Long Beach Swap Meet 2/28/09

Here we go again. Another swap meet was held last Sunday. I didn't shoot too many photos since my mission was to score parts. Below are some random pics and comments.

This cool '39 Knuck caught my eye on the way in. I had a chat with a friend of it's owner about it. He said he thought the paint was original. Something is up with the tanks. The silver and the patina/wear doesn't match the fenders plus they are missing the stripe.


Not a good photo but I wanted to show this view of the tanks. They didn't look right to me, as in too wide. The shape seemed more like the bad 3.5 gal. repops that are closer to 4 gal. They did have the petcock on the front right side. Maybe the good doctor has some input?


1971 FLH project for sale. $3500 seemed decent to me. I later noticed the Wing Nuts M/C decal in the back window of the truck.


Check the license tags. This thing hasn't seen the road since '75. Probably low miles. That's original paint on the fender. I believe H-D called it "Sparkling America" like on that year's Super Glide.


Likely built from swap meet pieces. Too bad it had S&S cases and ugly later model fork legs.


Nice pre-unit... just needs a Wassel tank.


Big Scott and the Cycle Zombie's space.


Some guy (not seller), tried to tell me this was for a '71 Super Glide. He didn't know who he was talking to. I have one and it was an option for both '70 and '71 Sportsters. I don't know when H-D stopped offering them as an accessory but, they were included in the '72 parts and accessories catalog.


A Garage Co. Knuckle. This one just isn't working for me like some others they've built.





Here's a composite panorama photo to attempt to capture the scale of the event. The chart below shows the layout of the vendors spaces. The red dot is were I stood for photo.

Those are all the 16' x 20' vendor spaces. Several times a year they completely sell out. They sometimes set up more spaces in the middle of the wide bottom aisle as they did on this day. Even on the smallest days they probably sell 60% of the spaces.


When the Swap Meet first started (before Topping Events), 20 years ago, there were only 3 to 4 events a year and they only used the red area directly below the stadium and it wouldn't even fill up. As the event grew, they opened up the large green area to the left. Later, the blue area to the right and then the purple area upper right. I'm not sure but, seem to remember the small purple area as the first motorcycle parking lot.


The motorcycle parking area. This is late in the day. I should have taken this picture earlier in the day when bikes were parked all the way up to the fence.


Here's a shot from Topping's website.