So-Cal Slow Ride turns 4 !
November , 2015
"Chances are you call up a few buddies and arrange to rendezvous at the park or the McDonalds or somewhere else before you go to the meeting - so that when you roll in, you're a convoy.
It's impressive."
Terry Cook, "Vans, and the Truckin' Life" 1977
So, where does the time go ?
This January marks the 4th Anniversary of the So-Cal Slow Ride. As we go into our 5th year of doing these caravan cruises, I look back and realize that the history of the Slow Ride, is really the history of California Street Vans, although that first run up to Palos Verdes pre-dates the club by over a year.
The whole Slow Ride idea came about when I was living in Redondo Beach, and took Big Bamboo for a cruise up in Palos Verdes. Palos Verdes Drive is an awesome, windy road with an amazing view of the ocean pretty much the whole way, and goes through neighborhoods of multi million dollar homes and gated mansions. There is almost no traffic, making it perfect for a caravan of boogie vans. So, I told Rory Fontana, whom I’d met only a few weeks earlier, about the idea, made a flyer, posted it on Facebook, and 2 weeks later the first Slow Ride happened.
January 5th, 2012. Redondo Beach.
26 vans and 1 dune buggy rolled into the Albertsons Parking Lot on Pacific Coast Highway. The Weather was a perfect 70 something degrees, sunny….all the things that make people living everywhere else envy Californians. January means garage time for most vanners…not us. We get to do this shit all year round !
Luckily, I had experienced folks around me, because I sure as fuck didn’t know what I was doing yet. Tom Chronsiter (Vannin’ since 1974!) from Wheels of Confusion (whom I was a member of at the time) did the drivers meeting, because I was new to the whole thing...
CARAVANNIN' - Boogie Vans stop to regroup as they ascend from redondo Beach up to Palos Verdes.
Things like, “everyone roll with your headlights on” and “stay close to the van in front of you” , or having a “blocker” in the back of the line, were things I hadn’t really thought about, because I’d never lead a caravan before.
Baja Charlie ran the tail, blocking traffic and keeping the end of the line together with the rest of us, and with the aid of a few others on CB’s keeping us all in communication with each other (absolutely necessary for doing this sort of thing with that many vans) and we made our way up into Palos Verdes.
It was super exciting seeing this many vans all rolling in one big line with the Pacific ocean as our backdrop. We hit all the stops, that are now famous from the many photos from that day, and all the Slow Rides since then, and ended up at Point Fermin. The few of us remaining….Rory, Jerry Whitworth, Zam…watched an amazing sunset over the Pacific, then boogied on home. It was a perfect day, and I managed to pull off leading a caravan of 26 vans with no incident, or any prior experience.
While we were all parked at Point Fermin, Tom and Brad from Wheels, corralled the bunch of us and told the group of LA folks that they should join Wheels, and that they would give them their own LA Chapter with me as president, since Wheels was based in Huntington Beach, and I was the only Wheels member that lived in LA. So, that is pretty much how California Street Vans started. We spent about a year in Wheels, then broke off to do our own club. People have come and gone, but the original group….Rory, Jerry, Mick and myself are the original CSV members. Zam didn't have a van yet, but was at that very first Slow Ride. So, we all go way back, at this point.
AT THE END POINT
Brad Phillps and Tom Chronister from Wheels of Confusion talk VANS with Rory Fontana and others at Point Fermin Park.
Meanwhile....Rear doors opened, coolers out, makin' a scene.
Since then, the whole van thing has gotten more popular, with younger dudes getting vans, and all the original guys who had vans back in the day, coming out of the woodwork, and getting vans again. Many of the original vanners told us that seeing the pictures of our Slow Rides on Facebook brought many amazing memories back to them from back in the day, going to van runs with 1000’s of vans, cruising Van Nuys Blvd, and hangin' with their clubs.
Many have gone out and bought vans again, broke out their old club jackets, and have regaled us with amazing stories, knowledge and photos from their vannin’ daze. With our Facebook Pages…CSV/SoCal Slow Riders, Vans Rule!, and Vans Only, ran by our own Randy York, and our Instagram account, ran by VP Jim Thompson, we have created a bigass internet presence.
THE INFAMOUS DIRT LOT
At the halfway point of the cruise, the caravan pulls into the parking lot at San Vicente Lighthouse. Hang out, check out each other's vans, take pictures, and then roll out., but before that, a group shot...
Rollin' forward...
I’ve been told that the caravan they’ve done at the Nats the past few years was inspired, in part by our Slow Rides. I don’t know to what extent that’s actually true or not, but I will say that before we started doing these cruises, I hadn’t really seen any of these types of Van cruises being done anywhere else as events of their own. As fellow CSV member (originally with Associated Vans back in the day) Bill McBee said to me…”Caravanning is what we used to do ON THE WAY TO the event…these days, the caravan IS the event”.
Well, there is a lot less van runs these days, especially here in So-Cal, so other than the few weekender events, like Dazed and Confused and the West Coast Nats, both of which usually have about 50 vans or less, so these Slow Rides are all we got….so we try to do as many as we can, and in a few different locations.
The numbers have grown, with 70 vans being our biggest number to date and amazingly, running a caravan with 70 vans wasn't that much more difficult than one with half that amount. The pictures have been incredible, and the whole thing has been big fun.
Now, because of all the Facebook and Instagram activity, we have gotten requests for memberships outside of California, which we have obliged with our “CSV Worldwide” Memberships. We now have members in England, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the US , outside of Southern California. Pretty fuckin’ Cool !
So, as we go into year 5 of the So-Cal Slow Ride, I look forward to see more rad vans rolling out, and meeting more cool peeps with bitchin' vans. It’s been a blast so far.So, fire your van up, and roll out to Redondo for the 4th Anniversary So-Cal Slow Ride… Oh, and by the way…get a CB….it makes my job a lot easier! See ya’ in the caravan.
Jim Bacchi - President, California Street Vans
Photos : Jerry Whitworth, Vince Rush, Jason Foreman, Mick Lance, and Jim Bacchi
