Good Art for Badd Eggs

Every year since 2003 the Sacremento Poor Boys have hosted Midnight Mass, a traditional pre-’65 car show/all night event. Here’s a link to the youtube clip. This year they asked me to do the design for the shirts and posters. They wanted something different than the usual “big drawing of a hot rod” kinda thing, so here’s what I came up with.

I was a little nervous about how it would be received because It’s a departure from the tried and true car show tshirt. I wasn’t sure that people were going to want to deviate from the norm. They sold out in one day. I guess I should have known there’d be deviants at this show.

After all, it’s the people that make up the show, really. The turnout and the vibe were better than any previous Billetproof show that I’ve been to, and the quality of the cars was very high. The highest I can remember. Maybe Billetproof has taken all the hokey rat rods with it? Thank you thank you thank you. The pinup girl contest was a hit, and the swap meet was great in the new location. Everyone had fun, and I can tell you that mini bike races are going to be a fixture from now on. I am working on my bike already, making some mods and updates so that I can wash away the bitter taste of dust and defeat. Adding the Road Devils and Nightmares to the mix was the best idea we ever had. They’re both great clubs and good friends. Including the cars from the clubs, we hit the 400 car mark.

There are still some stickers, tshirts, patches and posters on the sinsofsteel.com site. Thanks everybody! See you next year!

I’ll cut right to the chase on this: We were used, taken for granted, insulted and left for dead by the very same Billetproof franchise we brought to Detroit and helped to promote and nurture. So this year, the Poor Boys and the Peckerheads in conjunction with the Road Devils and the Nightmares are putting on our own show instead. You can read the whole story at www.sinsofsteel.com, and pick up some of the drama from the HAMB, but the bottom line is that the Davisburg show is still on. Still the first weekend in June, still at the Davisburg Fairgrounds, still the best collection of traditional hot rods, customs, choppers and bobbers in Michigan. There will be bands, the burnout contest, pinstripers, cool vendors, minibike races, a vintage parts swap meet, and more. See ya there!

Man, what a blast! As usual it was a great weekend hanging out with friends, surrounded by baddass cars. Our pals the Road Devils had a great display. It was a garage that had displays inside of it showing the heritage of the club going back decades. A couple of buddies from our Sacremento chapter came out for the show. Always great to see those guys. I’m slated to do the art for their Midnight Mass show in August, can’t wait to get started on it. Unfortunately the show is only about 3 weeks away from the due date on our new baby, so once again I will let another year slip by without attending Midnight Mass. Next year fer sher.

I put up a flickr set of pics of our display and the trophies we made for Autorama Extreme this year. Tim King and Roger Atwood scrounge the parts and make the trophies, and I pinstripe them. Every year there is a trophy for best club display, but you can’t win it two years in a row. Since we won it two years ago, it was time to pull out the stops and go large with our “Tournament of Thrills!” themed display based on the traveling daredevil shows of the 50s and 60s. Naturally, our hard work paid off and we won the Best Club Display again in 2010! I believe we hold the undisputed record for most “Best Club Display” trophies collected in the history of Detroit Autorama Extreme. Justin brought his Hemi-powered Model A. It sounds killer, here’s a little video.

We had table with tshirts and fliers promoting our upcoming show SINS of STEEL (formerly Billetproof, now kicking more ass!). It’s coming up on June 5th, same date, time, and location as Billetproof was. Go to the SINS of STEEL website for more info: www.sinsofsteel.com.

The 53rd annual Detroit Autorama is this weekend and The Poor Boys have been hard at work on our display for the Autorama Extreme in the lower level at Cobo Hall. This year it’s sponsored by Ol’ Skool Rods and they’re calling it Autorama 1953 instead, whatever that means. Taken at our research facility and test track is this smuggled picture of the centerpiece. I can’t say much, but the theme is Poor Boys Thrill Show and it seeks to recreate the traveling daredevil thrill shows of the 50s and 60s. Come down and say Hi and ride our kiddie ride (if you are a kiddie that is). Also, we will have a booth to promote our new car show: Sins of Steel (formerly Billetproof). The show is in Davisburg at the 4H Fairgrounds, same as before, but we have added even more attractions this year and the show now belongs entirely to US. I’ll post more on that next month, but the website is in the works right now.

I’m trying to keep a late 40s – early 50s feel to this car. I studied some early custom cars built by George Barris and Harry  Westergard and decided that frenching the stock headlight rings would give me the “bullet look” I wanted.  Naturally, it didn’t work out that way. read more »

Things were moving quickly now, and I was happier than a roach at Chi-Chi’s. Pistol Pete had called me up to do a month’s worth of fill-in gigs while he warmed up a new guitar player. This was perfect timing because about this time I was trying to figure out how to pay for a tranny. One sleepless month later, I had a rebuilt Turbo 350 sitting in the garage ready to go! The engine was done more or less, so I went over to Jeffro’s to pick it up. I spent most of the rest of my money on a wiring harness and a brake pedal setup. Now I was faced with the problem of how to get the motor and trans in to the car. I knew the perfect tool to use… a phone! I called up my buddies Matt and Brian and picked up a sixer. Now, Brian doesn’t drink, and Matt showed up late, so this was going to make for really cheap labor. read more »

Finally this car was starting to come together! Maybe I’ll finish this thing after all! I was going over to Jeffro’s one night a week and putting parts on the engine. But before I stuffed in the drivetrain, I wanted to fix up the hole in the floor. While I was at it, I figured that I might as well do the whole front floorpan because it looked like swiss cheese. From a Tarantulas gig I had met this old guy that did customs in the ghetto down in Detroit. I bought a front clip off of him because my passenger side fender is all crunched up.
“Hundred Twenty Five”, he said.
“Well,” I said “I only need the fender. How much for that?”
“Hundred Twenty Five. You can take the fender, or you can take the whole thing. Up to you. Either way, it’s a Hundred Twenty Five.”
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Last Friday I went out to Chicago to pick up the new Fiesta. What a blast! Here’s a video I put together of the whole trip. The car is a lot of fun to drive, has a great stereo with a hookup for an iPod or a USB drive, gets 40mpg (not even a hybrid), and miraculously has room inside for a Sasquatch like me. Another cool feature is you can control things with your voice. The car has a British accent, and I swear that if you talk to it in a British accent, it understands you better.

We’re waiting to see what our first mission will be. In the mean time we’re letting our friends take it for a spin to see how they like it. Stay tuned for news and reviews. Check out the vid and leave us a comment.

Summer had come and gone. The Woodward Cruise had come and gone. Winter was coming, and Jeffro needed more room in the main building, so I took the Chevy home. The rear end was in, but I was out of time and money, so it languished in my teensy one car garage over the winter. I was working full-time, freelancing at night, and phasing out of the Tarantulas. The realization had set in that if I wanted to spend less time on the car, then I was going to have to spend a little more cash on aftermarket stuff. So, I took my last month’s worth of gig money and “saved up” (no, really, this time I did) to buy something I desperately needed.
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