T
he first annual MotoBeach Classic was the brainchild of Roland Sands. He’d always wanted “To throw a race on the beach with all my friends.” With some help from Alicia Whitney from the Sea Legs venue in Bolsa Chica, and the final Okay from the state he was shocked to finally get his chance to do just that. From the time he sat down with the state, to the day the gates opened it had taken roughly eight months of planning and hard work to make the event to happen. Of course, it took an entire team, Roland and Alicia weren’t the only cooks in the kitchen. He had the help of his sister Summer Hoover and his events manager, Natalie Nunes. He also enlisted Andy Schmidt, his woodworker, and Kelly Yazdi to help with the art and bike show portion. Imagine if you will, Roland’s vision of how this event would play out. You know that “Endless Summer” poster you picture with the SoCal sunset in the background: As peaceful and serene as that seems, let’s remember Roland is a motorcycle man by default… So add in a little Bruce Brown “On Any Sunday” to liven things up a bit: put it together with music, art, food, and beer, and you have a little bit of perfect for most of us SoCal types. Having only dreamed of an event of this proportion, no one was sure what to expect. You put all your time and effort into this baby and can only
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hope that others will be in love with it as much as you are. As it turns out, they absolutely were! More people walked through those gates than they had anticipated, numbers were up around 5,000. People came out to enjoy all Bolsa Chica had to offer that day. Needless to say, Roland and his team were stoked. They were even more stoked that everyone they spoke to had a genuinely great time, and said they were looking forward to coming back to the second annual event. They ended up filling up the racers, stuntmen and vendor entries. They had roughly 120 racers alone. The vendor section was at max capacity, which helped them decide to expand next year. Bigger and Better is always the way to go! Along with more room for vendors, next year they hope to add more surfing, maybe a jet ski freestyle and TT event. They are pretty sure not all of this can fit into one day, so they are hoping to fill an entire weekend! When I asked Roland if there were any surprises, his answer didn’t shock me in the least. “Every single minute there was a surprise. For me, it was f#@kin gnarly, but for everyone else, it seemed to be a well-oiled machine. I feel like our crew really took care of the rough spots so everyone could enjoy the show.” I guess that is what you get when you have a good crew helping. Probably the biggest obstacle to plan was the racing, so Roland han-
