The end of LA will not be an earthquake or a mud slide, it’ll be the rain. This city absolutely shuts down whenever it gets wet and unfortunately today it’s been pouring non-stop. Thankfully MotorMilt & I were able to avoid a great deal of the foul weather by checking out the Cycle World International Motorcycle Show at the Long Beach Convention Center.

Seeing as how LA is a rather large motorcycle market, I expected that the show would be pretty decent. Boy was I wrong. It was really quite dull. To be honest, as much as I love motorcycles, I wouldn’t recommend going to any other rider I know… Now to be fair, perhaps seeing the Pasadena College of Art’s Supercar Show and the world renowned Pebble Beach Concours D’Elegance in the past year has left me a bit tainted when it comes to auto/motorcycle shows. Both of those shows had a plethora of exotic cars and extremely knowledgable people surrounding them. The Long Beach Show on the other hand was a train wreck when it came to getting questions answered.

I was absolutely shocked at the BMW booth when we asked where the new K1200S was. At first the gal working for them didn’t even seem to know what bike we were talking about. Then, once Milt pointed to a piece of literature that was in a rack sitting over in the corner of the booth, she finally picked up on what we were asking and told us that they didn’t have one on hand. That just blew my mind. Coming on the heels of the whole BMW demo fleet fiasco at their Motorrad Ralley in Washington this summer I was shocked. (If you haven’t read the apology letter in this month’s BMW ON it’s well worth the read)…

Unfortunately Ducati was no better, the booth was crowded with a ton of folks - a good thing for Ducati Motor Holdings I guess - but utterly useless for the consumer. As we walked around the convention center, the only places with serious action going on were booths that were holding what appeared to be large inventory sales such as Bert’s Mega Mall who had a rather large chainlink fence surrounding their booth with only 1 way in and 1 way out. Think WWF caged wrestling match and you’ve pretty much got it covered, only with a hundred folks stuffed in the ring.

After checking out what there was to see I was left wondering what the major motorcycle manufacturers were trying to accomplish. All the bike company booths were manned by local dealer retail staff. Some seemed knowledgable, most did not. None of the major bike companies even seemed to be trying to stand out of the crowd. They all just blended together. None was using video or audio very effectively. Few, if any, of the sales reps on the floor made me feel compelled to come check out their shop. It sort of reminded me of perhaps the only great scene in a very bad movie called “The Boiler Room” (starring Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel and Ben Affleck) wher Giovanni’s character is called by a local newspaper sales guy. The sales guy fumbles through his pitch and Giovanni stops him and tells him to stop screwing around and give him the sell… The Long Beach Bike Show had no sell going on. Not that I’m out to get a new bike, don’t get me wrong, but as a fan of motorcycling I want to see more people get involved in this sport. Having dull but highly promoted event like this just ain’t the way to do it…