Showing at an indoor event is always a bit of a hassle. For those of us that live out of town it adds a degree of difficulty to show at an event like the 2015 Starbird Devlin Show. For me it started Wednesday evening with a 90 mile drive to Wichita to drop off my daily driver in a parking garage. Then Thursday I took off mid morning to get the Galaxie washed and drive her to Century II. By 4pm I had the Galaxie in the show and cleaned up and I was back at work. I even had a few minutes to stop by Deville’s Barber Shop & Shaving Parlor to get myself looking good for the weekend.
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a pinstriped piece from Pinstriping By Lizzie, a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Hot Rod Hill Climb!
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
The view from the main level to the lower level was pretty good.Murph (in the hat in the chair) brought this wild kustom pickup out to show off again.
It seems that Darryl emptied out most of the museum to show off at the show.I’ve seen this car around for a few years and I dig it every time I see it.
Floyd’s 58 Edsel Roundup. Beautiful brand new mild kustom.Daniel Dolan came down from Colorado to hang out for the weekend.I looooove it. I need to get up to Colorado and shoot some video of this ride.California to OK at 80 mph and 23 mpg. It was great to see Bill Hines and John at the show.
Doc’s T is always one of my favorite’s and definitely on my list for a future feature video.It’s been fun watching this wild kustom come together!
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a pinstriped piece from Pinstriping By Lizzie, a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Hot Rod Hill Climb!
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
Last Monday on “Friction In The Static” Podcast episode #201 I was interviewed by Tiny. I had a blast, you should go to Set To Stun Productions or search for “Friction In The Static” on itunes, stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks again Tiny!
See you at a show,
Royboy
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February Subscriber Giveaway!
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a pinstriped piece from Pinstriping By Lizzie, a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Hot Rod Hill Climb!
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
Monday on “Friction In The Static” Podcast episode #201 I was interviewed by Tiny. I had a blast, you should go to Set To Stun Productions or search for “Friction In The Static” on itunes, stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks again Tiny!
See you at a show,
Royboy
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February Subscriber Giveaway!
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a pinstriped piece from Pinstriping By Lizzie, a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Hot Rod Hill Climb!
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
The West end of the building typically doesn’t have much that interests me. Yes I love most any kinda car but come on, a row of nearly identical muscle cars all with the same restoration, all with their hoods up… yeah I’ll walk on by that. The farther East that you go the more interest I have in the cars in this show typically.
Monday on “Friction In The Static” Podcast episode #201 I was interviewed by Tiny. I had a blast, you should go to Set To Stun Productions or search for “Friction In The Static” on itunes, stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks again Tiny!
See you at a show,
Royboy
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February Subscriber Giveaway!
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a pinstriped piece from Pinstriping By Lizzie, a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Hot Rod Hill Climb!
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
After working 7-10am at the day job, driving 3 hours to Kansas City, shooting the KC World of Wheels and then driving 4 hours to the south side of Tulsa, I was beat. I settled in at my buddy’s house and watched some racing and got to see the awesome advertising that was Chevrolet’s pace car catching fire in front of the whole world. Good job Chevy.
The next morning I went over to the Fairgrounds in Tulsa and hit the 50th Annual Darryl Starbird Rod & Custom Car Show. To my eye the show looked to have a ton more cars than I’ve ever seen in the building before. Especially obvious was the lack of the silly Monster Trucks and the addition of a whole bunch more floor space that was occupied by mostly occupied by the majority of the cars from Darryl’s museum, some previous Fine 9 contestants and the KKOA Village.
Hot Rod and Kustom fans, bear with me. This post won’t have much in it for you. It seems like most of the cars in the show have broken down and the owners were out getting new parts so they just left the hoods up in this most unattractive fashion while they were gone.
My friend Robert’s beautiful 59 Chevrolet. Fresh back from a stay at Hot Rod Garage where the car received a few updates to get her ready for a road trip to the west coast. I wish I could follow along in the Galaxie
In stock or restored forms this body style does very little for me. Like this, I can see it’s appeal, except for having it’s hood and trunk open showing all of it’s naughty bits like a cheap stripper…
You see all those lights in a row on the ceiling? That’s the size of this building and it was 90% used for the car show. That’s a lotta lugnuts.
More good looking cars ruined by having the hoods open. Yeah yeah yeah, judging, trophies, blah blah blah. Want a trophy? Go buy one, it’s way cheaper than building a car.
I’ve never seen a buggy like this. I don’t know why, I live the old Manx bodies but having a bit of the original sheetmetal on looks pretty okay too. Now where’s the map to the Little Sahara?
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a pinstriped piece from Pinstriping By Lizzie, a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Hot Rod Hill Climb!
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
This weekend will be a bit of a bear. There are two major indoor shows going on this weekend in my area, actually there’s 3 but only 2 that I regularly cover. I’m hitting both of them again this year even though they fall on the same weekend. I really wish I was able to hit all 3!
Today (Friday) I will work the normal day job 7a-5p (Winter hours have us out at 5 instead of 6), then I’ll be off to the Paramount Bar to see a band and possibly shoot photos of that performance. The Paramount is the end base for the Mid Decembrrrrr Run each year and this year on Saturday night of the KKOA Leadsled Spectacular weekend it’s also the home of a party thrown by Royboy Productions and Stray Kat Kustoms. At that party is where I’ll be giving away $1000 cash, want to know what that’s about? Click here to find out.
So then around 1am Saturday I’ll head back home, catch a couple of hours of sleep and head back to the day job for our required 3 hours every other Saturday morning. At 10:01am I will run home, pick up my dog and my dad’s dog and take them into the kennel before heading to Kansas City for the first of the two shows. 3 hours on the road puts me downtown in KC for the Autorama World of Wheels at Bartle Hall. 3 or so hours should have me through the whole building, but lately I’ve been spending a ton of time talking with so many of you that I should set aside an extra hour or so. In any case, by around 5pm I should be headed out of the building.
Kansas City is a city full of great places to eat and hang out, I’ll be blasting past all of them headed south at full steam, Oklahoma bound. 256 miles and 4 hours later I’ll get to my buddy’s place and the most comfortable spare bedroom mattress on the planet. Jared and Marie are so awesome to always put me up when I’m in the Tulsa area, they give me that awesome spare room where I sleep better than anywhere else, they feed me and we always have a great time hanging out. Then it will be time to edit the photos from the day and start uploading them to the site and prepare a blog post for Sunday.
The next morning I’ll be up early to head to the 50th Annual Starbird show in Tulsa. The Quiktrip Center is about 30 minutes away, so that’s an easy part of the journey. The show is a bit bigger this year due to there not being any silly Monster Truck show. That entire area is now filled with killer hot rods and kustoms. I’m assuming 3-4 hours for this show as well, and then it’s out the door and heading home. Another 4 hours and about 250 miles will get me home. Edit and upload those photos to the site and prepare a blog post for Monday.
So in a great big nutshell, that’s the plan for the weekend. The plan is to give you constant car show posts all next week and weekend until I’ve run through both shows. Sorry that I can’t give it all to you at once, but to be 100% honest I need content for that following week. So there you have it folks, that’s what it takes to give you all of the car show coverage that I can shoehorn into a weekend. If you want to support the cause, buy a shirt, buy a hat, buy a photo print of any of these 40,000+ images. I really appreciate it.
See you at a show,
Royboy
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February Subscriber Giveaway!
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a pinstriped piece from Pinstriping By Lizzie, a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Hot Rod Hill Climb!
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
As this is posted I’m finishing up my 3 hour stint a the day job on Saturday morning. From here I catch a ride with my Dad and my 3 & 5 year old nephews down to Wichita’s Century II where the Starbird-Devlin show is in full swing. The boys and I will check the show out today then they will come home and then my cameras will come out and I’ll get you some photos of the show. Look for those photos to start showing up here tomorrow Sunday the 19th. Here’s what I posted this week so far:
I’m excited to finally get the 2014 car show season underway! Next weekend I’ll be heading to Ryno Built’s shop to check in on a Merc project that he’s building for a buddy of mine. While we’re there we’ll also build a new transmission crossmember for my Galaxie so that the car can be dropped a couple more inches. So look for a tech article on that, plus the shop visit post from Ryno’s place. From there I’m hoping to hit 2 shops on the way home, 1 private where they’re doing a big time chop and another a pro upholstery shop. Stay tuned for those visits as well. The goal for 2014 is to start doing a lot more car features, more videos, and more of the same coverage that has been viewed over 11.5 million times so far. Buckle up, it’s bound to be a heck of a ride!
For the 2nd year in a row I’ve been asked by my friend and mentor Doug Reed to include my car in the Kustom City display in the Starbird-Devlin Car Show held in Wichita’s Century II Convention Center. To me, it’s an honor. I get to display my car along side some of my favorite kustoms and hang out with some of my favorite people. Today was the move-in for our group, so early this morning I fired up my Galaxie and made the 80 mile drive down to Century II. An early morning drive with some great tunes in my favorite car is an amazing thing for my attitude.
As soon as I pulled in I was greeted by one of my friends from the Kustom City display, I was waved into the building and directed to my parking spot with a bunch of rides that far outclass mine. As last year, some of the cars in the display are immortalized on Dennis McPhail’s Kustom City poster, it’s a real big deal to me to even be in the same display as all of these cars.
After getting the cars into position I spent about an hour hand wiping down the car. In my haste to get to the show and see my kustom family I forgot to stop and hit the car wash. Thankfully I had a fresh bottle of Meguiar’s Quik Detailer in the trunk, I cleaned every damn surface of the exterior with the stuff. 🙂 Then it was off to walk around the show a bit and see who else was already set up or in the process.
Out for a morning drive in my Galaxie 500 with my bug collection.
Here are some of the photos I took while walking around.
Floyd\’s 58 Edsel Wagon kustom. The car features a bunch of great pinstriping and a full kustom interior by Fast AL’s Upholstery amongst more kool touches.
Floyd’s Edsel Wagon. We talked today about me shooting a feature on it for a magazine, I can’t wait!
I keep running into this beautiful Mercury from Nebraska, and I’m not mad about that.Troy Pate’s newly finished hot rod. It was his uncle’s street beast back in the old days and was finished just before the show. I REALLY want a ride 🙂
Michael Behrendt’s 34 Ford Coupe. The car was given to him years ago on the condition that he someday build the car. Nothing on the car is newer than 53 except the 59 Olds steering wheel. The east coast channeling lends to the car’s Norm Grabowski’s Kookie Car-esque profile. I’ve been given a ride in the car and it was a blast!Goren brought this beautiful 48 Merc up from Texas.Chaotic Customs has their normal huge display full of just about everything you need for you hot rod or kustom. The new sign is kool too.Devlin Hot Rods shop is just up the street from Century II and they had some very nice rides in their display. There’s a giant glass wall behind that curtain so look for more photos of these rides later, I’ll shoot them when the sun goes down tomorrow.These are the cars parked in front of me in the Kustom City display. Johnny Hammann’s 58 Chevy (as it was built in 76), Terry Cook’s Chevy, and Jack’s 51 Ford.Looking back down Kustom City. We have 10 cars this year in the display, I’ve been asked to help round up cars for next year and I’m an ambitious fella. Let’s shoot for 20 cars for 2015. If you have a kustom and want to hang out with some awesome people, send me a message here.Hub and Gloria Harness’ beautiful “Cinnamon” One of my favorite kustoms on the planet. They have been so amazingly supportive over the last few years and I’m lucky and honored to know them.
The 2nd show on the weekend of Feb 14-16 is the Darryl Starbird show in Tulsa Oklahoma’s Quiktrip Center. For more info on the show go to Starbird’s site here.
Be sure to keep an eye on the center isle of the building for the Fine Nine award participants and see if you can guess who’s taking home the Go For The Gold award and it’s huge cash prize.
Just because this year is almost over doesn’t mean that we can’t be looking forward to the start of next year! In these parts January has but one major event. The Starbird-Devlin Rod & Customs Charities Car Show. The show goes down this January 17-19th at the Century II in Wichita, KS. Last year’s show was the first time that I displayed my car for an indoor show and I really had a good time, this year I will again be a part of the Kustom City display featuring Wichita area kustoms. I’m honored to get to have my Galaxie with these beautiful cars!
Here’s a slide show of the photos from this year’s event.
“HI ! I’m Jonnie King and I want to take this opportunity to thank my friend, Travis, for inviting me to share some of these great Interviews I’ve put together from these true Legends of the R&C Industry through the years.
Travis is a FANTASTIC photographer, and he and I eMailed each other, starting a few years back, while we were visiting on another R&C Site. Then, when we were at the 2011 KKOA Lead Sled Spectacular in Salina, Kansas, we ran into each other as we were admiring Yaril Quintana’s “Custom For Korea” Clone.
I was explaining to this nice young guy, standing by the car with a camera, that I had loved the Original Version of this “shoebox” since I was a kid…and still had my original Car Craft copy with it as a Cover Car back in 1953…
Finally, when the ‘nice young guy with a camera’ and myself got around to introducing ourselves, I found out he was “Travis From Kansas”…the same guy I’d been exchanging eMail with for over a year !
SO, that’s how this friendship started, and when Travis asked me about sharing my Interviews with all of you on his truly superb Website…well, it was a ‘no brainer’ !
What follows next is my latest story and Interview with the iconic DARRYL STARBIRD:
DARRYL STARBIRD’S NEWEST SUPER-CREATION is a Concept Version of what could have come out of Detroit ! A truly mind-blowing 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham called “THE SHARK” !
In this one-on-one Interview, Darryl told me the story of he created it, how it can be used in 3 different versions, and, a humorous tale about what some early viewers said about it.
This is one story, from the true “King Of The Bubble Tops” that you must hear ! PLUS, you’ll see some rare photos that Darryl let me take during the early build of this fascinating, rare, Eldorado Brougham ! To Listen, Simply CLICK-ON-THIS-LINK: http://www.legends.thewwbc.net/gpage36.html
Here’s the Fine Nine winner, the Atomitron by John Saltsman, driven out from CA for the show. I love to see kustoms driven especially when competing for such a prestigious award.
Also driven out from CA was Keith Dean’s 40 Mercury
Another of Shawn Mundy’s Fine Nine qualified 35 Ford Pickup.
For the last few years I’ve been taking advantage of some friends that live in the area by sleeping in their spare room and using that local home base to attend the Starbird Exotic Car Show at the QuikTrip Center on the Fairgrounds in Tulsa, OK.
Last year was a fun show, as soon as I walked in the door I’m greeted with the first finished view I’d had of the late Elden Titus’ Vibrasonic.
Another great ride that’s been on display at the show the last couple of years is Tom’s coupe.
Of course some of the rides from Starbird’s collection and Hall of Fame Museum were on display.
Darryl’s grandson Dakota is building kustoms under the Star Kustoms name and did this Chevy pickup
Ridler Winner in attendance!
What mighty big eyes you have…
One of my favorite kustom shoeboxes, a recreation of Junior Conway’s amazing Ford.
This Gasser got a lot of attention
Gee I wonder why I don’t get all giddy about shooting a row of newer Mustangs…
Wild kustom Pantera
Originally built by Dave Stuckey, restored by Darryl Starbird, the Lil Coffin
The 2013 Starbird-Devlin show is in the books!
Here are some of my favorite photos from the weekend. Thanks again to my kustom family for allowing my Galaxie to park with so many historic and beautiful rides.
Johnny Hammann’s tried and true 58 Chevy Impala. It’s been basically unchanged since Jan. 1976.
Mickey’s Merc (he washed it!) Once a 4 door, now a 2 door with a ton more kustom touches.
Distant cousins?
You don’t see these every day, and you don’t see many cars this clean and straight ever.
One of my favorite Mercs ever.
Mike’s 60 Olds fresh from a remodel… gorgeous!
Nice collection!
40 Chevy built by Big Creek Restoration with a band on stage behind it Friday evening.
The Big T
Corey Conyers is restoring a beautiful slingshot. I say it would almost be a shame to paint this body.
Larry James of Flyin Eye Kreations has been working hard to finish up his old Nova in new form
Rob Parker has been working on this Chevy Bobber Pickup Roadster for a few years, it’s pretty interesting to see all of the details that have gone into it.
That’s it for this time, click any of those photos to go to the entire gallery.
Just a quick sneak peek of some of the photos coming Sunday evening!
Rob Parker’s way wild Chevrolet roadster pickup, rear mounted turbo feeds the 261 inline six engine.
Love this simple hot rod that has everything a fella needs except a Betty by his side. Bill Hines chop on this 1947 Ford, the chop done at the KKOA Leadsled Spectacular.
So at 9:30am on January 17, 2013 I did something I’d never done before. I drove my Galaxie into it’s first ever indoor car show. The Starbird-Devlin Car Show at Century II in Wichita, KS, “The Wichita Tradition.” This is the 56th annual show, previously known as the Starbird Rod & Custom Show, it’s been a tradition in Wichita for a long long time.
I was lucky enough to be a part of the Kustom City display this year. Thanks to the new paint work done on my Galaxie by Jeff Myers, my car has been transformed to 60’s Boulevard cruiser. Doug Reed put together the Kustom City display of street kustoms from the area and my Galaxie was lucky enough to make the group.
So we rolled in, positioned ourselves and started cleaning the cars. It wasn’t long before it was time to head back to the day job, but I managed to grab a couple of quick snapshots while I was there.
I’ll head back to the show tomorrow after work and I’ll have more shots for you throughout the weekend. I hope to do a post of cell phone photos on Sunday and start the coverage of the show on Monday.
In Part 1 I went through some back history of the show from my cameras up to 2010.
So now on to 2011
Something I wrote at the time: “In the dead of winter each January it’s a pleasure every year to get together with my hotrod and kustom family and spend some time inside WITH a bunch of cool cars. The Darryl Starbird Rod & Custom show in Wichita, KS typically pulls about 400 cars max for a 3 day indoor show. As the name implies rods and customs show in abundance, but so do stock restorations, survivors, 4×4’s, lowriders, rat rods, and various types of racers.
A couple of very cool front engine dragsters were on display this year, as were some very nice traditional built hot rods. Traditional built rods are not rats, and this show had both build styles represented nicely. The car count and the vendor count both seemed down this year, but that was a blessing instead of a hinderance. Less cars means more room to get around the cars, and it seemed that the cars that didn’t show were the ones that I normally don’t shoot anyhow, so the show’s overall quality went up as a result.
The Marauders and Fundamentals had great club displays with the Marauders taking home the prize for best display for their “model” car display complete with giant exacto knives and Testor paint bottles to complete the look. The Fundamentals went with a beach theme and rumor has it some Marauders may have been involved with an incident involving Baby Ruth candy bars being dropped in the Fundamentals “sand” (kitty litter). I’m not going to say where the story came from or how hard the person who told it to me was laughing when he told how they did it.”
My friend Mike’s super clean Camaro
Just your basic 5 window hot rod coupe
Jack’s 30 Ford 5 Window Coupe as part of the Mulvane Marauder’s display
Chris and Karma Carlson’s 60 Pontiac Stella (owners of Chaotic Customs in Mulvane, KS)
Mike Young’s way wild 29 Roadster
A Historic hot rod brought down from McPherson College, the Paul Harris 32
Rocky Burris’ Wild Winged Ford pickup “TooKool”
Tom Hanna’s gorgeous FED
A couple of Starbird’s BubbleTops
2012
Jack’s 29 AV8 Roadster, a survivor from the 50’s Video Feature on this car.
Gene Weaver’s 54 Chevy, 95% owner built, and beautifully done.
Larry James’ 67 Caddy
Rob Robinson’s 49 Plymouth, customized by Chaotic Customs
A beautiful Kustom 47 Ford
Roger Jetter’s amazing 54 Cadillac
Big Lip Camaro, always impresses
Doc Parson’s 27 T, one of the koolest hot rods out there.
in the trunk, I cleaned every damn surface of the exterior with the stuff. 🙂 Then it was off to walk around the show a bit and see who else was already set up or in the process.
