Thanks for a great show. See you next year! With 2,378 vehicles registered in 2022, the Ducktail Run has been said by many to be “the best show they have ever attended.” Ducktail Run is a 1972 and older show, unless the vehicle is chopped, channeled, sectioned or tubbed. The entry fee is $35 for the weekend and you can come and go as you please. The swap meet had another record year of vendors last year with more than 400 swap meet and commercial vendors. Come early and stay late as this is a must attend event!When it comes to vintage and antique motorcycles there are a handful of events that cater specifically to finding hard to find parts for old bikes. Such as Oley, Pennsylvania; Davenport, Iowa; and Wauseon, Ohio all hold meets that are part of the Antique Motorcycle club of America keeping the spirit of antique bikes alive. The Speedway chapter of the AMCA in Indiana set out to hold a meet smack dab in the center of all those events in Gas City, Indiana. The meet would have a similar vibe but also hold flat track racing at the Gas City Speedway just south of the event grounds. We attended the meet in 2021 and amid covid protocols and rainy weather ended up turning out some serious attendance from people from all over the country ready to share their parts and stories about antique motorcycles and also rip a few of them across the Gas City dirt track. We sat down with one of the AMCA chapter members and former Born Free builder Jay Hart to find out his take on the event and get a little more backstory on how this shaped up in only a couple years to be a real top notch event that not only furthers the love of antique motorcycles but also gives back to the community.
Okay. Well, we are a fairly new chapter of the AMCA. We were all members of other chapters and weren't really that active in them and didn't really know much about the others chapter. We knew a lot of the guys, and the chapters we knew most about were far away from us. We had other friends that were in them around the country and even around the world, like a bunch of guys in France, I'm friends with. There's about 30 of us that talk, ride and work on bikes together. Someone said, you know what? We should just start our own chapter. Not that we didn't like whatever chapter we were in, we just weren't active in it. And we hung out with each other. So, us starting our own chapter just made sense, It felt natural to do that. I was in Oley, Pennsylvania at the AMCA in Oley, which is a killer time, like one of my very favorite meets. Lonnie Campbell was president of the AMCA at the time and I said; Hey Lonnie, we're thinking about starting a chapter in Indiana and I want to have a swap meet. He was like; "man, that's a lot of work, you know?" I'm like, "yeah I just think we could have a great one in Indiana". We came back to indiana after the Oley meet and we talked to some of the guys and decided to start a chapter. There's all this legal stuff you gotta do to get a chapter going. I told the guys, I'll promote stuff, I'll put on a swap meet, but one of you has to do the whole 5013C thing. I was so busy raising a kid, building a house, working on motorcycles, I didn't have time to manage the 5013C stuff. All the guys that I hang around, we're kind of 36' to 48' Harley guys. That's really kind of who we are in our club.
The Born free build was after the chapter started up. So yeah, with the club, you gotta set up a bank account and you gotta figure out who's going to be officers. Nobody wanted to be the boss, and nobody wanted a title. So i'm like, do I have to be president? because nobody wanted to do it. After all that, I became the director of the swap meet and they just gave me that title. I think they just saw that I was just going to like a bullet at it and everybody has sort of stood back and they're like alright, I guess we're going to trust Jay and see what he comes up with. I think a few of them were really in disbelief of whether or not we could do something like this. But then last year, we finally got our chapters squared away. We finally got our official stuff. There are several stages to becoming a chapter of the AMCA, we finally got it together and then COVID happened. And so the meeting at Oley was canceled. The meeting at Wauseon was canceled. Then Davenport meet was canceled. Born free was canceled, everything, everything was canceled. A lot of guys in the antique motorcycle world were vendors at these meets, they love motorcycles so much that they've made a career out of keeping them alive. Year round they're out building parts to keep these motorcycles on the road, teaching people and trying to get people into these old motorcycles. I was like, man there's a lot of people who really count on these swap meets to make a living. We've got to do something here, so we approach Gas City and they said, that's great we love it! When are you thinking about doing it? You know, like in a couple years?. And I was like, well, in like 40 days. And they were like, wow, uhh ok? We told them if they'll let us do it, we know we will bring revenue to town. We will give you all the money, we don't need to keep anything, just put it all back into the park. All we want to do is have a place to come where people can sell their stuff and enjoy old motorcycles. We will do whatever we gotta do to be safe, we had social distancing signs and all that jazz, you know. We told all the vendors, this is your booth and you make your decision about mask wearing and things like that and everybody was respectful. And of course, you've been to antique motorcycle shows, people are so great at these things. It's just a mellow crowd. Then there's the people, you know, who you come for the what the characters are like, swap meet people are just characters and, and let me tell ya, you want to hear the stories, you want to talk to people. You want to pick up a part and say, oh, well, man, I got the craziest story about this part. And then you could end up talking with somebody for who knows how long. It's just part of what makes these meets so great.
Yeah, exactly. I do paint work on 36 to 48 cars and stuff. That's my specialty sheet metal. Pre-war mostly, but also big twin Harley-Davidson stuff.. Collectively in our chapter, we were a powerhouse, we have some of the best collections in the world in our chapter. We have some of the best collections of motorcycles and we know all the other people who have the best collections. It was pretty easy to take the map of the grounds and start laying out lines and just putting names on it. We started calling people saying; "Hey, we're going to do a swap meet. You want to show up? Or are you chicken?" There were definitely some people who were like, I don't want to test that and there were actually some people who were like, "Man that's really dangerous" or "You probably shouldn't do that." Hey, we're outdoors, everybody knows what a swap meet is like, we will all be respectful to people. If there are people who want to keep distances and do things like that, we did have signs that said we had the health department here and we complied with everything they wanted us to do. We followed all the guidelines and had all the hand-washing stations and all this hand sanitizer. We were willing to do anything to have it. All of a sudden I was getting calls like this guy talked to this guy and this guy said something about coming. Can you put me next to him because he helps me unload. He's getting kinda old and I kind of help him out., blah blah blah, you know. So I'm trying to organize stuff, moving people and calling people. If you move one person, you have to call five. But the cool thing for me and that lucky thing for me was that nobody knew what this place looked like. So they couldn't say, hey put me in the good spot. I didn't know where the good spot was. The layout is like one big row. After we met with the city, a handful of us came here to look at it and we walked in the park and we met on a park bench over by the river. All the guys that were in that group said, these are really great spots. There's shade here. And then we said, ok I want this one and I want that one. In fact, I was FaceTiming my buddy Grant Peterson, with Born free, I was like, check this spot out, then a good amount of west coast people came out for this. When I saw people online that were posting that they're here in Indiana. I'm like, holy shit. Ok, yes, people came in from all over, it was really a great turn out. There's really no bad spots though. So, yeah everybody showed up. Everybody really liked the grounds, you know, like when everybody got here, and the city was flabbergasted. They were like, I can't believe you guys did all this.
Like there are a lot of people in AMCA who maybe don't go to those other events, but I knew we wanted to do a race with this meet. We had to do a race. I'm just blown away by the attendance and the happiness and also the attendance of the racers, the quality, everything. It really came together. I mean, George Wills man. I mean, how awesome. I knew we wanted to have a race with this meet, so I didn't want to compete with things that were going on with the races. My goal was all these bike guys that have built these bikes purpose-built to go race at the race of gentlemen or race at Born free events and stuff, let's make a Midwest place for these guys to go. Why are they just racing a couple races on the east coast and the west coast. We are the racing capital of the world! If there's anything we know how to do in Indiana, we may fumble through a swap meet, but we know how to put on a freaking race, you know? This, this is a chance to start from scratch and build people up. I went to a lot of the vendors and I asked all the guys in chapter the same questions, what they want, what they like, what they don't like, when they'd like to see it. We came up with the first weekend in June so the swap and race could be combined. The weather in Indiana the first weekend in June is amazing. A lot of the other meets like Wauseon can be so hot, Davenport can be just brutal sometimes, but we don't care. We're willing to do that because we love all the motorcycles. We donate a hundred percent of the money back to the city. We, were able to raise like $10,000 for the city last year. I don't know where we're at this year, but it's way better than that. All we ask the city to do is make the facility better for us, so we're investing in ourselves. Every year we come back, we're just putting better stuff in this facility. They had showers that weren't ready for swap meet people or to have hundreds of people come in. They, put in water heaters, new shower rows, and drains and did all this work. Now people come back and they saw all their money at work. For us, I wanted to make sure that, when the people should showed up, they see their money at work in this facility. The city said, we're not donating to the city's like general fund or even the parks department it's directly to this park. We want to get back to some of the old days, one of the ideas with this meet that all of our club likes is, we hear all these stories from like the guys who were attending the AMCA events in the seventies, eighties, nineties. They had prizes and all these skill tests of motorcycles and stuff like that. We're going to do some stuff that we know that people want to see today as well. Like today, like Oliver Peck, one of our guests of honor here. Like he's such a great guy and like, he's been so good for antique motorcycles, you know, with his popularity, television show
No, he's not. He is not a member of our chapter now. He's just a supporter, a lover of our chapter, I guess, but he was here last year. He was like, man, I'm coming to that meet. I was like, great. I was surprised that so many people were willing to take the chance on it. And even this year he's like, I'll be back next year. He showed up this year and he had all sorts of great ideas about how we could advertise, how we can do different stuff. And so I think next year, he's going to be doing a mini bike race, and we're going to do it here on the grounds, like out in the field. So I've got one important question I wanted to ask, what did you want to accomplish with the races? Not even close to what happened. I can't even believe it. I'm like, I'm so shocked right now, I'm on cloud nine, man. I can't believe it. Last year we knew we wanted to do a race. I talked to Jerry, Gavin's the promoter out here at Gas city Speedway. And I knew Jerry from my friend, Roy Caruthers, and a bunch of races, like Indy Car people and racing, sprint cars, midget car people back in Indianapolis. They said, call Jerry, he'll help you out. I said, listen, how about we have the swap meet this year and you got a car race on Friday night. And they had sprint car races out there last year. And I said, how about I send some of these guys out and you let them run around your track on their bikes? I'm like, they'll come out there. He said, they'll come all the way up here just to run around the track and not race. I'm like you give them a track to get on. They're getting on that track. I mean, they knew absolutely. So an exhibition of sorts which became a race, actually, it was supposed to be just an exhibition. So, they went out and basically they did this exhibition and all the guys on the bikes went out and they tore it up. They did a couple like laps and stuff and they lined them up and let them race. And, uh, Luke Atkinson won that last year. And so it was sorta like this impromptu race, you know, the unofficial, first race of our swap meet, you know, And so he won and all these guys came back. So last year everybody came back, they were so excited. They were like, oh man, the grand stands. People love it. The car
people love it. I knew they'd love it. You know? And I saw the video and like, Luke takes off, off the line lineup, front wheel, like 12 o'clock wheelie, you know, like this crazy big leave, you know, launch off. It was so good. So I talked to Jerry later and he's like, yeah, man, they really liked it. We should try to do this next year. And I'm like, okay, well I'll do my best. Like, so I talked to all the guys who raced and the guys in our club, Nikki Everett and, Kevin Price.
They, those are the two guys, like in our chapter they're at every meeting, you know? I said, let's you guys reach out to the racers and you guys try to get as many people as you can. And, uh, Luke is really good friends with Dave Wasserman and Wasserman is like, you know, he's AMCA royalty. I mean, everybody knows Wassermann, he's just one of the best antique collectors anywhere and one of the coolest people in the freaking world. And so Dave was like, man, I'm going to tell everybody about
this all year. We're going to get people to come. It's going to be fine. We're coming back. We're going to do this again. And I knew if I had a guy like that, I knew that if Dave Wasserman, I knew that he was coming back. So all of a sudden it just started like blowing up.
Yeah. All, all of, all of those guys, like Luke and George and Luther and, and Eric Bass and Jenny Bass. They're like, they're like so grateful. Even like Luther Zimmerman Jr. crashed his bike tonight, like broke handlebars, ripped his primary off. The dude had such a big smile on his face and was like, like definitely coming back next year. And I'm like, holy cow, you know, like, but George Wills, George, I mean, everybody knows racer George, the champion flat track racer, he's legendary. And when George called. I said, man, you know, we're going to try to put on a race out here, like where we had the sprint car racing and man, we really could use your help. Like, cause we have no idea what we're doing. We have no clue. But like we don't know how to like set up the brackets and choose a class. And, you know, and, and the thing that we talked about at our, in our group, at our meet was like the hand shift motorcycles, you know, the brakeless was whatever and the hand shift bikes, those bikes are usually an afterthought at some of the flat track races. You know, they're kind of like in the shadow of the ranks, the center of the show. So we want to show that is about those motorcycles. That's what it is. And you know what? We encourage everything else. Like we want to have a hooligan race. We want to have, the vintage heavies and stuff. We love that. But for us, the bikes that you would typically see that you would most likely see at our event, you know, and that hope that changes in the future actually. Cause we want to see more. We have tons of bultacos and triumph stuff here. We had a lot of that. Here's where we, I hope we see a lot more of that. I mean, one of the things we want to make sure we're welcoming all that, all those bikes into our means. We love vintage motorcycles, not just one particular one or two, all every single one of them, 35 years and older. That's what we are. So we want to highlight that hand shift bikes,
The ultimate goal of all this, of everybody here, the vendors like, everyone. The ultimate goal is, is to further the love and interest in antique motorcycles. There is no other goal and no matter what, what everybody wants us to do, people say, Hey man, you know what you want to do? You want to have a, whatever, you know, like people have all these suggestions, like, okay, the first thing we're going to ask about that suggesting is how is that further the love of antique motorcycles? How does that, you know, get more information to people or help people at the meet? How does that help antique motorcycles and, you know, and if it doesn't then, well, then we don't need to do it. You know, we're going to do something else. So we had like 70 new vendors this year, but our spaces, what we did is said, I'll get back to that part. It was like, I told the guys last year, I'm like, you know what, what if we just rented bigger chunks of land in these people? Because everyone's going to say the same thing when I call them. I'm next to so-and-so in Wauseon or I'm next to so-and-so in Davenport or, or Oley. You know, and I can't stress enough that like it's about hand shift motorcycles, antique motorcycles that are handshift. That's what we want to race, that's the race that we're looking for. That's who we want to have there. That's our focus. So, um, you know, we want everybody to come and race, but our highlight, you know, because I mean, let's be honest. There's tons of flat track racing. You can go to flat track races all across the country and they're all amazing. They're all awesome. But we want them host a race that is very specifically about hand shift, early bikes. That's what we want to be the highlight of this show. That's why we want to put George Will's name on it. He deserves it. He's earned it. He's traveled. I mean, countless years. I mean, imagine the miles that guy has put on his vans and buses racing. I imagine the miles, how many gallons of gas he has in racing fuel he's poured into those motorcycles. Imagine the miles that he's put on these tires, how many tires he's been through his life? Like, imagine all that, like, he's more than earned a title, something, you know, like we're not even worthy of carrying his name on this shit. So for him to agree to do it, like, I don't know, its amazing.
So next year when we have the swap meet we will also have a mini bike race, and a chopper show and then the big race. It's gonna be a circus man. It's pre 1950s motorcycle only. Yeah. But the, the chopper show is Pre 1980s motorcycles, so it's like, if it's sort of kept along those lines, you know, it's like, you're not bringing people in here with twin cam choppers or whatever, you know, that's not what we're going to do. Old bikes man.
Photos and words by Mike Vandegriff |
Gas city motorcycle swap meet 2023
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