Early Saturday morning Todd and I headed off for Dubuque’s Five Flags Center for the 2015 Retro Rewind. Todd was vending at the show along with a few other friends of mine including Ed Tillrock, Gears & Gals and a ton of other folks. It was cold out, REALLY cold out with temps in the negative without the windchill. The countryside between Marion & Dubuque was really beautiful in it’s winter wonderland-ness. The show takes up as much room as is available in the building, packing in a bunch of great cars and bikes!
I turned the coverage of this show into a photo book, have a look, buy a copy or 12!
With little time for vacation I took off Friday at noon. By the time I got some ToDo List items knocked out and got on the road it was almost 3pm. With about 7 ½ hours in front of me I hammered down and made my way to Marion, IA where I was lucky enough to crash on the couch of my friend and amazing artist Todd Jones. Thanks Todd for hooking me up!
I turned the coverage of this show into a photo book, have a look, buy a copy or 12!
I’ve been waiting for a year to drive to Dubuque, IA in January. Yes, I am in fact a lunatic. You see, last year I was ready to make the 18 hour round trip up to Dubuque for the 1st annual Retro Rewind. As fate would have it, going to the show wasn’t in the cards for me. I hit a deer about a week before the show, taking my daily driver out of commission. So this year I was excited to make the trip up for the 2nd Annual Retro Rewind.
I turned the coverage of this show into a photo book, have a look, buy a copy or 12!
With no show to cover this week, I’m looking into the archives for some photos to share! Here are some of my favorites from the Royboy Instagram feed. If you’re not following on Instagram go follow Royboyprods now!
Welcome to 2015’s first episode of Chrome Pipes And Pinstripes Radio Show! This week the guest is my ol buddy Jack Marinelli, he was a previous guest and one of my favorite story tellers so I’d been looking for a reason to get him back on the show. This week he’s here just telling stories and BS’ing. Click the link below to listen!
The Worst Elvis Contest at the Rumble that we mentioned…
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See you at a show,
Royboy
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I’m always wanting to hit the best shows that I can find. To me a good show has more to do with the people and cars than any trophy or any of that stuff. Below in this post I have my schedule, see if your favorite show is on the schedule, if it’s not use the comment box at the bottom of the page to tell me about your favorite show.
With over 50,000 images in the Royboy Galleries sometimes finding what you want could be a chore. So I’m doing what I can to help you out. I’ve created some special galleries where I will curate specific models of vehicles. These were started a couple of years ago and I’ve been updating them lately. Here’s the Mercury one!
Out for a morning drive in my Galaxie 500 with my bug collection.
Ahhh the first week of the year, always a slow time for me. As I write this my main computer is doing the final rendering of my first episode for my channel on the upcoming MotorNation.tv video service. I’ve had no show for the last 2 weeks and folks it is driving me batty to not be out on the road with my friends. Lucky for me this weekend is the first show of the year, the Retro Rewind in Dubuque, IA.
One of the things that I hear over and over again is that the car hobby is an old man’s game. In the past the older folks just had their cars longer so they had more years of refinement in them, and more disposable income than a young family might. Today though we see report after report that young teenagers have very little desire to own a car or sometimes even get a license. In my life we will see a real issue arise where there are no new people coming into the hobby to keep it going. Click here to see the entire post!
DaddyO performing with Pushrod at the 2013 HAMB Drags
2014 was the biggest year ever for royboyproductions.com The site saw record growth on the blog with a total of 125,218 page views! That’s an average of about 345 a day, up from 217 a day in 2013. Here’s the most popular posts from 2014…
Over 2014 the photos from the Royboy Production Galleries were viewed over 11,800,000 times! That’s nearly 1 million a month average! Some of you folks just can’t get enough hot rod and kustom car photo action! The photo above is the most popular photo of the most popular gallery, the 2014 Lonestar Roundup coverage. This shot by itself has been viewed 7,600 times as of the writing of this piece.
It’s been a few years now that I’ve been on Instagram (@Royboyprods) and it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve posted almost 2,900 photos total which have gotten 389,965 likes in that time with 3,726 fans on the site. It’s become a fun way to follow the adventures and lives of some cool people without most of the drama that some folks post on facebook and other social media.
We’ve all seen it, we’ve all done it. NO not that, I’m talking about people who buy a vehicle with one plan in mind and then it turns into something else. That’s exactly what happened to the simple shop truck build by Ryno Built of SW Missouri.
The 5th Annual Mid Decembrrrr Run is in the history books! At it’s peak we had 22 people on the run, but due to busy schedules people had to come and go during the day. We ate lunch with 21 people if I counted correctly and had 15 or so vehicles on the run as we showed up at Johnny Torres Upholstery in Hutchinson, KS.
This week Royboy tells the tale of the Lonely Knights Christmas party and Colorado Springs garage crawl. Fritz Schenck of spritzbyfritz.com sits down (literally on the floor) with me to talk bubbletops, DVDs and more.
We spent the day traveling around Colorado Springs hitting garages and having a general good time. Later in the evening it was time for the main event. The Lonely Knights Christmas Party! I have to say this to the world, The Lonely Knights know how to party! What a truly amazing group of people and a great time. More than 70 people took part in the most fun white elephant gift exchange known to man. Come morning time a few of us gathered up for some breakfast before I rolled out for home. Within a few miles the occasional flakes turned in to a full on snow storm for the next 60 or so miles. I’d get back in the car and head back up to Colorado Springs in a heartbeat if we could do it all over again!
Sometime this fall I got the invite from Big Rich to come up to Colorado Springs and hang out with the Lonely Knights and attend their annual Christmas party. Sounded like a good time to me so Friday after work I drove the 6 hours up to Colorado Springs. Saturday we got up and grabbed some breakfast at a great diner named Cokes Diner and started the Colorado Springs Garage Crawl.
Pics by Steve Giangreco and story by Brad Wise. This was in issue #12 of Gears & Gals Magazine
Koopmeiners & Sons (K & S) is Dave Koopmeiners, Eric Koopmeiners, and Jeff Koopmeiners. Eric is proud to say the following restorations were performed by his Dad, Jeff (his brother) and himself. That means a lot to this family. Eric lives in Union Grove, WI, home of Great Lakes Dragway. He never saw his Dad’s original 55 but soaked in the stories and pictures of it. Couple that with Dad’s influences and Eric never had a chance…
This week Royboy tells the tale of the Hot Rod Holiday and talks hot rods, movies and more with filmmaker Brian Darwas of Atomic Hot Rods on Chrome Pipes and Pinstripes Episode 36!
Since I had a photo shoot and a 6+ hour drive scheduled for Sunday I decided to not set up on Sunday morning. I hope you’ve enjoyed the photos from the Hot Rod Holiday show in Springfield, MO.
Saturday Morning we got to the show early and set up the booth, Calendars, hats, coozies, books, stickers and keychains on display to try to make some money for gas money. The spectator flow through the day was like most indoor shows ebbs and flows, sometimes I had people looking over people’s shoulders to see my booth, sometimes I spent an hour just talking to friends. The thing that was absolutely awesome was sitting at my booth editing photos from Friday night, uploading them to the site and writing this very sentence. Works so much better than driving 5 hours home and then sitting down to work on the site :).
Friday night I got to the Hot Rod Holiday show and the show was dead. It was cold and raining and a Friday night, these things do not work well for getting spectators to car shows. What I found was a building with a whole lot of great rides on display. Walking around the Expo Center I run in to my buddy TwoTallOkie who had a booth set up, I was next to Dragdaddy (always a treat), Fritz had 2 bubble tops sitting directly in front of Dragdaddy and I so we had some eye candy to look at all weekend. Hanging out in the building were some of my friends that put on the Queen City Riot and I ran in to some other guys you may have heard of named Darryl Starbird & Tim Strange. Since there was no crowd that evening there was time to talk to all the folks that normally would be too busy to be able to talk for long.
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