Festa Italiana 2006

Festa Italiana is an annual event at the Seattle Center, usually in October to commemorate Christopher Columbus's birthday.  However, due to scheduling conflicts, this year it was held on the September 23rd weekend.  The organizers always invite Italian automobiles, motorbikes and bicycles to participate.  Bringing a Ferrari is an excellent way to attend as you have free reserved parking right in the middle of Seattle Center.

But first, we had a required stop at Griot's Garage Sale in Tacoma, WA.  For those of you not familiar with Griot's Garage , it is a store (primarily mail order) that caters to the automobile crowd, with the items mainly in the detailing area.  Once a year or so, they hold a garage sale with overstock, discontinued, sample and returned merchandise.  Good bargains are to be had.  A example is their chamois wringer with drain pan for $40 ($199 in the catalog).  I picked up mine a couple of years ago for $35, but a friend asked me to get one for him if they were available.

I had two other wants on my list, a set of the GoJaks to enable me to move the PF coupe around and Griot's random orbital polisher.  The doors theoretically open at 9, but last year we got there at 8:45 and some of the bargains were already gone, including the only set of GoJaks.  So this year, we arrived early, about 8:15.  The doors opened at about 20 til 9 and there were already 40 people waiting to get in.

I was smarter this year and instead of wandering around trying to find things, I asked where specific items were.  They had several sets of GoJaks, so I got the two pair of those I needed.  Right next to them were the chamois wringers, so my friend will be happy.  They didn't have any orbital polishers as returns, but had new ones with a starter kit for 10% off the catalog price.  In addition, buying one of those kits gave you 10% off everything else you bought.  So I grabbed one.  Then I went wandering, picking up one of their long shop vacuum hoses, a couple of squeeze bottles and a car care bag for the 308.  Not as many tools as in previous years so only got a couple of very long needle nose pliers.

It took some packing to get everything loaded into the 330 GT.  We ended up taking the GoJaks out of the cardboard boxes so they would nest together in the trunk.  We had brought two folding chairs for the festival, but only one would fit back into the trunk.  The other and the chamois wringer ended up in the back seat.  It's a good thing that we didn't drive the 308!

After everything was loaded, we stopped by their demo area where they were showing how to use the polisher.  I asked about getting a demonstration on my car since I had just bought one specifically to polish out the marks left by the direct drive machine I used.  One station was open, so I brought the car over and they worked on a portion of the hood. 

It was like night and day.  In fact, the employees wanted me to leave the car because it was such a good example of how their products worked, but we had to get to the Seattle Center.

Here are the GoJaks in operation on the PF coupe.

There were eight Ferraris, a few Fiats and some Vespa scooters that showed up for the festival on Saturday.  As I mentioned, the venue is great, by the fountain right next to a grass area.

It took a while, but the cops finally caught up with us.  I guess bikes just aren't a match for a Ferrari.

There was a wedding going on at the same time.  Their photographer came over and asked if it would be possible to get some pictures of the bride and groom in one of the cars.  Scott assented to them using his Dino.  But just after the bride was seated, he said that he was ready to leave with her aboard.

I accomplished one thing that I had always forgotten in previous years.  Seattle and Perugia, Italy have a sister city relationship, so there was a booth there.  I remembered to print out my car's first two owners information (from the mid 60s) since they lived in Perugia.  Nobody in the booth knew the names, but the secretary of the organization said she would send out an email to see if anybody knows or has current contact information for them.  Hopefully I'll get a contact and be able to get copies of some early pictures of my car.