This past Saturday August 8th was the 49th State Street Rodders “Hot Summer Nights” Car Show in downtown Palmer. It was a wonderful show. The weather was great, temperature perfect and the vehicles sure came out. To say we were packed with vehicles would be putting it mildly, they were everywhere they could park. Not being able to park in the library parking lot took away a lot of spaces so next year there will be more room again. I thought last year’s show was big with 115 vehicles, but we went way beyond that this year with 175 that we know of and I am sure there were a few that got by us.
It was a perfect evening in small town America. Beautiful cars, trucks and motorcycles, food, music and perfect weather.
For food we want to thank all the downtown establishments that provided our patrons with their delicious far as well as the 2 food trucks that turned out. Exquisite Urban Tastes that frequent most of our shows and Pizza Peddler who we have never had participate before. I saw a lot of empty pizza boxes and people seemed to really enjoy their pizza. Something else different was Retro Babe Boutique. They had their camper boutique there and were dressing some of our ladies up in 50’s and 60’s attire.
Also different this year was live music. We want to give a big thank you to Presbyterian Hospitality House for paying for Sergio Castillejo to perform for us. There was literally dancing in the streets of Palmer Saturday night. He was great and played for 4 hours straight. Everyone loved the live music.
Special thanks to those that help make this night possible. The City of Palmer for letting us shut down the street every year for this car show. Larry for all his work over the years helping make this show possible dealing with city matters like barricades, Brenda for tirelessly walking all around for me talking pictures of all 175 vehicles to post on Facebook and helping out at the registration desk, Jane for all her help giving out the info to those who pre-registered and doing all the counting and tabulating of winners and Dani for her help blocking off the street and helping stage the vehicles. It was very challenging this year to say the least! And to anyone I forgot thank you too.
And thank you to all those vehicles who came out and made this a wonderful evening in Palmer Alaska, small town America.
Here are the winners for Saturday night. 3rd Place People’s Choice was a 1983 Dodge Rampage, 2nd Place People’s Choice was 1955 Nash Metropolitan “Pinke” and 1st Place People’s Choice 2023 GMC Denali.
I will put as many of the pictures I can with this post and those that don’t make it will be in another post.
