Erie Boulevard and Seventh North Street, causing severe
traffic congestion, while also radioing in fire departments to hose
down the pavement so screech-minded drivers will lose all tire traction
necessary to perform it. While understandable, this scene doesn’t sit
well with some of the locals.

As this reporter drove his
black-on-black 1968 Plymouth Road Runner to a recent cruise-in at the
Regional Market on a Tuesday night, there was talk of that exact
scenario. “Last year it was pretty intense,” claims John Howard of Red
Creek, who drove down in his 1966 Ford Galaxie and still hasn’t decided
if he’s going to make it to the Nationals this year. “It seemed like
there was a police siren going off in every direction you looked the
entire night and with the fire hoses soaking the road it really looked
like the apocalypse had struck Syracuse. It doesn’t seem like a welcome
sight that would want to make tourists coming into town come back
again.”

The participants might have a different
perspective if they were the ones with their names and reputations on
the line, as O’Connor is. “We meet with the police agencies every
year,” he says, “and we tell them outright that if someone is doing
something stupid, come down on them hard because we don’t want to give
the city and the event a bad name. But if the guy is from out of town
and he sees a restaurant and didn’t turn his directional on to get into
the parking lot, try to tolerate that. But if someone does something
really unlawful or dumb, put the car on a rollback and haul it away.”

A lot of people might not want to risk
having to incur those towing fees this year with the economy in the
tough shape that it’s in, which has also affected the territorial
demographic participating in this year’s event. “About five or six
years ago at one show we had cars representing 40 states and five
Canadian provinces,” says O’Connor. “This year, we do have cars from
California, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin and more, but not the numbers
we’ve seen in the past; they’re represented, but not as heavy. What we
are seeing is northeastern cars within a 300-mile radius of Syracuse
that maybe have never been to Syracuse before. A lot of people aren’t
traveling around the country and as far as they used to anymore.”

Yet with 300-plus vendors on hand,
O’Connor still expects just as many of the 7,000-plus cars and
75,000-plus spectators as were tallied last year, if not more. “A blur”
is how he describes his time at the event distinguishing between
spectator and working official. “I’ll watch some of the videos after
the show that people take and give to us and I’ll say, ‘I didn’t see
half of these cars,’” he mentions. “We’re always at a fast pace heading
from one point to another to take care of an issue and make sure
something is organized properly and that type of stuff.”

But obviously, one hot-rodder can’t
contain more than 100,000 people, which is why O’Connor says the show
couldn’t go on without the more than 200 volunteers who make the show
run smoothly. “We have a great group of people with us between the car
club associations and all the volunteers from the car clubs,” he says.
“I can’t give them enough credit for what they do to help the show run
smooth—dealing with all the car owners and making sure they are parked
properly and if someone’s got a problem with their car, helping them
getting it taken care of. They’re just good-will ambassadors for the
event and a great bunch of people.”

O’Connor was hoping to have his 1939
Ford Convertible currently under restoration ready for the show, but
says he’ll have to wait until at least next year’s Nationals to make
headway with it. In the meantime, reflecting on the 10th anniversary
this year, he says the first year will always stand out because of the
unexpected success, but year in and year out since have been just as
memorable.

“Every year I think it’s just the people
I meet that stand out the most,” he says, “and the comments I hear
about what a great time they had. The hotels are pretty much keeping
sensible prices and the restaurants give people good food for their
value and just the fact that people are so welcome in town because of
this event. I had a fellow come up to me, probably the second or third
year of the show, and he walks up to me and looks like he was upset at
something and he says, ‘I’ve got to tell you something; I was on my way
in this morning and stopped at a local station and you know something?’
And I thought he was going to say the guy charged him $8 per gallon or
something, and this guy says, ‘The owner of the station came out and
offered me a free cup of coffee and that was great,’ and we hear a lot
of that. If a guy has car trouble, someone
will get him to a shop to get his car fixed and we hear more and more
of those kind of good samaritan things. I think this is something that
really brings the town together.” 

If you have a custom, classic or
muscle car you want to register in the show, the cost is $45, which is
good for all three days and includes an extra wristband for another
person you might want to bring along, as well as all children under 16.
Car registration will take place at the Holiday Inn, 441 Electronics
Parkway, Liverpool, on Thursday, July 16, and Friday, July 17, 8 a.m.
to 8 p.m., and Saturday, July 18, 8 a.m. to noon. For more information, contact Right Coast at 668-9703.

Photos by Michael Davis

See also The Bat's Meow