North Florida COC Toy Drive

About this event

The body behind this will not admit a club whose members hold arrest powers, which tells you most of what the North Florida Council of Clubs is for. It is not a club itself but a gathering of them, formed in 1999 after Florida's clubs went to a national meeting in Las Vegas and came home with the idea; Richard Lester is the man their own account credits with explaining it to them. The purpose was and remains defensive — clubs sitting in one room so that riders' interests are argued by somebody, and the roads kept open to them. There are now three such councils covering the state, the original having been split. Officers meet at noon and the membership an hour later, which is the rhythm of the thing: a working body rather than a social one, and its toy collection is an extension of that rather than a departure from it. Independents and unpatched riders should know that a council event is a clubs' event first. If you have never stood in a hall where every jacket in the room belongs to a different charter, that is the sight worth turning up for.