L.A. Literature, Toy & Memorabilia Show

north onto Golden Ave. This was a residential street, with lots of speed bumps on it. I could see from my GPS (I was driving my E350) in my car there was a bridge that crossed the L A River at Willow St.

When I got up to Willow St., I encountered the same situation, more local police blocking the westbound traffic on Willow St. Therefore, I continued north on Golden Ave. The next bridge over the L A River was at Wardlow Rd., but Golden Ave did not have direct access to it, so I ended up going east on Wardlow, which allowed me to get onto the 405 Freeway going north. I had hopes of avoiding the freeways, but I was pleasantly surprised to see I got right up to the speed limit on the 405. Unsurprisingly, the slowest I got on the 405 was 50 M.P.H. I stayed on the 405 until Artesia Blvd. where I went west and then on to my hotel where I spent the night.

I never heard any explanation, either on the radio or TV, about the reason for PCH being closed. Saturday morning dawned wet and cold.

I was off early to the L A Airport Hilton for Stoddard’s Literature, Toy, and Memorabilia Show for Porsches and Vintage VW’s. Kind of a mouthful, colloquially referred to as the Lit Meet. I will not bore you with the embarrassing details, but since a lot of the vendors did not show up, I got placed in the main ballroom this year! I am pleased to say it was a good show for me. It was fun seeing quite a few people I know in Southern California. Since I have returned home, I have seen photos from several people that attended the inaugural event at Hagerty Garage in Van Nuys. This was referred to as “Die Bäckerei”. From photos I have seen, it looks like this was well attended, and quite the scene. This was in Van Nuys, and was scheduled from 2-7 PM. This event required you to RSVP prior to the event, which I had not done. I have found in previous years going to Rod Emory’s shop in North Hollywood, then trying to get to Orange County later in the afternoon, the traffic is really ugly.

So, following the Lit Meet, I went directly to Orange County. Considering the weather, which got quite wet several times going down the 405 to OC, I got to Costa Mesa in decent time. There is a Vons grocery store below Adams on Harbor that I have stopped at for years to get Girl Scout Cookies on my way to Costa Mesa. There were no Girl Scouts selling cookies on this day.

My first stop was at a shop I had never been to before. Performance Vintage International, at 187 E. 16th St. This is a small shop, but it appears they do exemplary work. They farm out paint work, but do assembly there. There were small patches of blue in the eastern sky while I was hanging out there, then it began to hail. The hail started and stopped several times. By the time it stopped hailing, there were big patches of blue sky, and magnificent clouds of 49 different shades of gray.

My next stop was a return to European Collectibles, which was a short drive on the other side of Newport Blvd. Once again, E.C. offered free tacos. Last year they did not do this. This always seems to draw a crowd, and there was a good turnout there, even though they had quite a few more empty parking spaces for cars to display. This year they had a gorgeous AC Cobra, a Jaguar, and more desirable Porsches than you can imagine in one place. For me, this is usually the highpoint of the trip.

In one of their service bays, they had what appeared to be a Singer Porsche that was in for body work. The engine cover was off, and the body piece across the rear, that is usually straight, had a very distinct “V” shape to it. The right rear corner was also concave, instead of convex.

After this, it was time to head up to Fullerton where I was spending the night. Traffic was moving well on the 55 Freeway, but I-5 was under water near 17th Street in Santa Ana. As I was planning on going this way to get to the 57 Freeway, I ended up getting off of the I-5 at 4 th St. and getting back on the 55 north.

This brings us to Sunday morning. The 356 Club once again held their All-Porsche Swap and Car Display at Boys Republic in Chino Hills. With I-5 being closed, I did not want to have to deal with the potential of additional traffic on US 101, so I got up early Sunday morning, and headed home.