When Lauren Richeson created the Goodyear Blimp Fan Club on Facebook in 2009, she expected only a few family members and friends to join. But like the blimp itself, the club began to slowly and steadily take off.
“Days would be where I’d have to approve 100 people to get in one day,” she said. “It’s been quite overwhelming to see how many people across the world are interested.”
The fan club has 12,500 members and counting and is more lively than ever as the Goodyear Blimp celebrates its centennial this year.
Richeson created the Facebook group when she lived in Torrance, where she and her husband would often see the blimp en route to its base in nearby Carson. Now, the full-time artist lives in a part of Florida where sightings are few and far between, so on trips to California she always makes time for one special stop.
“There’s certain things that I go back to L.A. for, like my favorite restaurant, the favorite places to shop that I don’t get here in Florida, and seeing the blimp is one of those things,” Richeson said. “So when I get to see the blimp, I’m a happy camper.”
Wingfoot Three, the blimp based in Carson, has two siblings: Wingfoot One in Suffield, Ohio, and Wingfoot Two in Pompano Beach, Fla. A fourth blimp is based in Europe.
Goodyear’s first branded blimp, Pilgrim, made its inaugural flight on June 3, 1925, and the famous airships have graced the skies ever since, photographing and filming Super Bowls, World Series, Olympics and more. The blimp even made a cameo in the Beatles’ 1965 film “Help!”
In classic Southern California fashion, Wingfoot Three doesn’t sit in a hangar like its siblings but hangs out in the open, turning heads on the 405 Freeway, which runs right along the base. A small crew of pilots, camera operators, mechanics and base staff perform upkeep and safety checks, but every so often, the blimp must escape the South Bay sun and undergo maintenance in a hangar in Tustin, about 30 miles south.
Part of its appeal is its sheer size: 246 feet long from nose to tail. In theory, the scale should be menacing — some larger 737s are about 140 feet long — but the bubble-like shape softens the airship into a gentle giant, and with nickname “Blimpy” adopted among many fans, it’s basically begging for a set of cartoon eyes.
“It’s just like your dopey friend,” Richeson said.
Earlier this month, fans got to see the blimp up close at the base’s annual Toys for Tots drive, at which children raced to the carnival games and adults lined up for walking tours around Blimpy.
Susan Gutierrez Turner couldn’t wait a second longer. Once alerted of her place in the 4 p.m. tour group, she darted to the start line, exclaiming that, despite being a resident of Southern California since 1972, she has never seen the blimp up close.
She melted into a crowd led by Goodyear staff, directing the fans around the entirety of the blimp — tiny planets orbiting a sun, pulled in by a gravitational force of awe and admiration.
Necks craned, cameras flashed and questions flew; many about the maintenance of the airship and the helium inside (not to be confused with hydrogen, which is extremely flammable). Others about its ridership capacities — a rare and coveted experience among blimp fans.
“I want to go on this new one so bad, it’s killing me,” said Cheryl Ritz, a South Bay native who’s ridden twice on old models of the blimp. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Each tour group maintained its distance from the blimp, anchored down by only its nose and threatening to move if the wind kicked up. In fleeting moments, when the blimp would begin to budge, you could almost hear faint cheers for stronger gusts.
But one tour group’s dream is a tour group leader’s safety concern, so they traced the edge of the blimp’s swing radius, staying out of reach of the resting giant.
Throughout 2025, the three U.S. blimps marked the centennial with a 100-city-plus tour. And there to witness them at each stop — and in between — have been members of the fan club.
They track the blimp’s routes, strain their necks and snap up photos to later post on the Facebook group, which is usually active on a daily basis. The stream of posts is host to photos nostalgic for the 2017 Goodyear Toys for Tots drive-through, documentation of a blimp-shaped dark chocolate treat, and the smiles of countless fans, standing next to the blimp as one would when taking a photo with a Hollywood celebrity.
But most of the photos shared capture the blimp with striking-but-identical sky-blue backsplashes, and yet the amazement never ceases. Comment sections overflow with exclamation points and emojis, the emotion palpable through the screen.
“My husband would say that I have a childlike wonder about a lot,” Richeson said. “The Goodyear Blimp is probably one of those things.”
The fan passion isn’t confined to visual offerings, but also tantalizing debates. One of the most common, according to Richeson, is whether the Goodyear Blimp is really, well, a blimp.
The current models are technically semi-rigid airships rather than non-rigid ones that make up a blimp, but Goodyear reminds people that “while it may no longer be a dictionary-definition blimp, it will always be the Goodyear Blimp.”
The blimp even posted a heartfelt confession about its rigidity on Instagram, on which its account has amassed almost 200,000 followers. The not-so-micro influencer maintains an active social media presence, throwing out sassy remarks like “Are you guys even paying attention or am I flying for nothing” on X and collaborations with rapper Ice Cube on Instagram.
The blimp might be booked and busy for its centennial, but it has still managed to hop on the year’s hottest trends, debuting an edited green-and-pink “Wicked” look, all while lovingly trolling its fans for constant requests to ride the blimp.
Goodyear offers passenger rides through charity auctions, sweepstakes, corporate partnerships and other invitations, but the opportunities are rare, with only 0.0006% of Americans able to claim they have flown in the famed blimp. According to John Tamura, a SoCal resident who met Richeson in 2024 and joined the fan club soon after, it can be a lifelong dream for blimp fanatics.
“People always ask, ‘What is it gonna take to actually get on that blimp? Do I have to sell my life, or donate a lot of money?’” Tamura said. “That’s how fervent they are about it.”
Besides the handful of fans lucky enough to snag a guest invite, some admirers found their way to the sky through routes that required a bit more training.
Goodyear Blimp pilot-in-training Fayth Rascon-Ryn grew up near the Carson base and would drive past the airship all the time. Though she didn’t always know she’d end up on the other side of things, she’s now on the inside looking out — often at fans.
“It’s really fun, especially if we’re flying low enough and we’re in these areas where people are stopping, I can see them wave, I can wave back,” Rascon-Ryn said.
For Nick Sintora, president of the L.A. chapter of the National Gay Pilots Assn. and a member of the Facebook group, growing up in Southern California meant the blimp was intertwined with his memories of the area. Now, as a flight instructor, Sintora flies in planes over and around the blimp all the time, and he hopes to one day perhaps mix business with pleasure as a pilot for the blimp.
Blimp pilots, Sintora said, share one mission: to excite the masses. “Bringing that joy to people really appeals to me,” he said.
And if he ever does sit in the pilot’s seat, one gets the sense that his experience will be like Rascon-Ryn’s. People on the ground will look up and wave. And he’ll wave back.
Avery Fox contributed reporting to this story.
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