This past weekend was a little different… I’m usually at all the major events out here in Southern California and fully expected to be at the Autogallery event in Huntington Beach. Jimmy and the rest of the guys from Praxis Productions had planned this event for the majority of the year and being that I’ve known Jimmy for so long now, I fully intended on going. A week or so ago, I remember that I had to make a trip to Norcal to attend my good friend Sunny’s grand opening of his new business venture and realized that it fell on the same weekend. Sunny is probably most known for his custom flared Honda Insight and being the man behind Franklin Autobody but he’s recently decided to start something completely new. It was still going to be an autobody repair/customization business but he was moving to a completely new city with a facility that was bigger than his previous. A lot of people don’t realize that Franklin Autobody was called “Franklin” because it was on Franklin Street near downtown SF. The name “Franklin” doesn’t have any association directly with Sunny himself so when he moved his shop, he had to come up with a new name and logo. He decided on “5Fifteen” because it was his birthday and the name sounded like it was pretty easy to recognize and remember. Anyways, Sunny has always been a good friend and even came down personally to invite me to the event so I had to go. I didn’t want to let him down but at the same time, I knew I was letting my other friend Jimmy down by not going to his event. My whole thing was that I really wanted to provide coverage from his event to support him while also being able to be at Sunny’s event so I came to the decision to find someone to help me out. It would have been weird if I had someone else go to the grand opening since it was kind of a personal-invite type of thing so I asked a friend of mine to cover Autogallery for me since he was already showing his car there. This way I could still have coverage and be at 5Fifteen at the same time…

It was also a nice time to get away with May and hang out with some friends that we don’t often see enough. DPK David and I came up with the idea to just roll with each other and make a weekend out of it. That way we could not only do some car stuff with our friends but also take the girls out to have some fun in San Francisco. It’s tough to be able to find the time to do everything these days with so much going on so this was the perfect weekend to get away for a bit. The girls always love being up in Norcal because there is a lot to do and we were also going to be having a huge dinner with the ATS Garage guys for the 5Fifteen thing as well as for Rywire Ryan’s birthday. Everything just sort of fell together that weekend and it was a cool mini vacation. It has also been hot as shit down here in Socal lately so I was happy to make the drive up north to be in some nice cold weather for a change. I’ve been sweating my ass off in this 90+ degree weather down here and up in Norcal at night I was walking around with just shorts and a tee on in 59 degree cold. Shit just felt amazing…

Below are some shots from the 5Fifteen grand opening. Sorry if there isn’t too much car stuff because it was more of a personal event with friends and family. Sunny is very traditional Chinese so it was cool to see some very traditional elements incorporated into the whole grand opening ceremony. Some of the stuff I haven’t seen in years and the whole event just had a really good vibe around it. I stopped taking photos for most of the day just so we could all chat and catch up with everyone. I think I got a bulk of the car stuff there that day but everyone mostly brought their daily drivers out so they didn’t have to worry about bringing their cars or trying to find parking… Thanks to Sunny and the 5Fifteen Autobody staff for being so gracious in hosting this event and inviting us to be a part of their special day. Sunny’s been successful for as long as I’ve known him so I don’t doubt that his business will just grow from here. Best of luck to him and 5Fifteen in the future…

Our trip started out that Friday. May had a busy day of work so DPK David, his wife Jackie, and I met up and cruised up to May’s area to wait for her as well as to grab some lunch. Rywire Ryan was also meeting up with us as well so meeting up in the valley about 2:30pm would help us avoid that whole traffic rush around 3pm. We ate lunch and cruised back to May’s to get her things and we headed off to Norcal. There wasn’t much traffic so we ended up getting to Norcal around 830-9pm. We checked into our hotel and set off to downtown San Francisco to eat dinner at Osha Thai, which was one of our regular spots every time we go to Norcal. They were about to close so we ate a lot pretty quickly and then drove around in the evening to see what was happening downtown… Not much else happened that night. It had been a long day of driving so we just hung out in the hotel and got some rest before waking up early the next day to get ready for the 5Fifteen event…

When we got to Burlingame, everyone was already inside hanging out and eating so I snapped this shot of the front of the shop. As you can see the red ribbon had not been cut yet for the official opening…

One of the first cars that I recognized when I walked in was this Acura NSX on Advan AVS Model 5s/T5s from Endless Projects…

Phil from ATS Garage’s new puppy…

5Fifteen-themed cupcakes on hand for people to consume…

I was a little bummed that I had eaten so much for breakfast that morning because Sunny had some of my favorite Dim Sum choices at the event… If you guys haven’t tried this stuff before you need to… I get hungry now just looking at the photo…

Filipinos know this as “Lechon” but we Chinese just refer to it as roast pig…

Clean 2nd gen. IS from SF KREW with baller Endless brakes and HREs…

The girls got together for a shot in front of the 5Fifteen back drop…

Turns out that this event was a bigger deal than we all thought because even the mayor of Burlingame, Jerry Deal, was on hand to welcome Sunny and 5Fifteen to the city…

Giant fake scissors for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony…

Welcoming 5Fifteen to the city of Burlingame after the cut…

The ribbon-cutting was followed by a very traditional dragon-dance to bless the business…

Music for the dance was provided by these drums…

The dragons lined-up in front of the entrance and each made their way inside and danced around for a bit before coming out…

The dragon dancers then proceeded to play the crowd for a bit…

The red one, which I assume is the lead, proceeds to do a solo performance on these wood planks. It was pretty impressive to see how these guys are as in-sync as they are and how strong the one in the back was by being able to support the front guy on his chest and carrying him on his shoulders while on those planks….

Some photos of Sunny and his business partner in front of 5Fifteen with the three dragons…

After that I walked around to see what other cars were there and spotted this kitted/bagged 2GS on Work Schwert SC2s…

Sunny’s Airrex-bagged Honda Insight on M-Technica Turbo wheels…

Wilson from Stancelab cruised up to 5Fifteen with his Carlsson-themed E-class on custom BBS wheels… I first spotted his Benz at SEMA last year and he tells me that he’s got some really cool things coming for this car for this year’s SEMA show…

Mark Arcenal from Fatlace/Illest showed up to show support in his Hakosuka Skyline…

Love how this thing looks slammed on Work Meister CR01s…

The interior of Mark’s Skyline with Mooneyes floormats and child booster seat on the passenger side…

Rear-shot of the Skyline…nice touch with the “ROUGH WORLD” aka Rauh Welt decal on the rear spoiler…

This 911 Porsche was just beautiful on Kinese Supercup wheels…

One more shot of the Stancelab MBZ…

As I said, I didn’t take too many photos that day. We stuck around for a little while longer just to hang out and shoot the shit, then we grabbed our friend Reeze and took her with us down to the Embarcadero to walk around and act like tourists. In the evening, we met up for a huge dinner at this Chinese buffet spot called Moonstar and then hung out at a local bar downtown. It was a good weekend and I’m glad we made the trip. Thanks for looking guys, Autogallery coverage should start tomorrow….