Day 172/365

     Friday night I got to cover another vintage/custom auto show. This one was much crazier than the one in Old-Town a few months ago. The Frankenmuth Auto Fest takes place on a solid stretch of Main Street in the middle of the town, and there are tons of cars, and even more people. It took the reporter covering the event and I quite a while to find parking, and then it took us even more time to wade through the masses of people to figure out what direction we wanted to go in for the story and photos. Eventually we got the hang of it though, and one of the people we talked to was the man in this photo, who brings his Miniliner to the show every year. Apparently he's become such a main stay of the event that they reserve the same parking area for his little camper every year. He was a really interesting guy, and we had a great time talking to him. A minicamper is definitely not something you expect to see at a vintage and custom car show!

Day 166/365

     My apologies for how delayed my posts have been lately; it's been a crazy couple of weeks but my dedication to this project is definitely something I'm looking to improve.

     Saturday/Day 166's post is a portrait of a local store owner. The Bay City Times recently did an exposé on young Bay City entrepreneurs for Labor Day. This man owns Electric Kitsch, a quirky little vintage music and pop culture shop in downtown Bay City. It seemed really interesting from what I got to see of it, and I definitely hope to visit it on my own time soon.

Day 125/365

     I've spent most of today covering the vintage and custom motor show that takes place on the street right outside one of the newsrooms I work out of. I put up a gallery here on MLive, and wrote my own blurb about the very beginning of the festival with a few other photos here as well. There were a lot of awesome cars, and a lot of fun people. Even with all of the cool cars I got to take pictures of today, I think this picture posted for today's entry was my favorite. This little boy stood looking at this Corvette for a solid fifteen minutes. I think I got such a kick out of it because his facial expression reminded me of how awestruck my brother and I would be when we'd go to the '50s diner down the street from our house with our dad on cruise-in nights as kids. We'd walk through the parking lot looking at all of the shiny cars with their hoods propped up in all of their chrome-covered glory, and our dad, (being the walking encyclopedia of almost any topic known to man that he was), would tell us about each car. He'd tell us about where they were made and why they weren't made like that anymore, but my favorite part that he'd tell us about would be how he reacted to seeing them as a kid in their heydays. Whether it was a car that his parents or another relative owned, a neighbor down the street, or a random stranger's driving down the road, my dad could tell you exactly where and when he first saw almost any of those cars, and why he thought they were so great. As I walked up and down through the street fair today, I thought of those nights with our dad every time I saw a '68 Mustang or a '66 Implala, or the dozens of other vintage cars lining the road. He would've loved today. 

Day 120/365

     Today I got to take photos of a guy's '58 English Ford Escort. It. was. awesome. There's a vintage car show this Sunday and we've been doing a few spotlight previews on certain owners and their cars. The guy that owned this car was a lot of fun; he had about four other vintage cars he's working on in his garage and a couple of motorcycles too.