A couple weeks ago we shot an event called, Back to the Beach, in Kenner, LA (which is basically New Orleans) on the shores of Lake Pontchatrain. It’s a weekend-long music festival culminating in a car show on Sunday; all to raise money for the restoration and preservation of the lake. It sounded like a good event, a worthy cause, and an excellent excuse to go down and tank up on some of that great Gulf Coast food, as can be seen in the pic of me going one-on-one with a killer soft shell crab Po’ Boy. Tasty!

We went down a day early so we could also take in a few of the sights in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter.

The temperature was 102 degrees that day, and I found myself strangely drawn to the signs heralding “Huge Ass Beers”. I can also say with certitude that was not false advertising!

We were looking at the potential of another 100+ degree day on Sunday, which can make shooting pretty brutal, but fortunately a light rain blew thru, dropping the temperature into the low 90’s. Not exactly chilly, but certainly more bearable.

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I would normally be just starting production on the next season’s shows now, but we’re actually still finishing up the last few shoots for this current season. A couple weeks ago we shot a Corvette piece in Texas that will air on May 15th, and last week we shot an absolutely killer pair of cars in Glendora, CA. A ’39 Ford Pro-street and customized ’53 Stude.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I am a known Stude guy, but regardless, both cars were excellently done and fairly extreme, yet completely streetable. The streetable part might be debatable with the ’39 since I’m sure it bumps up against the noise pollution limits of peaceful Glendora, but man what a sound!

I had first run into the Stude and its owner, Leonard Knight, at the SEMA charity car show last year in Pasadena. There were a lot of nice cars at that show, but that one really caught my eye. It didn’t hurt that it was green either. (I’m also a known green-car guy).

I’ve always thought the so-called Lowey Coupe (even tho it was actually designed by Bob Bourke) was one of the best automotive designs ever. It also seems to lend itself particularly well to customization.

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