Euro Journal, News & Events, Updates

The Morning Cuppa…Retrospective

Posted on August 9, 2024

Friday, 9 August 2024

I was thinking about the Euro Militaire. And I am quite tickled to be able to add to my Euro Journal. Of course Euro Militaire is gone since 2020, thanks in part to Covid, however Folkestone remains. In just ten days more we’re off to England for a four day summer break in the former home of the Euro Militaire, the storied concorso was a part of me I never thought would cease to exist. It was too big. Too important. Too highly regarded. Presumptuous to think it ever would end.

But little by little it slipped away. 

And now it’s no more. Replaced, by a bigger and in most sense of the word — a better concorso. Euro Militaire was the show. There was none other that compared. In the modelling world from 1986-2016 if you won Euro Gold you were in top form as a modeller. In 2022, a certain weekend in September met its final demise after thirty-seven years. Albeit as Euro Miniatures Expo. 

My own history with this legendary concorso will have met its own notable tick in the history box this year. September 2024. Twenty one years since I attended my first Euro Militaire. It’s near impossible to wrap my head around two decades having passed since a fateful decision was made to accept an invitation from Jon Tamkin of Mission Models to visit a place called Folkestone. My Euro story begins in 2003. Looking back, I wish I’d discovered it sooner, so as to have enjoyed it that much longer. Jon Tamkin owns the company Mission Models. I learnt about his hobby shop in Atwater Village in 2002 and began weekly pilgrimages to it collecting the latest in resin kits from the Europe and modelling magazines from Japan. This was a Golden Age for modellers —Dragon models was exploding with almost weekly releases and what you couldn’t find in plastic someone was bound to produce in resin.

So then, lets go back to 2003. The first mention of the phenomenon that was Euro Militaire came during an AMPS West club meeting at my house in Sherman Oaks in the spring of 2003. Jon Tamkin — a mate of mine and owner of Mission Models —enlightened me with his adventures in 2002 at a concorso in England called Euro Militaire. I’d never heard of it. Up until then I participated in some local Southern California miniature competitions, Mastercon in Missouri and the AMPS Nationals in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Jon travelled by train to Paris after the conclusion of this British concorso with Pat Stansall of MMiR to visit, amongst other things, the Azimut shop. It all sounded exotic and exciting. Having grown up in England what could be better than visiting the land of my youth? 

It was time for change. 

Looking back at early days—now twenty-one years behind me—I’m astonished I knew nothing of Euro. But,  this was from a time when modelling news came from a Canadian website called Track Link, or Missing Lynx. I really was half-dumb. The world was a different place for me then. US concorsos were all I knew. I was a different person. The entire modelling universe was a different place. In 2003 the economy was robust and the collapse of 2008 was not even on the horizon. I was living then in  the Sherman Oaks Hills of Los Angeles. I had an idyllic modelling atelier, kept an apartment in NYC where I spent a week a month. Life was in order. Sex and The City and The Sopranos were watched on HBO once a week. There was no AppleTV nor Netflix. If you wanted to record a programme digitally from cable tv you had to use this silly thing called TiVO. Plasmas and flatscreen LEDS were only for the very wealthy and iPhones didn’t exist for another four years. There was no Facebook nor Instagram. And we didn’t miss a thing.

I hummed and hawed for nearly a year about going to England. I continued to hum and haw over Euro until the 20th of August 2003. Just a month before the concourso. I was heavily invested in both renovations at my new home and in my then fiancés’ new clothing brand. It wasn’t until August I realized I had enough in the bank to spare a trip to England. I was at my desk in my home office in Sherman Oaks when Jon passed along the email address for reception at The Clifton Hotel in Folkestone and I sent on inquiry for a room right away. In no time at all I received reply from Philippa at reception. Philippa is to this day still a fixture of the hotel, and as always the individual who I most often associate with the staff of the hotel. In an amazing coincidence the email exchange between the Clifton Hotel and I of 2003 identified by the date of 20 August is 24 years to the day of my new reservation at the Clifton Hotel for August 2024. And this contemporary exchange took place with Philippa, no less.  

Just hours later in that fateful day in 2003 I booked my BA flight out of JFK to Heathrow and the next morning my Jet Blue flight from Long Beach airport to JFK. I would have several days in NYC before heading off to London and on the return a two week stay in NYC for Fashion Week/Market Week followed by a trip to Danbury, Connecticut to attend AMPS East. 

My first journey to Euro began on Monday, September 15th with a flight from Long Beach to JFK on Jet Blue. An overnight, I arrived to my apartment on 29th & 3rd early on Tuesday the 16th. This brief sojourn in NYC was memorable. That evening I went to dinner with Andrea’s friend Ari and her gay friend Danny. They took me to a restaurant around the corner from the apartment called Brasserie Les Halles on Park Ave South and 29th (My apartment was at 29th & 3rd) for steak and frites. I didn’t know then the fry chef was the soon to be famous Anthony Bourdain. It was a memorable meal to be certain.

I had all day Wednesday, September 17th in NYC. I spent most the day in the apartment getting my clothing pressed for the flight to London that evening. I didn’t pack warm clothing. England – like all of Western Europe – was suffering from a record breaking heat wave. I took only a red sweater with me for the flight out of JFK that night. British Airways flight182 departed at 11 that evening, arriving to Heathrow the next morning. 

Weather, it is oft said, is a third to place and time. Never is this more true than in Folkestone. In fact it is so true it’s quoted on the Harbour Arm lighthouse. In 2003, England, like most of Western Europe, was suffering through a summer heatwave like none had seen since 1540. Even the Danube River dried up, revealing dozens of scuttled German ships from WW2. I had gotten on an aeroplane in hot sunny Southern California and arrived to hot and sunny England. 

I spent a day in London, booked into the Ritz — of course — and met up with Darren Gawle who was traveling down to Folkestone the same day as I.

On Friday, September 19th we departed London by train from Charing Cross. Leaving The City behind, I was soon gazing out our old school First-Class Carriage at the Kent countryside. It was glorious. I was reminded me of my childhood train rides through East Sussex. We detrained at Folkestone Central station, cadging a ride in a taxi. As the driver made his way along Castle Hill Avenue I gazed upon a charming English town reminiscent of my childhood in Southwick and Brighton. When the cab came to a halt and I climbed out before the Clifton Hotel, the familiar waft of English Channel sea brine heavy to the air and the sound of seagulls, I knew in that moment I arrived at the right place. As it turned out, at the right time as well. 

I turned to the facade of the hotel. Edwardian grandeur. Faded. But no less glorious. It was all familiar. I went in. It reminded me of nana’s house in Southwick. It smelled of nana’s house in Southwick. I met Philippa at reception. She gave me the key to my room and I took the smallest lift I’d ever rode up four levels to perhaps the smallest room I’d ever been in. But, as such short notice it was all they had. Blessedly, the English Channel breeze warded off the heat through a dormer window.

Leaving my bag, I had a quick wash up before meeting with Jon Tamkin in the trader hall of the Leas Cliff Hall. Descending the stairs of the Hall, I entered into a glorious gilded age hall brimming with trade stands in various states of construction with brands both familiar and new to me: Resicast, Accurate Armour, Azimut, AFV Modeller, Historex Agents and Aber. Lest me not forget to mention Mission Models. Jon gave to me an extra Mission Models entry badge so I might come and go as I pleased before he, his wife Shanon and myself headed to Folkestone’s High Street to a delightful coffee shop called The Chambers. Brilliant sunshine at our backs we caught up on the events of the last weeks that brought us here. I was never more happy than in that moment. I knew then this was an event that would ever more change my perspective. 

It did. And in ways I was not then aware of.

The Journey is Everything.