Classic Car Show
Beer Garden at Bart’s
Windsor
July 16, 2025
It finally cooled off enough Wednesday evening that I decided to head over to Beer Garden at Barts in Windsor for their weekly Classic Car Show meetup. As soon as I arrived, I was drawn in by the sleek yellow car that sat at the front of the parking lot with the license plate BAD65SS.
The owner, who goes by Tony D, told me it was a 1965 Chevrolet Malibu SS. The car was a passion project that took over two years to get into its current shape. Tony did all the sanding, body work and painting, and the interior. His buddy Wayne, a race car mechanic, built the motor.
I asked him what drew him to cars.
“I’ve been doing this since I was 15, 14 years old,” he said. “Even earlier, I started buying Hot Wheels and models and building them. And then, as I got older, I bought real cars.”
Guys like Tony D were basically born into car culture. For others like Don Dryburgh, it was a matter of luck and timing. Not only is his 2004 Porsche 911 his dream car, but its former owner is none other than Geno Auriemma of UConn women’s basketball fame.
“I had seen the car four years before I bought it where I used to work,” he explained. “Geno Auriemma was sitting in the passenger seat and I asked him, ‘How do you like your car?’ And he said, ‘I love it.’
“I went out to Coventry Motors about four years later, looking at another Porsche not in my price range and Geno was purchasing that car, so I asked the salesman what’s Geno doing with his car and the salesman said trading it in. So I came in the following Monday, and the car was sitting there.”
An interesting element of car culture is how it brings out different aspects of the owner’s personalities. Take Richard Chesler for example. By day, he’s an insurance agent at Comparion Insurance, but at night, he’s a wheelin’ and dealin’ roadster collector. Well, not exactly, but the 2007 Mazda Miata he brought to the show was the result of a deal between himself and his brother.
“Actually it was my brother’s idea,” he said of the decision to buy the Miata back in 2015. “We decided we should get one together and share it. He was in New York. We traded it back and forth a few times over the years and eventually he got tired of doing that. I just made the rest of the payments and kept the car.”
He said that he’s been bit by the roadster bug. He also owns a BMW Z3and Pontiac Solstice.
The love of cars was a family affair as well for Michadley Philistin, who was one of the last people to join the show. He pulled up in an eye-popping C7 Corvette.
“My uncle had a C1, one of the first Corvettes that ever came out back in the day, so I wanted to grow up and do something like what he did,” he said.
The psychedelic color scheme of the Corvette wasn’t from a paint job, he explained, but a vinyl wrap. Michadley explained it’s like sticking a piece of tape to the car.
“I mainly did the design on the car because it’s for situations like this,” he said. “When you show up to car shows, it makes kids happy, it makes people happy.”
That was the main takeaway from the car show, that it was the fellowship of car enthusiasts, and people who just like to look at them, that made the whole thing worth it. Don put it best:
“The cars are awesome, but really it’s the people that you meet that are also into cars.”
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Beer Garden at Bart’s hosts its weekly Classic Car Show every Wednesday.
Jamil goes to check out an art happy hour.
