This isn’t about swap meets and sandy South Jersey short track. Rather, it’s tracing a long line of give and take to go and grow those offerings in what otherwise was destined to become another blueberry field.
For 25 years, the vintage dirt bike track day, swap meet and street-friendly bike show in Nesco, New Jersey has hosted thousands who can appreciate their roots on these fertile grounds. This city of refuge 10 minutes outside of scenic and sprawling Hammonton, the planet’s primary pie filling provider, has been a heavenly haven at the end of a dirt driveway since 1999.
At the center of it all is Nesco Dirt Works, the land of misfit Ossa engines and the brainchild of caretaker and kingmaker Joe Bilazzo as he plows another edition into two dozen years of celebrating old school bikes. It’s a kickstart-your-heart living history museum in dirt bike Mecca set to Mötley Crüe and if that all sounds like a good time, then take the pilgrimage to be with your people.
Firing Line
Standing next to a 1961 Hale water pump powered by a Wisconsin Engines product that in a perfect world would have been mounted to a fire truck (“Hey, it was cheap, and has been pumping water here for over 10 years,” he says), Bilazzo takes five minutes out of a hectic day for five questions as the track’s irrigation system primes up to tamp and tame the talcum powder.
The best part?
“It’s the younger riders coming up to me, freaking out about how much fun they’re having. I can’t do it like I used to,” he reluctantly offers of the toll age takes, “but I like to pretend that I can. I really enjoy seeing [riders of all ages] enjoy it.”
And the most difficult?
“It’s the prep,” said with a sigh. Yet, those who came down for the 25th running were greeted to brand-new towering berms as an ultra-recent addition, trackside signage for immersion and an overall ready-to-rip groomed course. Some of us are just gluttons for punishment.
How did this all get started?
What began strictly as a swap meet in 1999 (“I enjoyed going to them and had the opportunity to use the land, so I figured, ‘Why not bring the junk to me?’”) has turned into this regional destination event with no competitors and no comparisons. Adventure riders and Harley cruisers alike caught wind of the event all weekend and popped in for a glimpse before, naturally, ending up at the Pic-A-Lilli Inn.
How did the track come to be?
“The kids had these mini-bikes and needed a place to ride so I mowed a little layout in the field.” The property owner offered: “We’re not using the land for anything else,” so the circuit you see today from satellite photos was burned in around 2007 and has never stopped evolving.
What’s the future look like?
From the blood-red Bultacos to the thundering BSAs, “there’s a lot of heart and soul to these vintage dirt bikes. Where else are you going to see two XRs going at it,” he asked as two headlight-equipped four-stroke dual-sports came ’round the nearest corner at full tilt to be track day champion. The possible promises of electric dirt bikes are not yet fully realized so for now, out here where there’s no bulldozers immediately inbound and nobody to phone in noise complaints, we’ll keep throwing time and money into bores and strokes the way Señor Paco Bultó intended.
The Kindness of Strangers
The two-day ride-em-don’t-hide-em show is purely and passionately old school. Fox zebra print pants, Yamaha IT woods bikes pressed into roundy-round duty, concours-grade restorations for Sunday’s bike show and 1980s Cummins diesel Dodges hauling 1970s machinery. This, friends, is what it’s all about and if it goes away, a vintage void grows exponentially. It ain’t Mid-Ohio and it ain’t Barber Vintage Festival weekend, ironically held the same days this year as our primary focus, but it is somewhere in-between and it’s a hell of a lot more affordable than those other two.
It’s Piney Power, that bumper sticker slogan and DIY ethos of movers, shakers and artisan makers who come out of the woodwork to pull it all off without asking for a handout or leg-up. If a ’26 Hudson Super Six threw a crank bearing and needed fixing, this be the place. In John Steinbeck’s haymaker hook aimed square at the face of capitalism’s flailing corporate greed, it’s everyday people, failure and wrath in our eyes, staring down mandates gone mad. Out in the vineyards, the kerosene-soaked orange groves and, in this case, the blueberry fields, the threat of turning a profit instead of turning the earth is ever-encroaching as these souls grow heavier yet for the vintage.
‘There are so few examples of places like this. It keeps the old bikes and the passion for them alive.’
Gino Kradzinski, whose repair shop in Philadelphia’s Fishtown section is the city’s longest-running independently-owned motorcycle garage, grasped the last-man-standing concept. “It gives me a reflection of what the market is all about, what the value and availability is of vintage parts you can’t find,” the longtime attendee and vendor said when asked for perspective as a business operator. Some will jump at budget eBay imitations of Kehin products; others will settle for nothing less than OEM right off the drawing board at the headquarters in Hamamatsu bound for a five-digit restoration. “Support everybody that’s out here,” he said of few-and-far-between events like these and the gems just waiting to be unearthed. “Talk to people. Get to know people. Shake some hands.”
Bill Keehn, from Parkesburgh, Pennsylvania has been selling at Nesco for 15 years and on two wheels for 50. “I’ll be camping out. It’s beautiful weather and I’m having a good time.” Keehn, who grew up in Coatesville, said on Saturday. Once upon a time, “you could ride 40 miles either way” on a dirt bike in his neck of the woods without trouble. That era is a distant memory so, for now, we pull up by the hundreds to see, smell, hear, feel and even taste the airborne grit kicked up by a world that once was. “Joe does a hell of a job putting this together.”
Attendee since 2010, Antonio Moroni’s level of dedication is more than most. The whole front end of his Can-Am comes off to cram it into an SUV before he drives two hours down from Morris Plains, New Jersey. “There are so few examples of places like this. It keeps the old bikes and the passion for them alive. It’s a good way to spend a day in the open air,” he said. Before emigrating to the US in 1980, Moroni raced enduros in his native Italy between 1973 and 1980 (“I had to get my PhD in chemistry,” he adds of old priorities.) He’d travel back and forth between Italy and the US in the ensuring years, firing up some of the old bikes back in the old world when, in 2008, he finally felt it was time to buy a classic bike state-side. From there, he found out about the vintage community, found out about Nesco and finally found a place where he can be with his people. “I have more friends here than in many places. Even if I don’t need it, they always offer to help me,” he said of bolting the front forks and wheels back on before riding.
Promised Land
They look at the course layout from Google Earth, start looking at real estate listings from Atsion to Atco and start thinking: “Man I wish I had a track in my backyard.” Agreed, but there’s a bunch of reasons why we can’t have as many nice things as we used to and there’s so much unpublicized sweat equity going on behind the scenes to pull any aspect of this off.
I’ve seen Bilazzo, the hardest working man in motocross (he counters with a laugh: “Yeah, maybe the stupidest”), at work — and it is work. He’s walking the grounds two hours before anyone else was going to show up putting all the finishing touches in place. He’s troubleshooting a self-installed sprinkler system and lugging around fire department-grade hoses. He’s working admissions tables, he’s driving a tractor around mid-day to re-grade a totally tore-up course. He’s a flagger, a racer, the caretaker and risk-taker while fielding calls from track hands if something suddenly goes sideways. It’s labor, it’s love and it’s a sight to behold when the whole thing is firing on all four. His friends made “Joe Bilazzo for President” shirts this year and, if nothing else, he’d clearly make our county’s infrastructure great again.
It is, after all, election season and the lawn signs slowly turn the same shade of crimson as all the fall leaves still stuck to trees during a 45-minute straight-shot drive to Nesco, a tight-knit hamlet in Mullica Township. Children and family of all ages run the maze of logistics and design the merchandise artwork while longtime friends, year after year, partner up as course caretakers. The memories of those no longer around to help troubleshoot that fire truck pump are never lost.
Here on the outskirts of the Pine Barrens proper, Nesco’s population of 400 easily doubles as it becomes the center of the Northeast vintage motorcycling world. The eat-in convenience store slings a few more signature breakfast pizzas and the gas station sells a few more gallons of premium fuel. Bang a hard left into this city of refuge, a place that would give the EPA a coronary if they realized how much wore-out vintage iron still burned bean oil and transmission fluid, to enjoy this promised land while we still can. Before you go though, might we suggest a certain write-in candidate? Just, uh, double-check that spelling before dropping it in the ballot box.
Nesco Vintage Dirt/Street Bike Show and Swap Meet Photo Gallery
Greg Adomaitis 