This year is the 18th time the Seaside Cruizers car club has presented their annual Father’s Day Show and Shine in Qualicum Beach, but they’re still learning a new trick or two.
This year’s event, slated for June 17 to 19, will be no exception, says club president Norm Biddlecombe,
Billed as the mid-Island’s largest event, the Show and Shine kicks off with a cruise-in night at the Parksville A&W at 7 p.m. on Friday, June 7 and continues on Saturday with a poker run leaving from Bugsy’s Bar and Grill at 11 a.m. The day will wind up with a Saturday night street dance in downtown Qualicum Beach.
The big day though, is Sunday, when as many as 600 classic, vintage and specialty cars and trucks will line the streets of the uptown area of QB.
It’s during the setup for this portion of the event that the latest wrinkle will come into play.
“Parking has always been an issue with us because we bring in about 600 cars in a couple of hours,” Biddlecombe said. “We have blocks and blocks of cars and a lot of them can’t idle and tend to overheat, so the owners can get a little annoyed. This year, we are going to stage the cars that are not registered in the Civic Centre parking lot and file them into the parking lot so they can shut their engines off and we’ll take one row at a time.”
He noted the registered cars, which make up about a third of the total, will park as usual.
Biddlecombe conceded this year’s event might be just a little bit smaller than in past years, because of rising costs, including gasoline and ferry fares.
“Our pre-registration is down a bit from last year,” he said.
That shouldn’t be a problem though, as the 630 vehicles on display last year pretty much filled the available space to capacity.