MECHANICAL MARVELS ON VIEW
Earsplitting show at airstrip combines cars, planes, motorcycles and historic machines of interest that don’t fit into any category
The Pacific Coast Dream Machines show — an annual springtime sensory blitz of chrome, steel, smoke and decibels that’s been going on for nearly three decades — was blessed with picture-perfect weather this year and an expected record crowd.
Highway 1 was jammed in both directions en route to the Half Moon Bay Airport, where about 2,000 gleaming vehicles of a wide variety of vintages and types were on display. Some equally impressive rides were sprawled out on the grass alongside the entrance road, overheated casualties of too much
“The cacophony of noise is part of the charm of the event.” — Tim Beeman, event organizer
idle time waiting to get in.
“Maddie’s Caddy,” a dazzling white 1959 DeVille, was one of those. But owner Magdalena Dominguez, 88, didn’t mind giving the car she calls her “greatest joy” a rest and appreciating attention from passers-by headed to the concourse — affirmations that she also gets on the road.
“I love it — I’ll get out on the freeway with my lead foot, and everyone gives me a thumbs-up,” said Dominguez, of Menlo Park. “At my late age, it just does my heart good.”
The show was conceived 27 years ago by Half Moon Bay native Bob Senz as a fundraiser for the Coastside Adult Day Health Center.
The vision was a show that combined cars, airplanes, motorcycles and historic machines of interest that don’t fit into any category and bring it all to the airstrip.
Care to see, hear and smell a wood-fired, steampowered log-dragging apparatus? Bounce around in the back of the “Wheels of Freedom” monster pickup as it fishtails around a muddy patch, kicking up fist-size dirt clods? Take to the skies in the nose of a 1930 New Standard fourpassenger biplane?
Chuck Cushner and his granddaughter Aydin Levy did. Disembarking from pilot Mike Carpentiero’s barnstormer, 10-year-old Aydin said her first biplane ride got nearly too exciting when the agile aircraft did a couple of quick rises and dips.
“That wasn’t my favorite part,” she said. “But the ride was a lot of fun.”
Farther down the airstrip was one of the few boats in the show: the Western Mag Special, a waterborne open-cockpit dragster owned by Jerry Mangono, of Gilroy.
It set a record back in 1978 — 208 mph in the quarter-mile — and Mangono acknowledged that it’s the type of speed machine once piloted by only the most death-defying of daredevils.
“That’s why it’s retired,” he said.
But it still runs, boasting 3,200 horsepower and a fearsome decibel output that, when unexpectedly started, knocked the crowd backward. One parent leaped to cup hands over a child’s ears, pulling the boy away from an angry rumble that could loosen teeth.
“I don’t know for sure how loud it is,” said Mangono. “One time it registered 128 decibels, but it blew the sheriff’s meter up when they tried to test it.”
Chris Dohmann, of Livermore, who was at the show for a third time, grinned and called the sonic output “incredible.”
“Did you notice how everybody jumped back at first and then slowly started moving back forward?” he asked. “Do you see how everyone is smiling now? Just, wow.”
The auditory assault came from many sources at the Dream Machines show. Thrumming flybys by World War II Mustang fighters, the turbine whine of a Czechoslovakian jet fighter, the eardrumpierce of a 19th-century steam whistle at close range. Motocross stunt jumpers, and some kind of drag race involving riders literally dragged on a sled behind a single-wheeled motorcycle chassis — “unimotorcycle racing,” they call it. And if the piecemeal racket was too random, this year they added the “Cacklefest” — “A mass synchronized firing up of the engines from all the motorized mechanical marvels on display,” every other hour.
“The cacophony of noise,” said event organizer Tim Beeman, “is part of the charm of the event.”
Beeman said it’s “grown immensely” over the years and, based on the early afternoon parking lot count, expected the turnout to exceed 25,000 people. The weather definitely factored in, but Beeman said the variety-pack nature of the show is what has made it an enduring event for Half Moon Bay.
“We keep it fresh, and there’s a lot of artistry here,” he said. “It’s just eye candy. Everywhere you look there’s something fascinating.”