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In the meantime the whole ” press central thing” was catching up. Our own Frank Kaisler (who is always good to see) was there to shoot the shit. Giuseppe from Freeway, Yass from Vibes, Dollar from Kopteri, Zed and Eric from Freeway France, Sheriff from Sweden, even Howard Kelly and Eric from Hot Bike/ Street Choppers came by to say hello. It was truly an international meeting place, and by the way, I’m not dropping names. I guess we are just fortunate enough to be able to call these people our friends.
On the same line, Mike Pullin and Meanest visited us a couple times (we had fun bashing the old man) as well as Fabricator Kevin who gave me a really cool points cover with my sun logo in it. It’s always great to meet people in person that you have known through computers for such a long time. I know there’s others. Forgive me if you are not mentioned, but you know who you are. I’m glad to have been able to put faces with names.
Folks liked my new chopper–made my day. After busting our asses for a solid month it was the best reward to watch other riders photograph the latest Caribbean creation. There’s also the photo shoots, but I guess you will find out about those when the are published. The new island shirts were well liked, we had some. We hope to do this booth thing in the near future, but with more people, more friends and even more cool bikes (maybe Bandit will join us next time ? ). We also managed to ride a bit, to the hotel and back, but the weather was so shitty that we ended up caging most of the time. When the skies cleared the insanity returned and Main Street was packed. People to see and be seen everywhere. I visited Main in two occasions only, most of the time looking for cool chops and trying to move amongst the cattle like humanity. Sad to say, we might have seen two or three cool chops in the entire street.The peacock parade was in full force. The cops were having a ball busting the throttle offenders. I really don’t get why people have to crack their pipes while doing the street crawl. More power to them and less money after the ticket.
Likewise I was getting sick of seeing Hummers with trailers. That truck is as bitchin as they come but being reduced to a yuppie- mobile is kind of odd. Like I noticed most of the industry people driving dually’s. It will be a dark day when those become the status symbol.
We had a blast and were treated as family at Willie’s Tropical Tattoo. Geno was getting another tat for the magazine, and we hung around to show our support, bust his balls and drive back his truck if we had to. In his drunken stupor he was actually being pretty funny, some really cool stuff was going on backstage. Also Hackasaw showed up with his TN mafia and a bunch of Trumps. He presented Geno with a very clear and strong brew. It must have been good since he dropped the Rebel Yell and went straight for the clear liquid. Smoke blasted out from his ears….
Day after day we all waited for the event to start but it never did. People would come out of nowhere, like cockroaches, with the slightest hint of sun, or a lull in the rain. They’d disappear as soon as the blessed water flowed once more.We all managed, as best as we could, to fire up more than one impromptu rain party at the booths. What the hell can you do when it’s raining horizontally? We drank beer, talked shit and checked all the chicks participating at the amateur “wet t-shirt contest”.
No one left any of our booths with a wet shirt. It did not matter if they had money or not. The only act of warfare erupted when Suzanne and Mary Ann stole our heater and held a big ass ransom on it. lucky, I am patient. There will be a pay-back, one way or the other…
This report might be a bit different, but I guess it is the first time I see everything from inside a booth. I ‘ve been to Daytona many times, but never as a vendor. I think this is the first year ever that I did not make it to the Rat’s Hole show, nor the swap meet. According to our guys who did, they sucked anyway, so I did not miss much.
To end all this blabbering already–yes, it was the worst Daytona ever in an economic sense. None of our fellow vendors were happy about it, but we had such a good time amongst friends, cool choppers and stories to tell. I would not change one bit. It was even funny to see people running inside buildings, since there was a tornado watch. We even had a good time hiding in the trailer with a bunch of our friends waiting for the downpour to blow over. Yep, even the day we got the hell out of Dodge, it poured. We loaded under the pouring skies and quietly returned home.
— Jose De Miguel
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We’re still expecting one additional review of the wet east coast sand. Frank Kaisler’s CD of photography, containing babes to wet new products will be delivered to the headquarters shortly by a big titted undercover. Hang on. –Bandit
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