by Matt Gage

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In keeping with our “meister”-themed board positions as a charming nod to the German roots of BMW, the term “Wachsmeister” translates to “Wax-Master” which describes the organizer of our Clean Car event (thank you Dan Tackett for educating me on the origins of the name).

The Wachsmeister role has evolved over the years and today its main responsibility is still the organizing of our yearly Bimmers by the Bay event. Board member Brett Litoff has been in that role the last few years. I interviewed Brett because I wanted him to share with us his knowledge of the event, how it’s organized, and what it takes to be a great Wachsmeister.

Below are the questions and answers of my interview with Brett. Enjoy!

What is Bimmers by the Bay?

It is a yearly event where we invite BMW enthusiasts and the general community at large to Spanish Landing park to enjoy our beautiful city of San Diego and beautiful cars. Members bring all kinds of BMWs, from classic to modern, and socialize, admire, and learn about each other’s cars.

Tell us about the history of this event.

The event was originally created and run by Dennis Damon and it was called the “Jack Cavanaugh Memorial Clean Car Contest, Car Show & Charity Auction” and he ran it for many, many decades. I’ve been told that we’ve been doing this event since the mid-90s. I tried to always get it out of Dennis to pinpoint the exact year when it started but was never able to do so.

The purpose was for you to bring your car to the Bay where it would get judged on its cleanliness. The event would have different classes or levels of how clean your car was. We would have people use literal Q-tips to clean their cars after they drove them from their garage to the event and they would spend hours upon hours upon hours cleaning them. Then, Dennis would have arranged a whole corral of judges even from LA and Orange County to rate people’s cars by cleanliness. Dennis would then carry out a live auction of various BMW-related items.

The proceeds to this event would go to the United Ostomy Association in honor of another long-standing member, Jack Cavanaugh, who was an original Chapter founder in the late 70s.

Had you attended the Jack Cavanaugh Memorial Clean Car Show before?

I first attended the event in ‘08 and I may have taken my ‘89 325i convertible but later I did take my big 7-series.

Did you ever win an award at the event?

No, but Dennis suggested that I should put a sign on my 7-series saying “BEFORE” so that people could get an idea of what a dirty/worn car looks like and then take a look around to see all of the clean cars as the “AFTER”. I thought it was hilarious!

This actually relates to my perspective of the event as I’m not particularly concerned about every scratch or the cleanliness aspect of the event…that’s not my forte and so when I took over the event, I knew that I shouldn’t be running an event that I myself wasn’t particularly good at from a clean car perspective.

What is the difference between Bimmers by the Bay and the event that Dennis used to Run?

The late DENNIS Damon AS THE AUCTIONEER EXTRAORDINAIRE, A ROLE HE TRULY ENJOYED (PHOTO BY GREG UHLER)

I decided that the way Dennis focused the event on extreme cleanliness of the cars to be judged was not the type of event for me to run and it was not the event for the overall crowd we were trying to target. I wanted to tone it down a bit and not make it quite as serious. I changed the judging to a more relaxed “People’s Choice” system of voting where the voting was done by all the spectators. Now it’s more of an event where you enjoy a day in the sun with your family and loved ones and less about a stressful competition.

Another change I made was instead of doing a live auction where the whole audience participated in bidding on each item one-after-another, we now do a silent auction where people bid on items throughout the day and the winners are given their items at the end.

The auction items were also a lot different than when Dennis used to run it: In the past Dennis would have $1,000 donated by BMW of Escondido when it was owned by Tim Brecht, a longtime contributor and friend of our chapter. Since Tim doesn’t own the dealership any longer we longer have access to the quality and quantity of items like we did in the past. We are grateful for Tim’s contributions over the years.

Instead of the proceeds of this event going to the United Ostomy Association, I’ve decided to make a donation to the American Heart Association in honor of the late Dennis.

Finally the last big change we’ve done is to run the event in July instead of the springtime and that’s mainly due to it being the best time for our team to run it.

Why did you choose to take over as Wachsmeister and run the event?

Dennis and I were pretty close and up until the covid hiatus, I worked most of the events alongside him, including helping him set up and run the auction. It was something I really connected with. The sociability, the park, the cars; it was a good place for me to be. I agreed to take on the event if I had a committee to help me out.

Is this a members only event?

Yes. We wanted it to be a members only event because we want our members to see the value in being a member of BMW CCA. As a member, you have the privilege of being able to park your car on the grass in front of the harbor. That's not something you can just do if you showed up with a car. This event requires a lot of organizational skills and patience to run. This isn’t just a normal Cars and Coffee being held over a hot tarmac and I want people to see the significant value our club provides when you’re able to park your car on the grass and enjoy a unique environment.

How are we allowed to park on the grass at Spanish Landing?

We need to reserve the date with the San Diego Port Authority, submit documentation about the event, and be granted a permit. The Port Authority requires detailed specifications of the event that we need to meet: we need designated first responders, we need to agree to rules surrounding trash, ground pollution (such as oil leaking from cars onto the grass or not putting anything down a storm drain including ice), noise restrictions, crowd control, must provide a detailed map of the layout, ensure we communicate that no alcohol or smoking (including vaping) is allowed, etc.

We also need to provide a convincing argument to the Port Authority of how we’ll get cars onto and off of the grass in a safe manner. What was new this year was that the Port Authority stressed that we would have all cars enter and leave the park at roughly the same time. So we had to enforce a cutoff time for when people could arrive which we didn’t properly advertise to our members. We’ll make that more clear next year.

We have to document contingency planning and satisfy all of their requests and then wait to get the permit approved.

We then need to pay per spot for each vehicle we expect to come to the event and provide a significant security deposit.

As the months go by, there will be back-and-forth with the Port Authority as they ask questions about the documentation we submitted. They’ll go into further details about certain regulations that weren’t clear to me before so I may have to revise certain things to adhere to their rules.

The day before the event, I have to meet with a Port Authority representative where they explain further expectations such as a heads-up on locations of the storm drains and take before photos.

What else goes into preparing for this event?

We have to organize a committee of volunteers which is made up of mainly people from our board.

Then it’s trying to find auction items. Unfortunately, as noted earlier, our auction is not as strong as when Dennis was running it as every year. We are constantly trying to find items to auction. Thank you to all who donated to the event this year.

Neil from Oceanside Motorsports has been providing food for the event for many years and I coordinate with him to make sure he’s ready to go.

We need to figure out the voting awards. We first decide what categories for awards there will be and how we’ll tally up the results. This year we decided to use a weighted voting system (though we didn’t anticipate how long it would take to tally the results!) which helped reduce the number of ties we had the previous year.

We need to find a vendor to build the physical awards we’ll give out to the winners, design the logo for them, how much they’ll cost, etc.

A lot also goes into coordinating how we get equipment to and from the event. We need to get materials from our storage in various locations such as tables, tablecloths (made by Jim’s wife Connie!), easy-ups, flags, cones, auction materials, cash box and Square reader (since less and less people use cash these days), bull horn, first aid kits, trash bags, kitty litter, water, etc, and making sure that it’s ready to go in our chapter truck. 24 hours before the event, we’re loading all this stuff up, getting a ride to pick up the truck from storage and trying to fit this huge truck on my tiny driveway overnight.

How many people are on the committee and how often do you meet with them?

The committee meets for 30-minutes once a month starting 6-months prior to ensure we have all our ducks-in-a-row. The core committee this year consisted of myself, Lisa Goehring, Jim Patterson, Paul Silver, and Dan Tackett. We decide how we’re going to execute on all of this stuff and that we have enough bodies the day of the event.

What is the day of the event like for you?

I’m up at 5am to pack the truck and doing a zillion different checks because I’m always paranoid that I’m forgetting something. When I get to the park, before we start setting everything up, I take pictures of the site. At about 8:30am, Neil shows up and sets up the barbeque. We get everything lined up and organized regarding the items for the silent auction.

Cars start showing up around 9:30am. We check membership before letting cars onto the grass where there are multiple posts of volunteers carefully guiding cars to their spots on the grass.

Throughout the rest of the day, I’m continually walking around the site to check on things from a security standpoint as well as visiting everyone, introducing myself, talking about the club and their cars. I’m also talking with the general public about the event as there are a lot of runners and bikers that aren’t particularly thrilled that we take over the park. I remind them it's all for a good cause and that we are all volunteers.

I then start the auction at 1:30pm and since it’s a silent auction, that goes by pretty quickly, and then we do the awards after that.

After the awards are done, we then need to get everyone off the park which we have to be careful about because of course there are lots of bikers, runners, kids, etc around the park. It’s very stressful.

We then have to tear down everything we erected for the event and pack the truck. I then try to scurry everyone off the lawn so I can run around like a madman taking pictures of the site to ensure everything looks the way it did before we arrived so that we can get our Port Authority deposit back and of course be allowed to come back next year.

I then need to drive the truck around and get a ride back from dropping the truck off at storage. I got home around 7pm.

It’s important to me that we look good and professional doing this event. I spend a lot of mental energy worrying about being in such a large environment and dealing with all kinds of things that can potentially go wrong.

What are the categories of the awards?

Best of Show
Best Modified
Best over 100K miles
Best pre-2000
Best 2000-present
Best Daily Driver

How did this years’ 2023 Bimmers by the Bay event go?

I was very happy with the event and all the smiles I was seeing! There were minimal issues and it was very well received. It’s amazing advertising for our club. It’s what the heart of being a car guy or gal is all about.

This year a family brought a mini-table and sat around it as a small picnic and that to me is the ideal picture of what this event is all about.

I felt like we did a good service to the community and we raised $2,250 to donate to the American Heart Association.