The Return of Show and Go to Riverside California

Detroit Lives.

Text and photos by Richard Bartholomew –

A sunny day a folding chair and a moving display of decades of American rolling iron.

The show was gone and now it’s back and it was huge. Around these parts a couple times a year the city of Riverside, CA and it’s Rotary Club put on a nice show on the main street and many side streets. A show called Show and Go and I believe it covers more area with the most cars of every other show in the entire world except for the Monterey event up the coast in August.

To be fair maybe not second place in the entire world but larger than before and larger than most that I have personally attended. Certainly in acreage and number of cars for a hot rod event. All the major shows like those on Route 66 will probably be larger this year also as more people get out and about and are able to show off their latest new projects or finished hot rods again.

The fun started last Friday afternoon, April 29, with a registration and cruise. Saturday the thing just explodes into a multi-block party and cruise celebrating the American car culture and Detroit in particular. Note: some of the photos have the blue flyers in the windows edited out. The flyers identify the registered parade cars. Steel barricades marked the route and volunteers were directing the cruise and helping pedestrians.

Prevalent in this show are two letters S and S as in Super Sport. Though it may not show it in the photographs I pulled for this story the amount of Novas and other SS’s there was just slightly more than the amount of Mustangs in my estimation and their were a LOT of Mustangs. And I do believe it was mostly, but not all, the Mustangs that were doing the muffler bypass to the side pipes that really makes them loud.

I prefer the stock shiny finished ’30s or ’40s Caddies or lesser makes but the Huppmobile was a rare treat indeed. And I like the cars that are customed out, all shiny and sharp and those set up for racing, heck I like all kinds. More than one type of hot rod there had the car or truck set up to be fast with no concern of painting over the primer. And another genre is lowered American pickup truck from the 70s decade, boxy and bent a little with an engine in the process of being tricked out often with no bonnet on it, people like what they like and display what they have.

A day of stock trailer queens to gasser dragsters, stock Dodge muscle cars, painted flames of every color, hot rod of all types from every decade with a sprinkling of rat rods and low riders but mostly fat tires in back and thin in front for running a quarter mile I suspect. The weather was perfect.

At these shows you will also see for sale signs here and there. A fantasy question after a show like this is “Well, which one would you own?” I’m a ragtop guy but the rarity of the Hupp is something to consider? I really end up dreaming that I could take four or five cars home.

The Show and Go vibe is a nice family event. Many a young person will remember these shows for the rest of their lives. I was glad that the cars were all tuned correctly. I have gone to fancy shows in very fancy places with more fancy cars and been gassed out by some cars in poor tune, I mean you Austin Healey on Rodeo Drive and you white Porsche 356 in Malibu!

All not kidding aside, the Riverside show is a Detroit show with a large geographic area to draw from in Southern California and will have continued success far into the future.

Let us know what you think in the Comments.

Richard Bartholomew is an artist and photographer based in Southern California. Visit his YouTube channel here. He is open to interesting consignments and can be reached at zeroagenow@aol.com