We are for the first time…

…rained out for Saturday, April 12. (Sad face here.) This is on the heels of our most successful opening day ever, thanks to all of you! (Happy face here.) We counted 411 cars before we were full. “But wait, Chemo-Sabi, didn’t you once pack in 550 cars?” Yes, that was with the old center court configuration and two more rows in the main lot that we don’t have anymore. We turned away a lot of cars after 8:45 AM, and we were slammed hard by spectators and participants. We moved as fast as we could to get everyone landed without any screamy-screamy.

Several different estimates came in from various sources claiming that we had over 5,000 spectators! The entire city of Redmond was packed with cars, according to one source. It was so packed we had a difficult time moving volunteers from one end of the mall to the other. I’m not kidding. It was amazing, with few incidents of bad behavior outside of a Mustang that behaved badly and won’t get back in—probably someone from Fresno.

One thing on a side note: for some reason, car culture—long before we started E@RTC—always comes with drama from small groups of people who love that stuff. We knew it when we were first planning the event. It’s the root cause that killed so many great community car shows. It’s like that on Quora too. People have tantrums when they don’t get their way, and we’ve been very clear about who we are and why. We’re there to have fun and not take things too seriously.

We set a record precisely because we listen to the market. People want to be there. That should be proof enough.

Still, we have to respond to a lot of backroom gaslighting and remain in good cheer when we’d rather use a slingshot to their nuts when they aren’t looking. It’s as if these people graduated from the New York School of Overacting and are desperate to show their Drama Club skills. This has gone on for decades, and long before we started. E@RTC isn’t drama camp, so we do what we can to avoid it.

Yet, in spite of this, we often do a Scooby-Doo “Huh?” when a new rumor pops up. We will always defend ourselves in those situations because, as the saying goes, “Tell a lie long enough, and it becomes the truth.” They come at us like an angry hamster—it just sort of snarls and runs, and you’re standing there wondering what that was all about. That’s how it feels to us. We snarl back sometimes.

We have no idea what the issue is with some people, as we’re just a simple (yet massive) car show doing our best to please all of you. It catches us off guard sometimes, and the rumors are so weird they have the look and smell of a bad haircut, cheap cologne and a smoky bar. We stick to our mission no matter what: bringing you the best free weekly show possible. We put a lot of thought into it too. We’re not going to join the New York School of Overacting (NYSOA), and we do our best to ignore the drama kids, but sometimes we have to respond to set the record straight. Some of it is just too silly even for that.

Some even create a problem all on their own, then get mad at us when we don’t solve it for them. It could all be avoided if they did a little planning or contacted us for help.

As just one example, and there are a few, some members of the NYSOA are mad at us because we killed Classic and Collector Day after 2024, even though they aren’t owners of these cars to begin with. It’s sort of like internet trolls, except we see how bad they dress. We never, ever killed the welcoming of classics to the show on any day, and we’ve covered that here numerous times. We’re agnostic to all that. We get classic and collector cars every Saturday!

If Classics and Collectors want to come, they can. It says so in our criteria. That drama is spun up by members of the NYSOA who long for attention and need to gripe about something. We can only guess. There is no logic, sort of like your first marriage. We don’t honestly know what they are mad about. We guess some of it is ego. Some of it requires a good therapist and that’s always been the case. Some of it requires pills, we also guess. Or a little something-something.

We killed the Classic and Collector event for a bunch of reasons, all of them benign. To begin with, in spite of our promoting it with the other events, it was not that popular. That’s not our fault. It had the lowest attendance of any special event, meaning YOU all didn’t think it was all that great. We did our best to promote it on the blog and you didn’t read that either. The cars were also difficult to accommodate because of overheating, power steering, tight parking, our mall configuration, and the general logistics of having to provide and manage a staging area for a two-hour show. We’re a tough place for Classics and Collectors en masse and for all we know, they could have been gaslighting each other. We just don’t know. A few we can manage, but a lot, and we have logistics issues. We’re not an open golf course or one giant lot.

We’d need twice the volunteers to get them all landed and situated and less grumpy, and way too many were not nice people to an all-volunteer group. We need to keep our volunteers happy too. We got a lot of gripes, and the volunteers—our lifeblood—were not having fun trying to please everyone while remaining within our pre-agreed safety requirements. After checking with all of you and the emails we received in favor of killing it, we always listen to our participants as they hold our brand. Keep in mind, we reflect what we think is the market for a community-supported car event, and judging by our growth numbers, we think we’re still on point, in spite of the snotty public remarks by some who want to harm our event.

We can only do so many special events in a season, and to our surprise and delight, Retro Day was a massive hit, far overshadowing Classic and Collector Day right out of the gate. That surprised us, along with the lengths some went to remain in character. It was AMAZING, and you don’t want to miss it this year! That’s not drama. It’s just physics. That’s just us having fun.

Yet, some members of the NYSOA Drama Club are now taking issue and badmouthing us everywhere they can and we can only guess this is the reason. It was nothing personal. We don’t wish to become members of the NYSOA Drama Club anywhere it bubbles up like it’s Lawrence Welk night. It’s never been who we are. We’re a car show aimed at a specific market, that’s our focus, and we’re there to have a great time. We’re also a drama-free zone, which is why we don’t allow mimes. When was the last time you saw a sad tuba at E@RTC? You’re welcome.

We’re here to have fun on a Saturday morning. Show up with a qualified car, and if we have room, you get in. It’s super simple. That’s all we’re about. Don’t whine about it when we’re slammed. We’ll get to you.

The silliness of it all is that any Classic and Collector can show up at any time and be welcome, so what’s the beef, really? Dare I ask? No real constructive answer? We don’t need or want the silliness. We don’t know what other issues may be lurking. AI will soon be good enough to trace to the source, assuming someone posts something somewhere, so we’ll eventually know. But even still, we’re going to focus—just as we have since 2009—on what matters to most of you, and that’s giving all of you a great show on a Saturday morning. (I better not get another blank sheet of paper in the mail from some pissed-off mime in Peoria.)

We’ll try again next Saturday if the weather is decent. See you then with lots of love from all of us and thank you for the amazing, stupendous opening day! You’re the reason we do this. The Drama Club has no influence and never has. Neither has Fresno. See you all soon!