Post by CoyoteCrunch on May 10, 2015 9:40:20 GMT -7
This will be the 4th year my wife and myself will have our annual car show. I call it ours, simply because "we" brought it up to the city.
First a little history in what we call "Our" car show.......
My wife works with the city as the Industrial Waste Monitor - we both are heavily involved in volunteering with the Midwest City Police. 4 years ago, when we were heavy car show go-ers with our Camaro, we often went to shows hosted by an outfit called "Show Your Ridez" Jeff and Leanne ran this, and we got to be a part of their crew, helping to set up, organize, advertise, etc for their car shows locally in the surrounding areas.
During this same time, Ron with the MWC Police, a friend of ours, was organizing his own, smaller car shows each year to help benefit the Explorers Club, an organization for kids that may want to go into law enforcement once they graduate from school, but really, it's just an avenue to help kids with nothing to do to stay out of trouble and learn some responsibility. Kind of similar to the boy scouts, but more involved, and controlled by the local police force.
Anyways - 4 years ago, the city was thinking of starting an annual event themselves - based on the theme of "Made in Oklahoma". Where different company's, artists, restaurants, micro-breweries, etc would be invited to attend and show off their wares. This evolved into a HUGE event, with live bands, food cook offs with local chefs, etc, etc. Michelle and myself, being friends with the city managers, went to them and offered up the idea to also hold a car show during this event. They were reluctant a first, until we told them we could get "Show Your Ridez" to do the car show hosting, all that would be required from them was a parking lot. Of which there is a big one where the event is held each year, at the big Sheraton Hotel and Reed Center, (Reed center is an adjoining 2 story addition that holds huge conference rooms, etc). They agreed, and the first two years were a huge success, first year we had, I think about 85 show cars, second year we were close to 100. This also drew in more people to the city's festival than they realized. All was looking good, and then.... Jeff and Leanne, with Show Your Ridez got greedy, and instead of being paid 1500 to run the show, they wanted 2500 - that's when the city said no. Now, don't get me wrong, 1500 barely covered the cost of t-shirts, trophies for all the classes of voting, door prizes etc. Not to mention the work involved in setting up the sound system, trash cans, staging areas for the show car participants, making the goodie bags for them, selling 50/50 tickets, etc, etc you name it. There really is a lot of work that goes into these events. Michelle and myself hit the local businesses hard, getting some awesome door prizes, even donating door prizes ourselves. (We would make wash buckets full of car cleaning goodies). Now, making 5 or 6 of these was like 100 or more out of pocket for ourselves, not to mention the die cast cars I would donate.
But, when season 3 arrived, and we no longer had Show Your Ridez, we pulled in Ron with the Midwest City Police Dept. We sat down, and I literally felt like some kind of CEO, doing a presentation on, combining - the Made in Oklahoma Festival, with the Midwest City Police Dept AND how I got the Church involved for a bigger parking lot. The people at the Sheraton always had a chip on their shoulder about us needing one of the biggest parking lots, (this parking lot was located on the southwest side of the Sheraton - next to the Reed Center where the event was based out of). The church where we play volleyball at, is actually located on the north east side of the Sheraton, and is what I think a much better spot, as it adjoins all the outside booth and tents, and the huge stage for the local live bands that play throughout all day night at the festival.
They agreed to my plan and layout, then Ron stepped up to the plate and pulled in his own resources, and along with Michelle and myself, last year's show was the best yet to date. We had 183 registered cars, bikes and trucks. And with the ones that came just t show off and not register for trophy's, we estimated having nearly 250 total rides - Not to pat ourselves on our backs or anything, BUT DAMMIT - IT WAS AWESOME!!! We had the place packed and everyone had a blast! Shoot, the 50/50 we had ended up totaling over 3000, not sure who won it, but they certainly had a terrific payday for bringing out and showing off their ride!
Here is the flyer, one of them anyways, for this years car show - I will post pictures after the event!!
First a little history in what we call "Our" car show.......
My wife works with the city as the Industrial Waste Monitor - we both are heavily involved in volunteering with the Midwest City Police. 4 years ago, when we were heavy car show go-ers with our Camaro, we often went to shows hosted by an outfit called "Show Your Ridez" Jeff and Leanne ran this, and we got to be a part of their crew, helping to set up, organize, advertise, etc for their car shows locally in the surrounding areas.
During this same time, Ron with the MWC Police, a friend of ours, was organizing his own, smaller car shows each year to help benefit the Explorers Club, an organization for kids that may want to go into law enforcement once they graduate from school, but really, it's just an avenue to help kids with nothing to do to stay out of trouble and learn some responsibility. Kind of similar to the boy scouts, but more involved, and controlled by the local police force.
Anyways - 4 years ago, the city was thinking of starting an annual event themselves - based on the theme of "Made in Oklahoma". Where different company's, artists, restaurants, micro-breweries, etc would be invited to attend and show off their wares. This evolved into a HUGE event, with live bands, food cook offs with local chefs, etc, etc. Michelle and myself, being friends with the city managers, went to them and offered up the idea to also hold a car show during this event. They were reluctant a first, until we told them we could get "Show Your Ridez" to do the car show hosting, all that would be required from them was a parking lot. Of which there is a big one where the event is held each year, at the big Sheraton Hotel and Reed Center, (Reed center is an adjoining 2 story addition that holds huge conference rooms, etc). They agreed, and the first two years were a huge success, first year we had, I think about 85 show cars, second year we were close to 100. This also drew in more people to the city's festival than they realized. All was looking good, and then.... Jeff and Leanne, with Show Your Ridez got greedy, and instead of being paid 1500 to run the show, they wanted 2500 - that's when the city said no. Now, don't get me wrong, 1500 barely covered the cost of t-shirts, trophies for all the classes of voting, door prizes etc. Not to mention the work involved in setting up the sound system, trash cans, staging areas for the show car participants, making the goodie bags for them, selling 50/50 tickets, etc, etc you name it. There really is a lot of work that goes into these events. Michelle and myself hit the local businesses hard, getting some awesome door prizes, even donating door prizes ourselves. (We would make wash buckets full of car cleaning goodies). Now, making 5 or 6 of these was like 100 or more out of pocket for ourselves, not to mention the die cast cars I would donate.
But, when season 3 arrived, and we no longer had Show Your Ridez, we pulled in Ron with the Midwest City Police Dept. We sat down, and I literally felt like some kind of CEO, doing a presentation on, combining - the Made in Oklahoma Festival, with the Midwest City Police Dept AND how I got the Church involved for a bigger parking lot. The people at the Sheraton always had a chip on their shoulder about us needing one of the biggest parking lots, (this parking lot was located on the southwest side of the Sheraton - next to the Reed Center where the event was based out of). The church where we play volleyball at, is actually located on the north east side of the Sheraton, and is what I think a much better spot, as it adjoins all the outside booth and tents, and the huge stage for the local live bands that play throughout all day night at the festival.
They agreed to my plan and layout, then Ron stepped up to the plate and pulled in his own resources, and along with Michelle and myself, last year's show was the best yet to date. We had 183 registered cars, bikes and trucks. And with the ones that came just t show off and not register for trophy's, we estimated having nearly 250 total rides - Not to pat ourselves on our backs or anything, BUT DAMMIT - IT WAS AWESOME!!! We had the place packed and everyone had a blast! Shoot, the 50/50 we had ended up totaling over 3000, not sure who won it, but they certainly had a terrific payday for bringing out and showing off their ride!
Here is the flyer, one of them anyways, for this years car show - I will post pictures after the event!!