2018 VVMC RALLY

2018 VVMC RALLY

Sept. 22

The Venice Vintage Motorcycle Club has had some incredible raffle bikes over the past 11 years (5 of which we’ve attended), but this year’s 1971 Honda CB750 definitely took our breath away. As huge fans of all early 70’s Honda’s, being there to see someone ride that bike home (and buy a few raffle tickets of our own) was a must. The day kicked off with an early morning group ride at 8AM, which started at Abbot Kinney and Venice. Due to the camera equipment we decided to use that time to drive out to the event at Dell Ave so we’d be ready to start filming at 11AM sharp, when the riders would be showing up.

There were some new vendors as well as the usual suspects but it’s always great seeing familiar Moto faces. Although we were running around filming most of the morning, we stopped to catch up with a couple of our favorite peeps like Kevin Stanley from Moto Chop Shop. He’s been a friend for quite some time now and we admire the work he does and the fact that he is always smiling! Both great qualities. He had one of his custom Triumph’s there and a Kawasaki Z900RS, owned by Scott Metcalf.

At about the halfway point, we took the Sony camera off the gimbal to capture a few stills as things were getting busy and we needed some good stuff to keep the Insta-game on track. The weather was on point and the cool breeze and the shaded areas made it possible to slow the chance of pitting out. Oh, and the cold beer helped too. Thanks PBR! The BBQ sandwiches from CLUTCH VENICE looked mighty tasty but we ended up drinking our lunch so we could continue filming as time for the Bike awards and raffle grew closer. There were some beautiful originals among the bikes in the lot as well as some slick customs, so the judges definitely had their work cut out for them. We had a few favorites of our own, a couple of which ended up winning awards. Congrats to all the winners!

We continued filming as the Cougar Getting Jr Band wrapped up the last couple cover songs of the day. About 10-15 minutes prior to the drawing for the Honda CB750, an unknown woman purchased 90 raffle tickets!!! That is $900 dollars worth of raffle tickets in hopes of flooding the chances of winning the bike. There was a collective “Oh, shit” that swept across the crowd as we all looked over at the ticket booth to see her quickly writing her name on all of the tickets. There was definitely some worry that everyones odds of winning the bike got just a little bit smaller in that moment. After wrapping up the last few purchased tickets, a couple more VVMC Members joined the stage with the wheel filled with potential winners. In order to keep the drawing fair, they brought up a young girl in the audience that wasn’t affiliated with the Club to pick the winning ticket. We all watched with great anticipation as they instructed her to look away while she picked the ticket. She reached in and pulled a ticket and handed it to VVMC Member Fast Eddie. The first thing he says is, “This ticket was an online order” meaning there is a chance that the person the won wasn’t actually in the audience. That was followed quickly by the crowds “Ahhhhhh.” You want the winner to be there in person, so they can actually fire the bike up and the whole audience can be a part of that experience as well. They continued to read the name off the ticket, who turned out to be a guy named Peter from Massachusetts… No one was happy about that except for Peter who at least answered his phone when they called to notify him of his good luck. The kicker was he bought 2, yes two, tickets.

Finally, the VVMC presented a check to the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation for $1500, which was a nice way to shift the feeling of loss to joy. Donating to a good cause is always money well spent.