The Return of Carmageddon

The Lonely Knights CC in ColoRODo Springs, CO, tripled the number of entrants on August 27 for their 2nd Annual Carmageddon car show held at Southside Johnny’s Downtown Bar and Grille on Tejon Street, over their first annual show.

The streets were blocked off at dark thirty that Saturday morning and the cars started rolling prior to 7AM to get the primo parking spots. The street filled fast and the street on the south side and the parking lot to the west of the bar got the overflow.

This reporter likes to be “fashionably late” to events – take my time driving and didn’t get there til 8:30 AM after a cool sweatshirt-type 75-mile drive from Denver. After Pikes Peak got a dusting of Colorado powder snow earlier in the week, the day warmed nicely and the clouds threatening to dump rain on the Springs again stayed away.

Carmegeddon Car Show — Tejon Street was blocked off and full of hot rods and kustoms.

The Lonely Knights club is a Kustom car club and the members all parked together on the south side of the street. Several out of town guests including Mick Bryan, Travis Scanlan, Bill Baker, Gary Mundy, Rocky Burris, Frank Lund and ‘Duke’ out of Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri drove their kustoms out and got to park with all the other Kustoms. There was quite a showing of kustomized cars.

While the show was going on outside, Southside Johnny’s held a pin –up contest inside on the stage and in the afternoon, the east side garage doors were opened and a live band played for the crowd. Door prizes were handed out during the day and the vendors set up in the parking lot did a brisk business.

By the end of the day, there were 168 registered participants and among those, 7 received awards. The big one was the “People’s Choice” award and Ernie Guiterrez received the ‘King Pin Best of Show’ award for his kustom shoebox Ford.

The Lonely Knights CC like to keep the awards pretty simple, so they had ‘Best Hot Rod,’ Best Muscle Car’, Best Kustom’ and ‘Best Pickup’ and each one of those awards came with a $50 gift card to Southside Johnny’s.

Also, Rocky Burris, from Wichita, Kansas, handed out the KKOA award along with a free registration to the Leadsled Spectacular. Frank Lund, a KKOA Colonel drove out from Burlington, CO, and presented the KKOA ‘Coolest Cruiser’ award.

Not only did The Lonely Knights put on a great show on Saturday, but on Sunday they celebrated their 20th Anniversary as a club. They had about 40 cars show up for their picnic in the Fountain, CO, city Park and they had about a hundred and fifty people there; a great time was had by all.

Plan on the third annual ‘Carmageddon’ next August, it’s a great time to vacation in ColoRODo…