This is a Swedish subculture with a difference. Some people live it 24/7, and this guy is one of them. Met him at Vegabaren yesterday during the annual Grand Prix Raggarbil event. It was a great Summer day, everyone was happy and I came home with more than 700 photos of cars and people.
I visited the annual Greaser Meet at Vegabaren in Handen today. The Grand Prix Raggarbil 2017. It was a fantastic Summer day. The famous drive-in was packed with classic cars and fun people. I was there for around four hours. Filled one 16 GB memory card,that took just over 700 photos, so I have a lot of editing to do now. This was the first portrait I took. Many people dress up for this event and this girl was one of those people, looking great as a Grease Girl from way back when.Expect a lot of photos from this fun event in the coming week or so.
This is The Stuntman, AKA Jan Klintberg, from Nynäshamn. A keen photographer for most of his life, and a long-time member of the local photo club, His preferred camera was always a Hasselblad. I was taking photos of a few classic cars at Vegabaren in Handen (you saw them in yesterdays post), when "Klintan" walked up beside me and promptly informed me that his grandfather once owned that particular model Ford that I was then shooting. Klintan (who is very talkative), did a few stunts in his youth. And he proudly told me about the time when he performed the stunt of cycling on water! Word got around about that and later he was asked to do that same stunt in a movie. The film in question was Åsa-Nisse i Rekordform from 1969. Easily the worst of all the Åsa-Nisse movies according to the stuntman. As we continued to chat it started to rain, and before we knew it we were standing in a hail storm and that's when we decided to call it a day.
Biking past Vegabaren in Handen yesterday I noticed these old Fords parked next to each other. Turned out to be a few members from the Ford V8 Club Sweden that had met up for their annual meet. I just had time to take these photos before it started to rain. Among them are a 1946 Ford Super Deluxe. A 1929 Ford Model A. A 1939 Ford Pick-Up and a 1937 Ford.
One or two cool mopeds at this years Easy Rider festival at Vegabaren. It rained on and off but I stayed around for a couple of hours looking at all sorts of unusual motorcycles and mopeds. This moped is called Masen. That tells me that the guy who built it is a man from Dalarna.
I spent nearly five hours at the big car meet at Vegabaren in Handen today. Grand prix Raggarbil 2015 is the official name. It's a very popular event that attracts "raggare" from all over Sweden. I have told you about that very Swedish subculture before. It involves a lot of Americana from the 1950 to the 1970s. Classic cars. Muscle cars. Elvis, rockabilly, greaser girls, alcohol, and much more. I have a few hundred photos to go through now and here are few to get us started. A Dodge Coronet from 1957.
One or two hot girls at the big "Raggarträff" (Greaser meet), at Vegabaren. Weirdly enough I felt the urge to photograph them. And here is one such photo.
Hundreds of classic cars at the big Greaser meet at the famous Vegabaren in Handen last Saturday.
Cadillac Eldorado. Ford Edsel. 1960 Buick Le Sabre. 1956 Chevrolet.
It's just after midnight. I'm hoping to visit the big meet at Vegabaren twelve hours from now. it's the annual "raggarträff". Greaser girls, rockabilly, 1950s American cars and much more. This is Tina, I spotted her legs last Saturday at the bike meet also at Vegabaren. She was very surprised when I asked her for a photo, but I like the result. Hopefully I will be able to shoot many similar scenes later today, but I have been in bed with for 48 hours with flu like symptoms so fingers crossed.
I spent around five hours at the annual cruiser meet at Vegabaren in Handen on Saturday. People from all over Sweden had gathered for a few hours of fun. This event has been around for sixteen years and attracts people that love American cars from the 1950s and 1960s. Fans of Elvis, and rockabilly music. And people that enjoy dressing up, and of course many photographers. I took a few hundred photos and will try to show some of the best here over the next week. I will start with the a surprise because I hadn't expected to meet Batman here. The man with the long blonde hair is Leif Garwin. He is a sculptor,car builder, designer, painter, musician and singer! It costed him 8 000 000 SEK to build the Batmobile.
I met an interesting family at Vegabaren during the Easy Rider Festival. They are mad about trolls! The man in the family, Johan has even taken it as his second name! He is now called Johan Trollet Schalander. Together with his girlfriend Carola (it was her I spotted first), and their young daughter Teresia, he has two Honda Goldwings. There is also a camper that is one big bed. And a trailer that is packed with a big tent and what have you. Both bikes, one of them has a side car, the camper and the trailer are covered with spray paintings of trolls! The artwork was made by a well known spray painting artist. The original troll design comes from the botanist and painter Rolf Lidberg who was Johan's favourite painter. For the last eight summers the family has been travelling around Europe to many motorcycle meets and won countless awards for their bikes. And wherever they come they are the centre of attention! Johan told me that they must have spent around one million Swedish kronor on their machines. That is a lot of money. The more I looked at the bikes, the more trolls I saw. So I decided to photograph as many as I could and make a flickr set so that you could all see them. So just press the white arrow below and sit back and watch the slideshow.
I visited the Easy Rider Festival in Handen last Saturday. Saw some very cool and unique motorcycles. Old and new. And a couple of interesting trikes, plus one or two home-made bikes. And naturally I shot a few portraits. All of which I will show you in the coming days. One thing that is certain is that bikers love chrome and skulls. Another thing that is certain is that I have to shoot Self Portrait Reflections whenever I have an opportunity to do so...
Three people photos from the cruiser meet in Handen. On the top photo you can see Patricia and Jari, they are an item, and they are members of the club Moonshine Cruisers. Last year I met their President, a guy called Robban at the event. After the meet at Vegabaren the party continued all night at the Moonshine Cruisers headquarters closer to Stockholm. Second photo inst your typical raggare. It's a guy with a head tattoo. We talked for a bit. He told me he wasnt too happy with people taking his portrait, but when I asked him for a few shots he happily posed for a few snaps. The third photo shows the variety of people at the meet. Meet Tommy and Tina. They were at the meet with their two kids Moa and Johanna.
Together with Jimmy I walked around the cruiser meet looking for some of the babes that had entered the hottest greaser girl contest. And here are two of them. The top photo shows Anna. One of my favourites to the title. I didn't get the name of the girl on the second photo, as Jimmy was the one asking for a photo here. You can see his version over here. He had never before asked anyone for a photo, but after a few hours in my company he seemed to have figured out how to do it!
There's nothing better than the smell of burning rubber. At least that was the opinion of many of the raggare at the cruiser meet last Saturday at the famous Vegabaren. During my visit the air filled with burning rubber every ten minutes or so. Some of the visiting cars had travelled a long way to get here and celebrated in style when they arrived. Some of them even produced a pink smoke cloud! Every year you can vote for the worst cruiser car at the meet. To enter the contest you must show that the car has passed the compulsory periodic inspection done by the Swedish Motor Vehicle Inspection Company. And believe it or not, both these vehicles with the resting raggare on the car hoods has been here for the last couple of years. And has obviously passed that test!
Here are a few more shots from the cruiser meet. The first photo shows Rebecka, Teddy and Madde, three of the people that I met and asked to pose for a portrait. As you already know by now there was a Greaser Girl contest, and I'm sure both Rebecka and Madde got a few votes. If you are wondering about Rebecka's tattoo, I believe that it depicts Hylonome who was a Kentauride (a female Centaur). The second photo proves that you can drive a Swedish car when you are a raggare. This is a customized Volvo Amazon, now a convertible with a very cool paint job. On the last photo you can see a beautiful 1958 Ford Fairlane parked across the road from the famous Vegabaren. Which is very fitting as it was in 1958 that Sweden's first ever Drive-In Kiosk opened here. And a few years later, in 1964 it became the country's first Hamburger Bar. The man behind it all was Erik Engström. After him the Italian Carlo Taccola took over and he has done a great job with the place. Today there is even a hotel here. For more than forty five years Vegabaren has been the place to be for the lovers of the Raggare culture, and anyone else hungry for a burger in the day or late a night. I started coming here when I was eighteen. Me and my friends would drive up to Handen for a meal and sure enough there would always be a few Raggare around. Later as we started visiting night clubs and bars in Stockholm we often took a taxi home, and a stop at Vegabaren was obligatory as it was also a favourite place among the taxi drivers.
I guess I should explain a little about the subculture known as raggare (greasers or cruisers), in Sweden. It is people that love American cars from 1950s and 1960s. And everything else American from that era. Although there are of course also many raggare that drives a Swedish Volvo Amazon. Their preferred choice of music is rockabilly, and obviously Elvis Presley is the king. Every weekend they dress up and go for a cruise around their town. Or if it is summer they will drive to one of the big meets, like this one in Handen on Saturday. Raggare has been around since the 1950s. Back then it was more gang oriented, with fights between troublemakers from different cities and regions. These days everyone knows each other and the meetings are often big street festivals where you will find both the young and old as well as many families. I didn't count all the cars I saw at Vegabaren, it must have been a few hundred. The place was filled with Chevrolet Bel Airs, Crown Victorias, Thunderbird and De Soto Fireflites to name but a few. And the traffic came to a standstill every ten minutes or so, when someone decided it was his time to do a burn out! I have read somewhere that we import around 5000 classic cars from the US every year, and that there are now more restored 1950s cars in Sweden than in the US! More classic cars and people in the coming days.
For the last sixteen years there has been a big Greaser meet at Vegabaren in Handen. It's a great event. Greasers arrive from all over Sweden. In classy cars and in really trashy rides. There's usually a few bands playing, and some really interesting contests. Like best Greaser Girl. This is one of the contestants. She is The Girl With No Name. I stayed around for about four hours. Met a lot of people. Took around 300 photos. So you can expect to see a lot of pictures of classic cars and people who look like they are from the 1950s in the coming days. Or weeks...
This is Tony. I met him at the cruiser meet in Handen a while back. He is the Vice President of the Southern Streeters, a greaser club from Södertälje. The club has been around since 1994 and has 21 members.Tony drives a 1960 Ford Starline. He bought the car for 50 000 SEK three years ago. I have probably used another 100 000 SEK on the Ford since then he told me. He was at the meet with friends from the club, and with his girlfriend, their new born baby and his mother. In his professional life Tony works as a truck driver. Cars are his big hobby and his latest project is an old Buick. He also told me that the bass player in the band on stage as we spoke was a member of the Southern Streeters. And as it happened Kenny has a great photo of that same Bass Player.
