La Jolla Concours d’Elegance 2024
The La Jolla Concours d’Elegance was a couple of weeks ago and is one of my yearly highlights. I started volunteering to work on the Sunday in order to get in to see these fantastic cars. As you no doubt know by now, I am a car enthusiast from childhood. One of the things that I enjoy most is looking at distinctive examples of automotive art. The highest form of competition in car shows is the “concours d’elegance.
From Wikipedia -“Concours d'Elegance (French: concours d'élégance) is a term of French origin that means a "competition of elegance" and refers to an event where prestigious vehicles are displayed and judged. It dates back to 17th-century France, where aristocrats paraded horse-drawn carriages in the parks of Paris during summer weekends and holidays.[1] Over time, carriages gave way to automobiles and the gatherings became a competition among vehicle owners to be judged on the appearance of their vehicles.”
Putting on a show of this size is a daunting task and requires hundreds of volunteers to execute. I volunteer for the early Sunday morning shift called “Load-in”. Typically arrive in downtown La Jolla around 5:30AM, park somewhere close to the venue at Ellen Browning Scripps Park and walk down the dark and quiet streets. The Load-in crew are responsible for getting the exhibitors situated at their assigned spaces on the lawn and aligned so that the attendees and photographers have a nice straight line of cars or view of many of the classics arrayed on the green. Once all exhibitors are in place, the crew are released from assigned duties, but we are still considered staff that can help answer any questions or point out directions to facilities. At this point I usually take a quick tour of the field to check out what cars I had not seen come in and plan out what cars I might want to spend time taking photos of.
