NESS SHOW

On April 18-19 the 3rd annual Arlen Ness show was held at the San Mateo Expo Center. This was a new venue for this show and in my opinion a better venue in most ways. It's much easier as an exhibitor to get your truck and trailer into the venue plus there was actually trailer parking available for the event. In past years there really wasn't any trailer parking and the load in and out was a nightmare to me. I did the first one and then skipped last year. I decided to give it another shot at the new venue so we had a space there. The other downside to this venue is they don't allow you to ride your bikes into the building. If I wanted to push bikes in and out of shows I'd be in the bicycle biz. It's a motorcycle show people, that means we want to or should want to ride our bikes into the building. I will say the vast majority of the bikes I saw coming in and going out of the building were never even started. Do they actually run? My guess is not very well. To me they should have to ride the bike up to the door or they can't compete. All of the hot rod shows I've ever done make you prove the bike runs and will move under it's own power. I guess the motorcycle biz has gotten to be too damn soft for that type of a show. I mean why would anyone want to build custom bikes that actually run, right? I actually watched numerous baggers being loaded onto trailers to be trailered home after this show, now that's really BS to me. No trailer queens. I guess I'm too old school for that shit. Ride the damn thing, especially a bagger.
My other issue with this show is the people that run it. It's not Arlen or the Ness family. They just license their name to the promoters of this show. The promoters are there to take your money but I never once saw anyone from the show for the rest of the weekend. They charge way too much for the patrons to come through the doors too. Over the course of this show I also realized that loud pipes are no longer the big deal anymore, it's loud stereos on these baggers. The entire weekend was peppered with bike show entrants blasting their various bike stereo systems. I'm a fan of music too but come on guys, that was bullshit. The problem here is the people trying to do business at this event like me really couldn't because we had to scream at our customers just to be heard over this noise. Did the promoters tell them to stop? Nope. They're allowing the show entrants to drown out the people that paid a lot of money for vendor booth spaces, again, bullshit people. I had to take off my bike builder's hat and put on my event security hat(I also do that as a second job by the way). I did my best to get these discourteous and rude people to shut down their loud stereos, something I shouldn't have to do as a vendor. The security company working for the venue is one of the worst in the industry so I knew they weren't gonna say anything. They were too busy telling people they couldn't bring in any outside food or beverages. Another downside to this venue. They want you to be forced to buy their over priced food and drinks, I won't even go into the quality of their food.
The attendance was barely worth being there by show's end. Most vendors I spoke with were extremely unhappy with the turnout. The people that did come in really weren't spending any money with the vendors either. They were there to see the bikes and kick tires, not buy anything. It's partly a sign of the times I guess. The economy is tough for everyone.
I will say the actual show part of this event hands out a truckload of trophies. That's probably the sole bright spot of this event to me. So now after doing this event a couple of times I'm thinking maybe I'll just enter bikes into the show to compete and save my money. It's a lot cheaper to compete in the show than buy a vendor space.

FTF
Ride Free