ClassicVWBugs.com Palm Beach Garderns Gathering With Chris Vallone

This past Sunday, March 4th, I drove my '63 ragtop bug up to Palm Beach Gardens Florida to meet Chris Vallone from ClassicVWBugs.com at his first ever VW gathering event here in South Florida. Chris is an awesome dude that has become very popular on Youtube for posting tons of really good VW restoration tips videos. He also runs the Classic VW Bug Shop up in New York where he restores mainly vintage Volkswagen bugs.

The event turned out really good, I was the first one to get there of course :). At first I got worried that no one was going to show up because it was raining slightly, but people started arriving a little after twelve noon. Fortunately the rain stopped and we got some sunshine. About 20 VWs came, lots of Beetles, one Karmann Ghia, and a good amount of buses. I met lots of cool people. It's always interesting and fun to hear the stories about how they got their VWs, what their plans are for them, and how many they have!

From all the VWs that came the most notable was an early bug that a guy had bought from a junkyard in beautiful condition, painted Brunswick Blue (if I'm not mistaken), the only problem the bug had was that it had suffered an engine fire. I still can't believe someone would put a car like that in a junkyard!!! The only thing this guy had to do to this bug was rebuild the engine and repaint the deck lid.

My '63 ragtop looked nice of course, I think it had the cleanest interior. I don't know why some people don't even bother cleaning their cars before coming to an event like this... I had spent all day Saturday working on my bug installing the engine compartment rubber seal and cleaning it inside and out! The flat black paint always catches people's attention and they come to check it out. I also had the chance to promote my new website AircooledVWvideos.com. I handed out flyers, told people what it's all about, and got a really good response from everyone.

Chris did some filming of the event and he'll be posting the video on his website sometime soon, maybe I'll post it here too. Hopefully he will come back down to Florida and organize this event at least once a year, I'm sure a lot more people would come next time. I do want to mention that the event happened at Francesca's Pizza & Wine Bar, which is owned and run by Chris' sister. The pizza was great!

Here are the pics my girlfriend and I took. Enjoy!