By Amy Poole

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IT’S CHOPPER TIME!!!

I have to say that the BEST part of Bike Week is Willie’s Tropical Tattoo Old School Chopper Show…for a few incredible reasons! It’s quite simple how this all began. Willie’s bike show began about 12 years ago. Willie and a few of his custom builder buddies, such as Jeff and Donnie from Sucker Punch Sally’s, and Adam Chandler would meet up on Thursdays at the shop on their choppers to gear up for a night out. As this continued, many onlookers were aware of this and chose to ride their chopper in, park, shoot the breeze, and from there it just got bigger and that is how we got to the present.

This year’s bike show was BIGGER than ever with 173 bikes on property and Willie and the crew’s choppers were not counted!! The eager crowd, getting inked or not, and the unique bikes were packed in tighter then a locked up wheel!! The builders were competing in many categories for some rare hand made trophies handed out by tatted babes and the Twisted Tea girls. Drink stations, like $2 beers, wine, cocktails, soda and water were set up all around along with snacks for lunch, if you got the munchies while listening to the non stop live music. An added perk too were the bales of hay stacked up in the sunshine so many of us parked ourselves on them!

Another thrilling factor at Tropical was having celebrities Josh and Bill from Moonshiners TV show and of course Cutie Pie, Josh’s dog, on site selling shots of moonshine and boy was it tasty!! If you are not familiar with the show you fail to see the humor and the hard work they put into their stills, but sippin’ on some shine while doing so…makes it well worth it!

The topper of the day was that ALL monies that were profited at the show from selling the beer, refreshments, food, moonshine; the gals and guys tip money, etc. ALL FUNDED the Arni Foundation Animal Shelter!!!! Raising $9,000.00!!!!! Arni is a nonprofit no kill shelter located here in town. They save 100’s of animals from other shelters that are in danger and find them loving homes! Arni has been onboard with Willie at Tropical’s bike show for the past 5 years. Nikki Lynn, founder of Arni, is an angel for these furry friends…she has a heart larger than life!! Here is their website if you are looking to give a 4 legged friend a loving home or to donate…arnianimalrescue.org

A big thank you to Dave Perewitz, Twisted Tea, Spectro Oil, Big Rick and the Troublemakers, and to all who supported this event!!!