48.0°,
Overcast Cultivating a classic car community
Collectors stop by Kennedy Plaza
“Ever since I was a kid, I was always fascinated by Corvettes,” said Long Beach resident Lester Ginsberg.
When, as a child, Ginsberg would take family trips to the beach, he would be far from the sand and sea walking through parking lots ogling each Corvette he came across.
In 1965, Ginsberg purchased one of his own, a 1958 model for $1,000. After spending years in his garage being restored, the tomato soup colored Vette is now worth more than $100,000.
Ginsberg’s was one of 56 vintage cars driven in from all over Long Island for this summer’s Antique & Classic Car Show at Kennedy Plaza on July 16. The City of Long Beach and the Vanderbilt Cup Region Antique Automobile Club of America hosted the event, which required all cars be at least 25-years-old.
“It went well,” said Gene Proto, the club’s vice president, said about the show. The oldest car was a 1919 Buick, which made it to the event after a bit of trouble with the vapor lock while on the Meadowbrook Parkway.
Proto said club has been attending the Long Beach event on and off for the past 26 years. “In the earlier days we were allowed on the boardwalk,” Proto recalled. He admitted he lost many of his participants when the city decided to prohibit the cars from driving on the wooden structure. “That was a big attraction.”
The show attracts locals like Ginsberg as well as automobile aficionados from Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties and the boroughs. He has been showing the fruits of his restoration labor at the show in Long Beach since the early 1990s, but every couple of weeks residents can catch him riding his Vette around town.
“It really does bring you back to your youth,” said Ginsberg about his Long Beach travels that often brought smiles to onlookers.
While Ginsberg has driven his car to shows in Boston, Williamsburg, Va., and Carlisle, Pa., where it was one of the top 20 1958 Corvettes, he tends to keep the car local these days. Next month, he plans to bring it to a Town of Hempstead sponsored show in Point Lookout.
