On a sunny day in late September, a residential street alongside Dunne Park looked more like a luxury car-show lineup.
One shiny Porsche after another parked up and down the Seventh Street side of Dunne Park as their owners enjoyed a lunchtime picnic in the grass next to the tennis courts. They were part of a touring chapter of the Porsche Club of America that drove from the Sacramento Valley and stopped in Hollister on the way to a Templeton winery.
Gregg Lourde was the chairman of this particular tour and shared some details while his fellow chapter members buzzed along in conversation. The Hollister stop, he said, was part of a multi-day tour.
“In a multi-day tour, we go to different parts of California, central mostly,” Lourde said. “If there are wineries, we do wine tasting. If there are museums, we do museums.”
Even though the common bond on such tours is a love of the German-made Porsche, they’re really about socializing.
“We just all happen to own Porsches,” he said. “We use that as a guide, or an impetus, to get us together.”
The Porsches are certainly present, though, so it’s hard to avoid an occasional conversation about them, right?
“What’s unique about a Porsche car is they’re well built,” Lourde conceded. “They’re high performance. You can drive it in a high-performance mode and drive it to work.”
So how did Hollister fit in to the tour?
Lourde said he recommended the stops as part of the choosing process for the tours. Organizers create a map and have a general goal of making sure participants have a good time, Lourde said, turning and marveling at the “$2.5 million” worth of cars on Seventh Street.
