Quote:
Originally Posted by firebirdcrazy
You know They really need to add modified classes to this show for all years. And also have judges that dont know the winners as well. Other then that it was a nice get together of Firebirds.
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I can understand your remarks regarding classes, however keep in mind that unlike large national shows like Dayton OH, Norwalk OH, etc which charge $55 for registration and $25-35 for spectators, we ask for a minimum donation of $5.00. Also keep in mind that unlike those other large shows which keep nearly all the money, WE GIVE AWAY ALL THE MONEY to Special Olympics. We keep nothing for ourselves or our club. Nothing!
Now since we do not charge $55 registration and $25-35 spectators, and since we give away all the money that we receive, where does the money come from to buy trophies for classes including stock, light modified, heavy modified, super street, etc, etc, etc??? I am open to ideas. PM me with all of your solutions.
Please recognize that we gave away 24 very nice trophies plus 18 very nice Resin ovals for 4th, 5th, and 6th places for the classes, plus 25 athlete ribbons!
That is a total of 67 awards spread on a field of 139 Firebirds, which I happen to think is a very generous award structure where the main purpose of the show is not to stroke egoes with trophies, but to raise money for a very worthy cause on a beautiful field in a beautiful park with free admission to a beautiful Auto Museum and cheap food and drinks.
As far as judges knowing the participants well, I am not sure what you are referring to. Our 4th Generation judge for 2008 was from Ontario Canada and probably knew very few of the participants on the field, let alone the owners of the cars he was judging. Our 4th Gen judge in 2007 was from CT.
The only way to have judges that know none of the owners is to fly in a bunch of Mopar owners from somewhere far away, and once again, please consider our purpose is not to spend money and stroke egoes, our purpose is to deliver a low stress down home people friendly Firebird Only car show with a reasonable award structure but without tech lines or politics.
Within a few weeks, I will post a complete list of all the winners and all their home towns. I think you will find that most of our winners were folks from out of town and even out of NY state.
The fact is that our volunteer judges labored very hard to judge all cars on the field with integregity, honesty, and fairness. ALL of the judges and MUCH of the show staff including myself had cars on the field, but NONE were in competition. They were all there for display only.
The real reward to most participants was seeing the smiles on the faces of our Special Olympics Athletes wandering on the field, Athletes seeing cars they will never be able to own or drive, and Athletes talking to warm and friendly car owners that they would otherwise never see in their daily lives, and participants having their picture taken with Athletes.
Thanks for coming.
Tom Smith in Saratoga Springs NY
Show founder, organizer, and head cheese.
BTW: If you know people or companies that would like to donate a few thousand dollars to our cause for the purposes of buying 4 times more trophies to give away, please PM me with all of your info and I will follow up personally.