I am nine years old. My legs slide across the hot black vinyl back seat of our classic Thunderbird, as we stare over the enormous shining trunk to watch my dad, cursing with tools in hand, at the strange wood and metal shopping cart-based contraption currently splayed across the driveway, with its wheels angled toward the sky like a reclining cat, spinning almost petulantly, and mocking him.
The Chariot, as it was coined, would accompany us through many years of the Lead East Classic Car Show in New Jersey, from the time we outgrew our strollers to the age where walking of one’s own accord through stretching parking lots of chrome and fin became a standard. Each Labor Day weekend of my childhood would begin the same, an ounce of prevention as my dad plugged away at trying in vain to ready the rickety, un-steerable cart for the enormous car show weekend before us. He knew that for him to fully enjoy the enormous car show, we would need some form of transportation other than our short little legs.
Despite having no motor, transmission, or radiator, the Chariot would infallibly break down sometime over the course of the three day festival. It would eventually be lugged back to the Volvo’s trunk, as my brother and I began to complain of our tired feet, paying no mind to the fact that my father had been actually pushing two kids around on his.
This year, some two decades after my first Lead East Car Show, I am still complaining of tired feet – but I do so with a smile on my face. Lead East is more than a car show. It more than a philly cheese steak vendor in the hot summer sun. It is more than a couple of ripped up Chevy t-shirts bearing nudey lady tattooes. Don’t misunderstand – it is all of those things. But it’s more too.
To begin, the show is massive. It spans the weekend, from Thursday to Sunday, and stretches the whole berth of four industrial parking lots, separated by the Parsippany Hilton Hotel, and varying fountain and gulley accoutrements, which give the impression of traveling on some important adventure to view the Nomad just across the way. It is large, expansive, and full. Those who do not book a hotel room 364 days in advance are relegated to the subsequent lots, and we often joke that a Lead East parking spot gets bequeathed in the family will.
But as mentioned above, Lead East is more than a car show – it’s the biggest 1950s party on the east coast. In every direction are kids in push pedal hot rods, middle schoolers and retirees dressed like the sock hop girls of Grease, yippy pocket book dogs wearing poodle skirts and bows in their hairless ears. To the main stage in the hotel is a man singing karaoke at an alarming pitch, while an Elvis impersonator awaits his turn, scarfing down jumbalaya in his bedazzled cape.
Johnny Cash streams from speakers all around the lots, but you are likely to hear the Monkees or Beach Boys from any of the small tent parties parked along the cruise route – decorated with disco balls and glowing pink flamingos, chocked with coolers of beers and ice tea. Some even smell of fresh burgers from George Foremans and a table full of waiting condiments.
Lead East is a vibe – a massive, celebratory hurrah to push off the end of summer. There will be more shows to come, even in the cooler months, but this is the biggest party of the year, getting bigger ever summer.
That’s because they really get it right. There are options for food spread at reasonable distances around the lots, ice cream and lemonade stands, beer sellers on golf carts, healthier options and the expected car show fare. There’s an indoors for when it’s too hot to function, a place to peruse the interesting vendors, and to find an indoor bathroom when a 100 degree port o’ John loses its appeal. There is music, dancing, and events. Drive-In movies bring in the evening, and every single person you meet is simply happy to be there.
It seems, in a strange way, that Lead East is a time capsule for two reasons. The first, and more obvious, is that it focuses on the classic cars up until 1972, allowing for classic music, dress and movies. In and of itself that’s a fun experience. But slightly deeper, Lead East seems to be almost frozen in time. In the course of twenty years, I have learned that certain cars will always park in certain places. There will be flashing sunglasses on the reeds at the tent near the hotel entrance. These four vendors will be selling Betty Boop clocks and Bettie Paige DVDs near the Jukeboxes.
In that sense, it transcends its own year, and allows one to escape – whether it’s from the dreaded first day of school, (is it obvious I’ve done that before?) or to simply avoid whatever the Tuesday after Labor Day might bring, one can simply enjoy the moment – the lights, sounds, and smells, and that’s wonderful.
Of course, nostalgia can only get a girl so far, and there were a few things this year that brought an uncomfortable stroke of reality into the fantasy. For one – the prices were unmanageable. It’s an expensive show to produce, and a leeway has always been provided for that. But this year they began to charge nearly $100 for a car to enter for the weekend, and gave only one admission with it, instead of two. Over the course of Friday and Saturday, we spent nearly $200 on admission fees alone, and that’s an untouchable number, not to get anywhere near the cost of food and drinks and general goings on.
That leads me to why I think Friday night was a bit slow. In direct competition with the rising prices and management disagreements, a show began last year in Mahwah, Dead Man’s Curve Car Show, and has only gotten more successful, despite the David and Goliath theme of the quarrel. But Friday night was surprisingly empty, with parking available in the third lot for late registers, instead of the fourth, and fewer people than normal. That all picked up Saturday morning, and all was well, but I do think it indicates that the show is not quite so untouchable as it might like to think itself. Lower the prices and more will come, I have no doubt of that.
A more superficial grievance was the movie choice projected against the hotel wall as part of the Drive-In movie. The idea is wonderful fun, and everyone gathers in folding chairs and sweatshirts to either close out the night or start it. They got a one of three for their movie choices for me this year, of the days we attended. Friday night was a showing of 2001 A Space Odyssey, which is as slow as it is creepy, and generally a rather uncomfortable film to watch, not something one wants to celebrate over, or remember the glory days of.
Saturday night was a double feature. In 3D, (a valiant attempt which fell flat on its film), we got the campy horror of Creature From the Black Lagoon, exactly the kind of movie one wants to neck to in the back of a friend’s Valiant. It’s everything you might want from a Drive-In. But the second film offered was the brilliant and slow moving Dial M for Murder, directed by Hitchcock and starring Grace Kelly. But even the most interested of audience members was unable to make out the subtle dialogue and plot twists. Great movie, but not right for the occasion.
Every car show, even the most successful of 1950s bashes, is wont to have their stumbles, and I can forgive them for the most part. I do feel that the pricing this year was unrealistic, especially given the general audience of families and the like, and I feel they’d do a duty to themselves and the car loving community by lowering it for next year, before they lose any fans to the show across the way.
Other than that, however, it was the fantasy I remember – and one we got a chance to share with you on our very first live broadcast, as we cruised the parking lots. It’s a little of everything we all love, and I’ll always feel a pull of nostalgia to it, for my childhood and for the decades of sock hop and drive ins that I never got the chance to experience.
And you know what, when I’m squeezing my nerdy kids in a rickety strange wood and metal shopping cart-based contraption, I bet that those cars will still be the same spots and those Betties will still be waving as we pass by.
Image by Tomm Scalera
Check out more photos from the show on our Facebook page.