Andy's Picnic

40th anniversary

By Eric Geisert

Free beer? And free hot dogs? Could that be the secret formula to make people take hot rods to yet another car show? Well, it was back in the '60s when Andy Brizio decided to hold a get-together for some of his hot rod buddies in Northern California.

The first Andy's Picnic, and we're talking about 1966 here, was just Andy, his wife, Sue, and a few friends with about 30 cars that showed up at Morton's Hot Springs near Calistoga to hang out. Afterward, they then got folks who had heard about how much fun it was and said they'd like to go to the next one, and soon a tradition was formed!

The second Andy's Picnic in 1967 drew 60 cars, and was held at the Crazy Horse Ranch in Napa. In '68, the event at Turtle Rock Ranch in Mount Diablo drew 100 cars, but by 1969, when the show moved to Crow Canyon, Andy was getting 475 cars through the gate, and his little picnic had become the place to be!

Keeping in mind what was happening in the hot rod scene at the time (the first and only Street Rod Nationals had happened only the year before, and the first issue of STREET RODDER magazine was still three years off!), the fact that Andy was able to gather so many cars for a show tells you something about the NorCal scene in the late '60s and early '70s.

The Crow Canyon Picnics Andy and Sue Brizio put on were the stuff of which legends were made, and still rank high on "best all-time events" for some folks. In 1978, the Picnic moved to the Salano Fairgrounds in Vallejo, where a nearly limitless amount of space could be devoted to the event. But, unlike a lot of other gatherings, Andy's stayed true to form, and didn't go for all the glitz and glamour you see at some of the car shows today (and from 1978 on, he no longer served up the free dogs 'n' beer).

Andy's Picnic has always been about a gathering of friends (all of Andy's seem to own hot rods!), and Brizio has enjoyed meeting with folks who come from all over the country (and even the world) to attend his one-day car show. In fact, many of the people who do attend the Picnic year in and year out attend only this show, and don't bother going anywhere else.

So, it was a bit of a shock to those who had attended Andy's Picnic for many years when Andy and Sue decided in 1996 that the 30th anniversary show would be the last one. The event T-shirts for that show proclaimed "An End of an Era," and they were right, for nothing else had the laidback atmosphere that Andy's Picnics did. Andy and Sue got busy with some of the cross-country trips they were making in Andy's purple '32 highboy (in fact, he was one of the first to drive cross-country in a hot rod back in the mid-'60s) and, over the next decade, Andy would record more than 100,000 miles in his roadster on various Ya Gotta Drive 'Em and Topless tours.

But, people who loved and attended the show wanted another opportunity to get together, so Sue and Andy organized the 35th anniversary show in 2001, keeping the numerical sequence going even though there hadn't been any runs between the 30th and 35th. The '01 show was supposed to be the last, but it took five years to convince the patriarchs of the Brizio clan that they should have a 40th anniversary show in 2006, and it was like old home week all over again.

There may or may not be a 45th anniversary show in 2011 (Andy said he'll be too old, but you never know), but rest assured there will be people lined up to get in if Andy and Sue decide to put one on. But, that's what you always get when you hang out with the Brizios and their friends: a guaranteed great time and a lot of great cars to look at!