Typical for an LA Calendar event, there was non-stop action again at the 2009 show, what with the Calendar Bike Building Championship bike contest, Calendar Bike Building Seminars, the Calendar Girl Music Festival, the Brown & Koro World Record Dyno Shootout, free Can-Am Spyder demo rides, complimentary admission aboard the Queen Mary ghost ship, and the Saturday Night Iron & Lace Calendar Builder’s Party aboard the Queen Mary with a live band. Last year’s first-place Pro Builder Kenji Nagai of Japan flew back to L.A. for this year’s 2009 Performance Machine sponsored Calendar Bike Building Championship with his all-new bike 1913 to take Best of Show. Ken returned to Japan the lion’s share of $86,000 in cash and awards, presented to him by show co-sponsor Ted Sands of Performance Machine.

It’s no surprise the LA Calendar Show always does well, but Jim echoed many bike event promoters in saying attendance was off this year. “Of course all of us know the motorcycle industry has fallen into a bit of a collapse,” he said. “Attendance has dropped about two-thirds at all bike events across America from Daytona to Sturgis. What’s most disappointing, of course, is many of our manufacturers and custom bike builders have gone out of business. As far as the custom bike market goes, I don’t believe it will ever come back at all, because it’s going to go back to where it was in the 1990s. There’ll still be a couple of big names like Arlen Ness and Ron Simms and Dave Perewitz, but that’s it.”

“All of the custom bike motorcycle programs that came on television back in the late ’90s and 2000s like Monster Garage and Build Or Bust and on and on were great and they created a great exposure for the custom bike market and it brought in a lot of new people into the sport,” Jim said. “They all came in and bought expensive custom bikes but the problem is once people bought those bikes they rode ‘em a couple of times and found out they aren’t practical, they aren’t safe, they’re very difficult to ride, and they often broke down. And all those people came out of it with a bad experience and they quit, they pulled out of the market. That started about 2005 and 2006, before our economy experienced problems. And so the market kind of collapsed on itself, then the economy’s problems kicked in. That’s what I feel has occurred.”

But the show must go on, as they say, and it takes Jim and his staff a full year to put together an event as successful and well planned as the LA Calendar Show. The team is already working hard on the 2010 event, which will mark its 19^th year. “To say we’re busy is an understatement,” he said, laughing.

To check out more photos of the 2009 event, the Calendar Models, see a full list of show sponsors, and make plans for the 2010 show, visit

www.fastdates.com.