2010 - Little Italy

October 10th, 2010

Little Italy's "Festa" is an annual cultural/culinary celebration of everything Italian. With special emphasis, of course, on many of the local merchants. Lots of nice Italian music, great Italian food and just a few Italian cars. Not only were the Panteras virtually the entire motorsports display, but they were a huge crowd pleaser!

The number of people that went through the show was unbelievable. Security informed us the numbers were between 100,000 and 150,000 !!!

With 8 Panteras in attendance, 1 Alfa Romeo, 1 Maserati, 2 Ferraris and 1 Lambo, the Panteras WERE the show. We had about 4 no-shows from SDP, but the Panteras held the front 8 spots, 4 on each side of the display area. It could not have been more perfect for us.

To say that this event was crowded would be huge understatement. The humanity was thicker than Mama Celeste's Marinara!

Sadly, the homeless pepper problem in Little Italy rivals that of any other larger Italian themed neighborhood. This individual appears to suffer from a substance dependancy issue as well. Probably Galiano or Limoncello in the bag. Bruce and Gary don't seem to be much bothered by it.

One of the slightly lower-performance forms of Italian transportation

This is actually the car display area. You can barely see it, as it is completely jammed with people

It was difficult to get a shot of the cars without getting people

Bob, George, John, Chris and Mike walked about 10 blocks over to the Gaslamp district to check out the Cars on Fifth show. It was a very nice display with a number of outstanding custom cars. Naturally, we ended up hanging around the winner of the People's Choice award, Brad Diez's awesome '74! We put the pressure on Brad to remind him to join our club.

Bruce displayed some authentic Italian beverages

The chalk street art extended across 2 city blocks. It was quite impressive.