Sunday, July 20, 2008

Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix

This weekend, we went to the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix, a car show, street race fund raiser extravaganza. This weekend's activities were set in Schenley Park, just blocks from our apartment, and benefit one of Myron Cope's organizations- supporting care and research for Autism. The car show is incredible, there are rows and rows of cars from all makers and all eras. This kind of event had a huge crowd, despite temps well over 90. The crowd is a "only in Pittsburgh" mix of fans, enthusiasts and aficionados (or pop, coors light and champagne). There were old minis and triumphs, a few very old model Ts, and some very new hotrods and sports cars. You can imagine Matt was really in to this.

The car show itself takes place on the Golf Course in the park, so there are plenty of rolling greens to park cars on. Ha. This is of course convenient to the race track, which are the winding roads in the park. Right there! They really drive these real old cars! Fast! To truly experience a vintage grand prix you would have to imagine the noise of a gang of bikers combined with the smell of burned alcohol and rubber. For the benefit of the movie, I've added a blues soundtrack, since I've found this is the best way to cope with the heat. Although the race is almost a mile away, we can hear the cars from home. I cobbled together a couple clips for those who might enjoy seeing this.


1 comment:

Gordie said...

Woo...,cool soundtrack, Ken Burns-like featurette, the smell of rubber, the sound of testosterone, this is a favorite on the site for me! Very sporting of you to accompaniy your family gearhead on the quest inspite of the heat. Recalls weekends at the deerPark drag races when I were but a youth. I just loved watching the tires smoke off the line even though we now know that was just lost traction. Nice vid, thanks sweetie