Charleston Rod Run and Doo Wop show board pumps brakes on 2023 show

KANAWHA COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) - West Virginia’s largest car event, the annual Charleston Boulevard Rod Run and Doo Wop will not return in 2023.

After 17 years of driving out-of-towners into Charleston and helping build the area’s car community, board members shared over the weekend that the show won’t go on citing challenges during the pandemic, loss of volunteers, and increased cost to run the show among other reasons including the potential of a bike path being constructed along Kanawha Boulevard.

The board’s President Jack Jarvis said it took years of research to help the show reach its full potential.

“I go to shows all over the country, and I tried to pattern this one after other ones I’ve seen and add things, good things and so forth but some of these people only see one of these things,” he said Monday.

“We had people coming in from five or six states just to see the show, they don’t bring a car!”

Those visitors Jarvis said turned into special relationships.

“We used to pay up for longest distance we gave them a man a mini award and the longest distance we ever had was San Francisco,” he recalled.

“Last year we had three cars from Texas we’ve had several over the years from Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, just all over that comes in. It’s kind of like a reunion in a way, people go to different places for these cars face looks at all the pretty cars. And we all get together and have a good time thing.”

Jarvis called ‘car people’ a ‘special kind of people’ thanking everyone who was along for the ride.

“I just would like people to know that we appreciated everyone that worked with us that helped us in any way, really I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart because you can’t do anything by yourself and you got to have help,” he said.

“We’ve had some very good people help us and some people have been ringing off the last two or three days when we announced it but it just is what it is, we can’t change yesterday we can try to change tomorrow.”

In a statement about the cancellation Mayor Amy Goodwin said:

“The City of Charleston has supported this fun, family-friendly event for many years and has continued to work closely with the event organizers. We were disappointed to hear the Rod Run and Doo Wop was cancelled — especially after we included financial support in the City’s budget to help them.”

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