Ketchup…
*Catch-up
Sorry for the lack of an update from this past Friday to Monday today. I was out of town for the weekend for DPK David’s bachelor party in Las Vegas so I didn’t have a whole lot of time to put content together. It was a cool weekend but as Vegas goes, I didn’t get a whole lot of rest so by the time I came back early Sunday, I was already beat. Rywire Ryan and I left early Sunday morning to be back in time for the Motion Auto Show so I do have coverage from that. Another event that happened was the Hellaflush show over on the other side of the planet in Kansai, Japan. One of my favorite photographers over there, Makotoman, was able to capture some really good snaps of Hondas over at the show so I am also now in the process of going over those before I get them up later this week. Tomorrow will kick off Part 1 of the Motion Auto Show coverage and once that is completed, I will go ahead and dive right into the Hellaflush Kansai photos. Stay tuned…despite the lack of an update the past 4 days, this week will actually be pretty busy and filled with content. Make sure to come back and check it out!… For now, here is just a small preview of what is on tap for this week…
Motion Auto Show marked the return of Michael Mao’s NSX with his lastest set-up. The re-barreled Mugen MF10 wheels in gold was the talk of the event as enthusiasts flocked to the car to check out these custom wheels. It is one of those hate it or love it type of things but it definitely captured the collective attention of all the showgoers…He also showed off his new twin-turbo set-up as well as his new custom exhaust…much more on this NSX in the coverage coming tomorrow…
A quick overhead shot of the Hellaflush Kansai show. This event looked like it had makes and models of all sorts but Makotoman spent much of his time covering mostly the Hondas of the show. I am currently waiting on my other Japanese contact over there, Koji Karimata, to see if he attended the event or not because he often takes the most photos of any one I communicate with overseas… The photos I got are good ones so thank you to Makotoman for the upcoming batch of Hellaflush Kansai photos…
Much more to come!… stickydiljoe.com is all you will ever need!
Motion Auto Show 2012…
No Throwback Thursday edition of The Chronicles this week. I’m in the process of gathering some more photos from the past and hopefully by next week, I will have a huge throwback update for you guys. I figured today would be as good of a time as any to tell you guys about the Motion Auto Show this weekend in Long Beach, CA. I’m sure many of you are still catching up on Part 9 of the Rywire ITR Build update so today’s update is “optional” for you to view…
I have to head out to Las Vegas for a couple of days but I will be back in time to head over to the Motion Auto Show to do coverage. Another reason why I will be attending is because I found out a couple weeks ago that I was nominated for a media award that they are presenting to websites-related to our industry. It’s called the “Motion Media Award” and I guess people within the industry took notice of The Chronicles over time and nominated me for the award. It’s a huge honor for me because I had no idea people even cared about this site, haha. It is now down to Performance Auto Sound magazine, MotoIQ.com, and The Chronicles. It would be a surprise if I won, to be perfectly honest, but either way, it is an honor to be nominated. I never expected anything like that to happen so it is a good feeling to know that what I do here is recognized by my peers. From what it says on their website, this is the first time they have ever done anything like this and I hope that they continue to do it. It is cool that companies and websites are now being noticed for their hard work…
In any case, here is a flyer with all the information on this weekend’s event…
If you people missed out on last year’s Motion 2011 event, I have attached links below to my three-part coverage from last year. It’s technically not really a “throwback” for Thursday but it is a look back into 2011…
Make sure you guys head out to experience the show. I had a great time last year and it was one of the best shows of the year for me, personally. Peep the links below for more shots from last year’s event…There are some scantily-clad females in each post because this show is very import model-oriented so be forewarned….
Motion Auto Show 2011 Coverage…Part 1…(NSFW)
Motion Auto Show 2011 Coverage…Part 2…(NSFW)
Motion Auto Show 2011 Coverage…Part 3…The Finale…(NSFW)
Thanks for looking and see you guys Sunday…
We Want You!…Sort of…
I threw this up on The Chronicles Facebook page early afternoon Sunday but I figured I’d put it up on here to and see what kind of response I can get. I, as I am sure many others, on this side of the coast are interested in seeing some solid coverage of the Import Alliance Spring Meet that happened this past weekend. So much so, that I’d be willing to post up the coverage here on The Chronicles. After going out to the summer IA event last year and having a pretty good time, I really want to show you guys on that side of the coast some love. Plus I’m always trying to get up coverage and photos of cars from all over the world so it would be great if I could see some of your photos from the IA Spring Meet. So…if you feel like you took a solid number of photographs from the meet and you feel that they are pretty good shots, contact me and let me check them out. If I like your stuff, I’ll post up the coverage here on The Chronicles and the winner will also get TWO free original Chronicles decals! It’s a cool way for people from all over the world to see your handy work as well as get something free in return for it. Please, if you are going to submit your photos, consider the fact that we all love to see great photos so let’s make sure that they were shot on a dSLR and not on an iPhone or some other smart phone device. They can even be straight from your memory card if you want, I would even go through them and edit them for you! I actually prefer it that way but if you have already resized them, make sure that they are pretty large still so that they can fit the format of this site…
If you’re down to possibly get your photos up here on The Chronicles, please message me on The Chronicles Facebook page or email me at stickydiljoe@yahoo.com. I’ve already had a couple people submit their stuff and so far it is looking pretty good. I haven’t decided yet on whose photos to run so now is your chance to get in on this cool opportunity!
As for other news, this week we will have ongoing coverage from our “REMASTERED” series and we will again be looking at one of our favorite events from the past…for now, enjoy a couple of photos of DA Integras that have been remastered for your pleasure….
Thanks for looking and make sure to check back tomorrow for coverage (hopefully) from the Import Alliance Spring Meet!
(The two Integras below belong to Bryan Leon and Ejay Adriano, respectively…)
This is all bad…
I really hate to start off a perfectly good Monday with bad news, but of course, this is the real world and bad shit happens… Apparently, you just can’t have nice shit anywhere in the world these days. We all understand that theft of cars and their parts are prevalent these days and happen quite often here in the states but in Japan??! Come on man….Even in the mecca of the Japanese automotive tuning community, theft exists and it’s hit pretty close to home in terms of The Chronicles international family. It’s just another kick in the ass and spark of reality that reminds us that no one out there is safe and any one at any time can get their prized possessions taken from them…
Masashi Kameoka is a friend of The Chronicles. Not only is he a loyal follower of the site, he happens to be very good friends of our buddies from Japan over at Tactical Art. You’ve probably seen his car on this site now a couple of times. He owns a Toyota Mark X and it’s project that he’s very proud of. It is a damn good looking car and yesterday, we all found out that he had his 19-inch Work Meister S1 wheels stolen in the middle of the night. He woke up to find his car sitting on bricks…sort of…see, one side of his car was still sitting afloat but the other side was laying on the ground because the bricks that the thieves left his car on managed to give out and shatter, and that entire side of his car collapse and hit the pavement….
If you want to familiarize yourself with the car, here is the link to some photos of it that the Tactical Art guys took…
Just a beautiful car with very simple, very tasteful mods. And here is how he found the car that morning….Above is how the car looked before, below after….
What a fucking shame man…who knew that people even steal 19s over there! The sizing is pretty specific as well as the finish so it’s not like it’s easy to just toss these on any car, you know what I mean? Wheels that fit Civics and Integras, okay, that’s understandable because the sizing is pretty generic. When it comes to a set-up like this, it’s either hit and miss if you’re going to be able to fit them. Hopefully it’s not one of those deals where whoever stole it is going to resell it to a importer and those wheels end up in the states over here or something…
Here is another photo showing how one of the bricks gave way and how the car sat when Kameoka-san found it…It’s just a sad sight to see, whether you know the guy or the car. I know many of you may be wondering why he doesn’t have this thing stored in a garage but the way housing is set up in Japan, garages are not easy to come by. It’s just a sad kick in the ass reminding us that nobody’s shit is safe, no matter where you are…
If you are in Japan or happen to be an importer or something that runs into these wheels, be on the look-out. Here are the specs for the wheels…
FRONT – 19×9.5 Work Meister S1 with 215/35-19 Toyo DRZ
REAR – 10×10.5 Work Meister S1 with 235/35-19 Toyo DRZ
I believe Kameoka is in the Osaka area or near that region…
The rear wheels are in perfect condition and the front two wheels have some minor scratches on it. The color of the faces I believe are Titanium Gold or something related to that. It’s hard for me to translate the Japanese… I’ve also attached some links to the Japanese blogs/sites that have posted up the information. If you know how to read Japanese, then you’ll probably be able to gather more information. For the rest of you guys, please be careful with your cars and keep a close eye on them. The common misconception is that there is no theft of this kind in Japan…The truth is, there are thieves everywhere looking to steal and make a quick buck, it doesn’t matter what part of the world you are in. Some say that culturally, the Japanese don’t condone stealing…uhh, what culture does? Anyways, keep an eye out if you are over there. Just sucks to see this type of stuff happen to good people with nice rides that they worked hard to put together!
Links to some Japanese blogs/sites that have posted up more information and photos…
Another blog hosted on Minkara…
At least we can always remember the car like this….
Be careful out there people! Lock your shit up and hide it because there are individuals out there that don’t want you to have nice things. They’ll take whatever they can from you! Don’t expect “karma” to come back and get them…
Odds and Ends…
Hmm…pretty sure I’m going to toss up another update today but that’ll have to come later in the day. I am happy to announce that I will actually have some coverage coming up for you guys though, because I am attending this weekend’s Formula D season-opener in Long Beach. Many of you that come on here aren’t into drifting and seeing from the Formula D Tech Day coverage, the fans of drifting that come on here are jackass kids, haha. Just kidding, only the ones that made stupid comments… I am a fan of drifting and have been trying to go to this event that last two years and have utterly failed. Two years ago I tried to go and by the time I got down to Long Beach, the event was nearly over and I was too dumb to figure out where to park, so I literally turned around and went home. Last year I wanted to go, but something came up during that weekend and so I was unable to attend. This year, all the stars have aligned and I will now be going to Formula D. I tried to secure a media pass but I lagged on it and Formula D closed-off all media pass distribution to Source Interlink.
I looked on the Formula D site and tried to see how much it cost to just pay for a ticket and go, and fuck man, it is not cheap. If you buy the tickets through presale online, it comes out to like $37 dollars. $37 dollars is really not that big of a deal considering people will pay almost $50 to go to an HIN show, but got damn, I haven’t paid that much to go to any automotive event in awhile. You can even show your car at the Slammed Society (show) portion of the event for like $45 bucks. Why wouldn’t people just pay the extra 8 dollars and park inside? I’m pretty sure it’ll be more than that by the time you pick up your presale ticket and pay for parking down in Long Beach. In any case, I somehow ended up with a spot inside the show so I will now be bringing my crap box Q45 to the event. There was a couple of more things I wanted to do to the car before I brought it out to a show but it works out, since I needed a spot to put my camera bag down when I didn’t want to shoot photos. Now my car will be inside and I can use it as storage, haha. I mean, I’m going to wash the car and try to make it look pretty but shit, don’t expect much when you walk by it. There will be plenty of amazing cars there I’m sure so don’t worry….
In other news…
I am currently working on all the orders that have been processed through the storefront from the past couple of weeks. There was a large batch of orders shipped out during the middle of last week but if you haven’t received your items yet, it will most likely go out tomorrow morning. I’ve been busy working for the majority of the past two weeks and just haven’t been able to get around to completing the orders. I know how important it is to you guys so don’t worry, you will definitely get your stuff ASAP. I wouldn’t try to scam you guys out of your money so don’t go getting crazy on me and reporting me to Paypal and shit. If I was trying to get your money I’d pose as some Nigerian Prince that had some offer you couldn’t refuse and would have you send me money so that I would deposit more into your accounts…
Before I go, I’d also like to mention that I have finally hopped onto the Instagram bandwagon. All the cool kids are doing it so I jumped on when the people over at Instagram ported it over to the Android system. I don’t give a shit about that whole debut with iPhones vs Android so don’t bother trying to use that as a conversational piece, but I am happy that I am on Instagram now because I can bring you guys some cool shit from The Chronicles. That means I can post updated photos on Instagram live at events as well as other cool car shit from my day to day dealings with Hondas and other makes. It’ll be cool because I can also do posts whenever I am at a shoot or something or at some industry stuff that you may otherwise have no access to…
It’s still in its infant stages but it would be cool if you guys jumped on now and started following The Chronicles/Stickydiljoe on Instagram. I know many of you aren’t into the social media thing like Facebook but for whatever reason have an Instagram account. I’ll try to keep it updated constantly with cool shit so follow me…
I’m easy to find. Just go to the search bar and type in “stickydiljoe” or #stickydiljoe or #thechronicles. I should come up right away. I appreciate it and I would love it if you guys would throw the whole hashtag thing at the end of Honda-related stuff or stuff you see on the site so you could potentially help expand stickydiljoe.com
You guys are great, go eat some pancakes and take an amazing shower or some shit. Have a good day…see you guys at Formula D Long Beach or catch me on your favorite social media outlet….self-promotional jargon over…
Oh and if you want to complain about how the Droid phones’ cameras suck and how my photos are coming out like garbage, guess what…my photos always come out like garbage regardless of phone or camera…clicky-pow!
Glory Days…
Well, it is indeed Tuesday now so I guess I should start off with an excuse to why there was no Monday update, haha…. To be honest, I really wanted to throw an update up as I do every Monday, but I’ve lacked the adequate amount of time and content to do so. You guys have heard me say it numerous times already in the past couple weeks, things have just been moving at a slow pace…events-wise anyway. There was a small event this past Sunday, but I spent Saturday helping DPK David move into his new place and Sunday was basically the only day off I had with May to just not do anything and relax. I have been working the past week as well so I didn’t get much sleep during the week and took the time on Sunday to sleep in. Formula D is this coming weekend though and since I’ve missed out on the Formula D Long Beach events the past two years, I’ve decided to check it out so I will have coverage from that event…
The site has moved slow but on the days where you may not see an update here, I invite you to check out The Chronicles Facebook page. Even if you don’t have a Facebook page yourself or just plain don’t like Facebook, I still would love it if you guys would go on there and bookmark the page. If you don’t see an update here, most likely I am busy working on something. Even when I am working however, every free moment I have I’ll try to throw something up on the FB page. The FB page has been moving consistently lately so you will see photo uploads there often. It’s much easier for me to upload something to The Chronicles Facebook page on my phone or when I’m on the road than uploading something to the site…
Anyways, work has picked up quite a bit lately. I am currently working on finishing up a story for Honda Tuning magazine but last week, I spent much of the week working on the annual Super Street Honda Issue. This year’s Honda Issue has a different feel to it than the past two years where I think this year’s is much more diverse with Hondas ranging from all over the world. The stories I finished up for that issue are from Japan and the east coast. I think you guys will enjoy it and it’ll be great like every Honda Issue that comes out from SS every year. I also finished up a pretty lengthy feature last week for the international magazine that I contribute for, Total Honda. I’m really happy with how that story came out and I’m excited to see how the photos and everything come together when it goes to print. I closed out the week doing a story for Honda Tuning about a Honda from the midwest and am currently knocking out a story from a really clean CR-Z from out here in the west coast. Once I get that knocked out than I will be working on some pretty interesting builds from Japan for Import Tuner magazine… My hands are pretty full with work but things are good right now and I am enjoying it. I’d love to take on as much work as I can because it’s great to see different builds from all over the world. One of the great parts of having my job is that I get to see a lot of diversity. While I focus a majority of my time on Hondas for The Chronicles, my actual job has me devoting my time to vehicles of all makes from everywhere…
I don’t want to leave you guys without anything to look at so I took the liberty of taking some photos yesterday from my day down at the Rywire facilities… My buddy Takeshi Kobayashi made a surprise trip out here from Japan for business so we’ve been trying to dig up some time to hang out with him. He just went home to Japan a little over two weeks ago but then a customer of his requested that he find a Acura CL from over here in the states. He located one in the exact condition that the customer was looking for and arranged to complete the sale and transport immediately. He came back out here and hit us up so of course we were going to spend some time with him. Takeshi is one of our good friends from overseas that we often don’t see for months at a time so it’s important that we make him feel welcome while he’s in the U.S. Though he was out here on business, he even stopped by Saturday to help David move into his new place. That shows how close of a homie he’s become to us over time. The man is out here from Japan and he’s still down to help move. There are people out here that know David for a longer period of time that aren’t even down to help, haha…
He’ll be on a plane on his way back to Japan by the time he sees this but yesterday, Takeshi met up with me over at Ryan’s shop because he had to pick up some Chronicles t-shirts for his customers. We were going to meet up to make the exchange and also to meet up for a final dinner before he headed home today. After I arrived, a couple of the other homies showed up for dinner as well so I just decided to stick around for the rest of the day. Takeshi was capturing some photos with his camera so I felt inspired and decided to take some photos. I always bring my camera along with me to Rywire anyways since there are times when Ryan needs me to take product photos for him. There aren’t any particular back stories to a majority of these photos, I just took them for shits and giggles. The ones that I’ve posted up where there is a meaning behind I’ve left comments, otherwise, they are just random photos from stuff that I saw around the shop… Enjoy… There are a lot of photos of incomplete builds that are currently in progress. While I’m sure you may have questions about certain things related to the builds, I will address them at a later time when I get photos of the cars in more completed states. If you must, you can always ask a question in the comments section and I will try to answer them for you…
For those inquiring, the first two shots were shot with a Canon 70-200mm L-series lens. The rest are from a 50mm 1.4…I am no expert so I probably can’t answer any of your other photography questions, haha…I am however, randomly listening to Taylor Swift’s first album while I type this…why? I don’t know, I find it quite enjoyable and I still haven’t gotten over the fact that TBS stopped showing Saved by the Bell episodes from 3-5am…
Thanks for looking…
This is actually Alex Doan’s S2000 from the shop next door, Ballade Sports, which operates out of the L-Con facility…he’s the guy that used to own the completely Spoon’d-out black S2K. This is his current project…
Rywire Ryan’s Acura NSX on custom black Rega Evos….
Our Japanese buddy, Takeshi Kobayashi, checking out DPK David’s EJ1 Civic coupe…
Supertwinz John’s E-AT Civic build…progress has been slow on this project but he’s been busy with regular life stuff as well as with his job over at AEM…
His mil-spec harness mount and power connection to his battery…there is just so many cool details about this build that will be unveiled when he finally finishes this thing…
Speaking of slow progress, DPK Darryl’s EM1 is still posted up at Rywire… Darryl’s been working on it slowly but as you can tell from the passenger side window, this thing is getting no love…haha…
The engine bay is starting to really come together…he went with an interesting valve cover choice which some of us like while others are still on the fence about…
DPK David’s TE37s showing some of its age…eventually he’s going to re-do the wheels in a different finish so new decals will go on the spokes when the time comes…
Just a man alone with his thoughts, perfecting his craft and building his brand…
Always good to see Ryan’s CR-X at the shop…. word has it that this may not be his car much longer. It may have a new owner and the car will undergo a drastic transformation so this vanity plate may be appearing on another one of Ryan’s upcoming projects…
Darryl’s Mugen Active Gate brakes…
Absolutely love John’s re-conditioned BBR Comps….
Darryl’s Mugen lip for his coupe…
If you haven’t noticed, Darryl is quite the Mugen-whore…
I thought this was a cool shot…I might be wrong…
Darryl kept insisting that John put his front bumper on for photos but I think that we’ll have plenty of opportunities to see this Civic with a bumper on later…for now, it’s cool to see it in its raw state…
It’s only right that a AEM employee run AEM products…
Checkerd Sports steering boss on John’s E-AT…
Supertwinz John catching up on his NWP4Life content before we headed out to dinner…
Random but there was an Accord fully decked-out with a Black Widow body kit getting dropped off at Ballade Sports for a new transmission… It was transported to the future from 2001 since transmissions were too expensive a decade ago for these cars…
As stated, it was Takeshi’s last night in America so we all decided to get together for dinner. A couple more of the homies showed up for dinner and it turned into a full-on guy’s night out. We didn’t want to make everyone drive everywhere so we decided to grab dinner at a local spot called Brodard. If you follow this site then you’ll note that we’ve eaten there on numerous occasions. Takeshi is from Japan so he doesn’t have very many opportunities to try out Vietnamese cuisine so it was a good chance for him to expand his palette…
One of the guys that decided to come out to grab some dinner with us was PG+K Jay. Jay’s made the move out to the west coast so he’s gonna be a regular here on The Chronicles. He’s always been a regular but now you get to see more of his mug and the shit he eats when he’s out with us now…
Brodard is famous for their Vietnamese spring rolls so we always get a couple orders of that when we are there….
Jay ordered a 33…
Brodard isn’t your traditional Pho noodle spot where you just have noodles, broth and meat. Their food is from a different region so their menu varies from the average…above is my Pho Thai that I always get there…
J.P.’s beef stew came with a French baguette…
Takeshi ordered a more traditional broken rice platter…
After we grabbed dinner, we headed back over to the shop to chill some more before we said our good byes to Takeshi…I shot some more photos…
John’s battery and custom battery mount fabricated my Louie from L-Con….
Another shot of the BBRs on John’s E-AT…
For those wondering about specs, they are 15×6.5 +45…. I am a fan of them on his car but he also has a set of Mugen NR10Rs which are just perfect for this E-AT….
Ryan’s AP Racing brake caliper for his ITR… yes, it’s still over at ASC and no I don’t really have any news on the progress…
Random snap of Ryan’s Bride bucket…
Supertwinz John’s coil-on-plug set-up with the Rywire coil-on-plug mounting plate…
We were talking about E-AT Civics and got to chatting about John’s other car, which is an E-AT straight from Japan. He bought it off of Yahoo! Auctions Japan a couple years ago and it’s also been a slow work in progress. John was describing to Takeshi how mint the car was and then showed him some photos of it the day it left the dock in japan and was shipped over here to the states…
After looking through some photos it was time for me to head home to finish some work I had pending…. Here’s a shot of a custom coffee mug that belongs to J.P…. pretty cool stencil of him and his EG from his Honda Tuning shoot years ago….
That’s a wrap…
Weekend Warriors…
While the last couple weeks have been a total snoozer, this past weekend proved to be quite an eventful one for all of us… I really didn’t have that many things planned because I was busy organizing a surprise birthday party, but everything sort of came together and produced a pretty memorable weekend. The weather here has been pretty strange lately but the sun was out long enough on Saturday where I actually had the opportunity to get some work done… As for the site itself, I apologize if there has been a lack of heavy consistent updates lately, but there just isn’t that much going on. In terms of automotive events, this month as well as the next will be few and far between. Everything will pick up in the summer time so I guess we can just chalk up this time as the proverbial “calm before the storm”. There are meets here and there and I will try to get out to cover some of them but I don’t always know about them until a day or so before and there are times when I already have regular life events planned but trust me, I will try my best to get out there… Now, onto what happened over the weekend….
It was May’s birthday this week so I really wanted to throw a surprise party for her. She’s thrown a couple for me in the past so I thought it would be cool to try to surprise her. I didn’t go in with high hopes because she tends to ask a high volume of questions for everything but I just decided to do what I could to surprise her. I just needed a couple of distractions here and there. She took a couple days off from work for her birthday as well which made things more difficult to organize but luckily I have some great friends who were willing to lend a helping hand. We went out to dinner a couple times on the nights leading up to the weekend, which we all hoped would lead her astray from thinking we had anything planned. I also had to take care of some stuff for work so it was good timing that the girls had to get together in the morning to go do their thing…
I woke up early in the morning to meet up with DPK David to shoot his EJ1 Civic coupe for a U.K.-based magazine (Total Honda) that I recently started to do work for. Many of you who are familiar with his coupe know that it’s been featured twice here in the states within the last 6 years or so, but I thought it would make a good feature vehicle for an overseas magazine. It’s a popular build here in the states but I feel that it is still mostly unknown outside of our borders. We’ve always talked about me doing the story on his build in the past, but things just never came together for that to happen. When his car was featured back in ’06 for Honda Tuning, I wasn’t even working in the industry yet and when it appeared in Import Tuner mag a couple years ago, I hadn’t started doing work for IT yet. I don’t feel that the U.K. has very many well-known K-swapped Hondas yet, especially coupes, so I thought that it would be cool to get David in there. I think a lot of people sleep on his build too because of the fact that it’s a coupe and not the more popular hatchback. In any case, the opportunity came up for me to finally man the feature for his build and I seized it. It’s cool of Total Honda U.K. to put their trust in my abilities to pick a good car and that’s why I like doing work for them. Hopefully their target audience enjoys the story. If not, it’s all good though because I would have shot the car just for fun anyways. He’s recently added a couple new things here and there and this current look is probably the best yet….
We got to the shoot location around 7am and the sun had just risen. Rodrez from Honda Tuning was also shooting at the same location not too far away from us as well so he stopped by to hang out for a bit after he finished. The weather was surprisingly pleasant compared to the last couple weekends I had shot out in L.A. so I wasn’t interrupted with constantly having to blow my runny nose… It took a couple hours but I was pretty happy with the overall results. After Rodrez took off to go home and take care of his baby, my buddy Jae Bueno randomly cruised by to say what’s up. Jae runs his own blog as well (www.jaebueno.com) where he does something similar to what I do here, but for the ever-popular Socal Lowrider community. Jae has been a fan of this site for quite some time, even though he isn’t a Honda head himself, and has always been very kind to me whenever we have run into each other at events. He also shoots for Lowrider magazine and he was down in L.A. that morning to shoot a car. He set-up down the way from us and after I finished shooting David’s coupe, we cruised over there to check it out…
We loaded-up my camera gear and drove a couple feet down to where Jae was. His wife was busy shooting the model alongside the Chevy pick-up and I chatted with Jae for a quick minute before he was called over to help. I asked if it was cool if I could grab some shots for the site and he obliged. The location was a perfect spot, I think, for the shoot but I don’t envy him having to shoot a build that had dark paint which mirrored everything around it. The curves of the truck also looked like it would be challenging since it would reflect everything around that area. On Saturdays it also tends to be busy because the adjacent businesses are still open, unlike Sundays when it’s a ghost town in the early mornings…. Click here if you want to see a larger version of the above photo….
I only stayed for a couple of minutes because I didn’t want to intrude but I remember Jae Bueno telling us that this model drove all the way out from New Mexico just for this shoot… With the way gas prices are, I would imagine it would have been better to fly but she didn’t want to miss out on the chance to be in Lowrider magazine so she hopped in her car and made the trek out to the mean streets of L.A. in her bikini, haha… Click here for a larger version of the above photo…
After saying bye to Jae Bueno and his wife, we decided to get out of the area and head back home. Rodrez had mentioned that there was an event going on that afternoon at one of the Source Interlink offices so I hopped on Facebook for some details. It wasn’t a heavily advertised event but it wasn’t too far away so I went. It was a small meet that Super Street and Import Tuner put together to coincide with the Formula D tech day that was going on down at the Irvine offices. There was an interesting mix of cars but it was a pretty small turn-out in comparison to most meets. They didn’t expect much from it anyway since there wasn’t much promotion behind it….
I’ll be perfectly honest, I don’t follow drifting much these days and I didn’t even know when Formula D was taking place, but it was interesting to see all the new drift builds popping-up. I am not even involved enough to know if drifting is even remotely as popular as it once was but apparently there is still a pretty strong following… I didn’t recognize any of the cars besides the Garage Boso S15 so I used that day as sort of a re-introduction into the drifting scene…
We stayed for maybe an hour or two and I managed to get a pretty solid batch of photos. I’ll post them up tomorrow when I finally get a chance to go through all of them but this is all you guys will see from that event today. The SC430 drift car is supposed to be a pretty big deal and from what I saw while I was there, this thing is pretty intense. Just the custom fabrication alone was impressive. It didn’t matter that the car wasn’t finished and without a colorful graphical livery. We chatted with some people that were more familiar with the car and they said it was Achilles Tires newly-sponsored drift vehicle. I got more pics, but again, I’ll post them up tomorrow…
The girls coincidentally were in the same area as us so they drove by and met up. Rodrez and Tes also came by with baby Maddox…
This little guy is growing up so fast and will be the first Chronicles regular before he’s even spoken his first word, haha….
Most of us had woken up early in the morning so we parted ways to rest-up before the night’s festivities. Everything had come together pretty easily for May’s surprise birthday party so it was just a matter of getting to the restaurant that evening….
This photo was taken this past weekend but the owner of this Civic, Sam Ip-Nguyen, is the owner of the restaurant that we’d be having May’s party at. Sam is a great guy and was more than happy to host the surprise party for us. His girlfriend Linh also helped out and prepared everything from the food to the decorations for us so I basically had nothing to worry about. For those wondering, Sam’s restaurant is called Hoy’s Wok and it’s on Sunset Blvd. It’s a Chinese food spot and the food is great. He’s there 7 days a week as the main chef so I highly recommend going there if you like Chinese food. The guy knows how to cook and has great taste in cars. Support your fellow enthusiast and stop by when you guys get the chance. Peep the website for his restaurant here….
As usual, we got there a little late but it worked out since a couple others were also stuck in traffic on Sunset Blvd….When we got there, May was greeted with our usual car-friends as well as her old friends from high school. It’s rare to have everyone in the same place at the same time since both are completely different groups of friends but I was really happy to see everyone together…I don’t always throw surprise birthday parties, but when I do, apparently they are pretty successful, haha….
The birthday girl was all smiles as she cut her cake…
Random but May’s cake isn’t your traditional birthday cake because these cakes from “Nothing Bundt Cakes” are one of May’s favorites. I figured people aren’t always down to eat regular birthday cake anyway so why not just get something that May would eat even if it wasn’t her birthday. Nothing Bundt Cakes isn’t really close to my area but Rodrez and Tes came through in the end and picked it up for the party….
Hoy’s Wok isn’t that big but Sam reserved half of his restaurant just for us…There was probably about 25 of us when it was all said and done….Kind of hard to see everyone but guys like Ejay, Rywire Ryan, Supertwinz John, Parnell Navarro, Rodrez, Big Mike, Downstar Frank, and PG+K Jay where all there to celebrate….You can also see Rodrez sitting all the way in the back with Tes and the baby while DPK David was chillin’ against the wall…
Big thanks to everyone that came out…I really wanted to get a group shot of everyone that was there but there were a couple that had to leave a little early due to prior engagements… Here is most of the party outside of Sam’s restaurant….
After we departed from Hoy’s Wok, a couple of us met up down at Diddy Riese in Westwood to grab some of their famous ice cream sandwiches. It was pretty cold but the girls sure love their ice cream… Sunday was pretty uneventful for us since we knew there was a huge storm coming. We stayed in and just watched TV all day…but….
Meanwhile, at the DUB Show in Anaheim…
Holy shit…haha… Jae Bueno mentioned that there was a DUB event this weekend but I had no idea it was on Sunday. I jacked these photos from my FB buddy Jose Romo, who apparently decided to go check it out….When you think of the DUB show, you imagine seeing stuff like this…
I am unsure of what this is, but it was taken hours before the storm hit Anaheim, CA….
You would also expect to see stuff like this…which also actually happened at the DUB show that day…dogs standing on girls asses? Sure, why not, it’s the DUB show. There was probably a couple of fights that went on as well as a concert…but torrential downpour? Nooo…..
Shout-out to all the people that stuck around but fuuuuck, that shit looks horrible! Haha…I can’t even imagine standing in that and attempting to have a good time. Take a look at the pic two photos above again, that pile of blue mess was once a fold-up canopy! What a mess….
At least these guys looked like they were having a good time…Shit is coming down hard…You can even see the Chrysler 300C with the Camaro front-end I posted from Hot Import Nights not too long ago in the background, haha…. I was curious so I looked at some coverage online of the DUB event and they were dry for most of the day but damn, when that rain came down, it wiped out the whole show….Props to those that got through it…I’m all for rain or shine events but a lot of those builds that regularly attend DUB events aren’t ever meant to see water or spend a lot of time outdoors. I don’t know what steps they took to prevent their cars from getting hit with all this rain…Imagine Lowriders with 10K+ paint jobs with no tops and custom interiors…plus a rainstorm…yikes….
That’s a wrap for today. Life is good, I can’t complain…
M&M Honda Collection…
I’ve been on a real M&M Honda kick lately on Facebook and since I remembered that many of you aren’t on Facebook, I figured today would be as good of a day as any to just unload a bunch of photos from their Facebook page. I posted up a photo of the M&M FD2 over the weekend and I didn’t even know they followed The Chronicles. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even know they had a Facebook page for their company so I was surprised when I clicked over and saw so many great shots of their cars on their page. They were full-size too so I took the liberty of downloading them and re-sizing them to fit the format of this page. If you are a member of Facebook and want to “Like” or follow them, I will include a link below of their page. Today, we are going to take a moment to check out their collection of builds produced in-house from their facilities. A lot of their aero components are from various other tuners but they do manufacture their own parts, be it performance or aero-related. I’ve been familiar with their shop for a couple of years now but they aren’t all that well-known worldwide compared to say, Mugen or Spoon Sports so some of you may very well have not heard of them before this. You’ve probably seen some photos of their cars here and there, but didn’t know that they came from this shop. The Japanese Honda scene is very different from our own. The majority of the more “built” Hondas over there are built with track or circuit racing in mind and aren’t driven very much on the streets or taken to local meets. Some of them are just pure-bred race vehicles so the only time you will ever see photos of them are on the track. In any case, check out the pics below. As for specs, I wish I had more information on the cars but I don’t. I am not all that familiar with their stable of cars and some of them I too am seeing for the first time. Many of the photos are also dated as well and pretty old. They are just an assortment of shots that they posted up and range from the early-mid 2000s to now…
This DC2 is probably a build that you have seen once or twice before if you regularly peruse Integra photo threads on your favorite Honda forums…
It’s one of my personal favorite Integras of all-time and I was pretty happy when I stumbled upon more photos of it…
I love how the front fenders are done as well as the rear fender flare. The C-West kit usually looks so bulky but with flares like this, it actually makes the car look more complete…
This thing is just all business…Cool to see Regamaster Evos being utilized too…
A couple shots of a more streetable version of their DC2…
M&M Honda EK9…
C-West aero just like the Integra…
Rocking some Altezza-style Civic taillights, haha….We will let it slide since the rest of the car looks on point…
M&M Honda CL7 is another one of my favorites…
Wish I had a better shot of the bay but it seems these guys have no problems mixing Spoon Sports and Mugen products on their race cars…
AP Racing brakes…
An older shot of it before the graphics and other additions….
Best shot of the bay that I could muster….
Another CL7, not sure if this is one of their customers or one of their other personal demo cars….this one sits on BBS LMs…
M&M DC5R….
Mugen front bumper with custom ventilation…
Some bigger photos, these are like HDR style or something…I didn’t do any of it so if you don’t like it, don’t blame me, haha…
Interior of the DC5R….
Weird how it has individual throttle bodies but the air box is still in place…maybe this was an unfinished shot…
Cool shot of the canards and the SSR Type-C wheels…there is also a glimpse of the AP Racing brakes as well…
Really liked this shot of the brakes and how you can see the wear and battle scars from abuse inside the wheel wells…
One more shot…Notice the front staggered set-up of the wheels…
M&M Honda Beat….
Sitting on Watanabe wheels… Notice the center exhaust even though it’s barely visible…
Drive in comfort with the fuel cell sitting next to you….haha…I like the over fender action too…
M&M FD2 Civic R…I think this one is their flagship vehicle now….Not a huge fan of the front bumper but it seems to flow pretty well with everything else…
One of my favorite parts on this FD2 is the front fenders….
The rear is pretty wild but it all comes together nicely. It’s good that they have these naked shots of it so you can see all the lines of the kit before all the graphics they put on it…
An overhead shot…
Here it is with the M&M graphical livery….
In the two shots above you can see the rear bumper and how the diffuser ties into it….Interesting that each end is vented….
Side profile shot in front of some Mayan temple, haha….
This is a pretty crazy shot…would have been perfect without the Toyota Corolla in the background….
A pair of M&M Honda S2000s…both wearing Spoon front bumpers….
Prodrive wheels…
You can get a sense of how small their shop is in this photo….
Pretty cool stuff right?… If you guys want to check out their official Facebook page for more photos, click on the link below. “Like” their page too….
The Official M&M Honda Facebook Page…
Oh before you go, they also have a collection of some really good videos of their cars in action. It’s mainly of the CL7 and the FD2 but it’s cool to see these things in action…
That’s a wrap…have a good one….
New York state of mind…
Okay, not really…the state of mind I’m in right now is that I’m hungry so I am going to drive to the market to buy some string cheese but I thought it’d be cool to post this up. Their are great builds everywhere throughout the country, no matter the east, west, mid-west, south, Mars, wherever….so I thought this video was good to post up because it would be cool to give some shine to the guys from VRaceworks in New York. This Civic was one of the more memorable cars for me from last year’s Import Alliance Summer Meet, and I’m happy to see it in action. The video speaks for itself so I will not drag this on any longer with words. All I have to say is…nice job, cool build, well-played. Shout-out to the guys out east for building some heaters…. Good day…
Photos of said-build when I saw it out in Nashville, TN at Import Alliance 2011…
Now, for the video… Thanks to the Honda Tuning Facebook page for this, otherwise I would not have known about it. It’s hosted on Vimeo so I suggest you click the video so that it takes you over to their page so that you can enjoy it in stunning HD. Unless you are a cyclops with a monocle that magnifies things into high definition, the video will probably appear somewhat small when sized to fit the format of this page….Anyways, however you want to watch it, just watch it…
The Rywire ITR Build…Intermission…
Not much going on this week…only news worth mentioning is that the Rywire Integra Type R is off to ASC Speed Metal in San Diego for a month or so. The chassis will get a bunch of new stuff fabricated by the guys down there and when it comes back it should be much further along in completion. If time permits, I’ll try to head down there with Ryan during the middle of that time to cover what they are doing and give you guys some insight as to what is going on with the car… til then, it’s break time for the Rywire ITR updates…
HELLASUNK decals are BACK!!
I stopped cutting these awhile back but since they were one of the most popular stickers of all time and people kept asking when they were going to come back, I decided to come out with an entirely new design and had them printed and cut on white vinyl. They’re laminated for quality and to last in the harsh outdoors. Grab them in The Chronicles Official Storefront!!!…
A day in the life…
Ummm…sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. I was going through the second batch of the Osaka Auto Messe photos and just didn’t have enough time to knock them out. I should have them up later today though so it might be one of those rare days where we have a double update. Right now I’m just gonna toss some random photos up of what we’ve been doing lately. This is just to give you guys an idea of what goes on regularly. I mean, this isn’t exactly a daily thing but it basically sums up how our days go whenever we’re doing car shit. Life really isn’t all that exciting normally, but I don’t want to show you guys a day in the life when I’m just laying in bed or stealing porn from the web, haha…
Anyways, one of the reasons why I didn’t get a chance to knock out the photos from Osaka Auto Messe was because I had to meet up with our buddy Takeshi Kobayashi from Type_K Autosource Japan. He’s been over here in the states lately to do a bunch of stuff for his clients from Japan but during the evenings, he has some free time so we all try to get together to hang out with him. This usually involves us taking him to some place where they serve really unhealthy American food because he really enjoys the “USDM” lifestyle so we figured that he’d like to gorge himself on some good ole’ fatty US food. Haha. I’m gonna just show you some random photos from both my phone and my camera from the last couple days. No real purpose behind this other than to show you guys what we do normally. You won’t be able to differentiate the photos from my phone and camera because they are all crappy today. Haha, I just snapped whatever I could and I even tossed in a photo that Takeshi took and posted on his Facebook page…Okay ready? Let’s get this going because I’m watching AM MTV and I’m not on my 3rd cycle of the same videos. Random, but people always complain about how MTV doesn’t show music videos anymore but have you guys listened to music lately and seen some of these videos? Holy shit, there’s a very good reason why they don’t show videos anymore. You’re either going to have an epileptic seizure from all the effects or you’re going to change the channel anyway because of the garbage as music that is out these days…
Alright, on with the photos…
Over the weekend, we met up with Takeshi and took him over to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles where we made him wait two hours just to eat dry ass chicken. We told him it was American to wait long periods of time to eat greasy food and he was cool with it. After that we stopped by DPK David’s house and chatted in his garage while his Civic finally sat on the ground for the first time in weeks after receiving his latest set of wheels…We hung out for most of the night and just caught up with Takeshi and everything that he’s been up to in Japan…
Sunday and Monday I was busy knocking out random errands as well as typing up that story on the puppy that Arn saved so there wasn’t much car shit being done those two days…I also had a story to finish up for Super Street so my Monday night was occupied…
On Tuesday, I woke up and walked out to my Q45 to get something from it and remembered how filthy it was…
I mean, when I say it was filthy, I mean IT WAS FILTHY….I generally don’t want to neglect my car but I just don’t have that much time to really mess with it lately but I wish I did… A couple months back I had a set of wheels built for it and one of the valve stems ended up leaking on one wheel so I had to take it off. After I got it fixed, I just wrapped my car cover around it and put it in my backseat. Then it just sat there for like a month before I finally put the wheel back on last Saturday afternoon. It’s bad….gas is getting ridiculous lately as well and I don’t know if I’m down to drive this thing around at $5 a gallon…
There was still some gas left in it from a long time ago and I finally had all four of my wheels back on the car so I went ahead and took it to the car wash to get it cleaned up. I brought my camera along just to get some updated shots of it but I ended up only taking like one or two photos. I don’t want to look like a tool taking photos of my car at the car wash so I didn’t stay long…
Oh I forgot to mention this but my Q had been sitting so damn long that when I went to go start it up, my air compressor turned on right away and it pulled all the power away from my battery that was already low… May was out of town over the weekend so I had her Toyota Yaris to drive around in. I wasn’t sure if her small ass battery on her small ass car would be able to jump start my car but I had no other options so I gave it a try….sure enough, it cranked and turned on right away so I could move the car around…
I almost didn’t recognize the car after I washed all the dirt off of it…I had this thing parked at my parents house for months on end and it was already dirty from being down there so it was in desperate need of some cleaning. On the way to the car wash my windshield was so dirty that I could barely see out of it when the sun hit it…
It looked like it was going to rain at one point during the wash but I didn’t give a shit…I dried it with a brand new Absorber towel and grabbed a quick pic. I’m still not sure how I feel about the wheels but I think I’m starting to like them. I’m so used to having a full faced 19-inch wheel that a step-lipped wheel with an 18-inch face looks kinda small…
I took the car home after that and put it back into its spot. The next morning I got a message from Takeshi requesting some stickers and a t-shirt from me so that he could bring back home to Japan. I guess one of his customers wanted a shirt and he wanted to bring a stack of stickers back so I spent a couple hours on Wednesday putting that stuff together. He was over at the mall not too far away from Rywire’s shop so I grabbed my Q and cruised over to the shop…
By the time I got there it was close to 6pm already so the sun had basically set… The SuperTwinz (John and James Nguyen) were there hanging out and I hadn’t seen them in a couple weeks so it was good to shoot the shit with them while I waited for Takeshi to come by…
Ryan has his hands full with work so he hadn’t found the time to bring his ITR down to ASC yet….it was supposed to be down there this week I believe but he’s been struggling to find the time to roll down to SD…
I walked over to Ballade Sports/L-Con Race Cars next door to see what was going on and the Ballade guys were busy working on this S2000 on TE37s…
Walked back over to Rywire and Takeshi pulls up in his rental car. He comes in to hang out for a little bit before we decided to go grab dinner with him….
Here’s a shot that Takeshi took while he was waiting outside that I stole from his Facebook page…The S2000 is James’, the EJ1 Civic coupe is DPK David’s of course, and my Q is the one illegally parked on the side…The white CR-X is John’s daily…
Ryan was in the back diligently working on a mil-spec engine harness for another Japanese friend of our’s, Tetsuya Yamaguchi from USDM Jam…
Supertwinz John’s E-AT getting closer to completion..
You probably can’t see shit in this photo but he’s done a lot more to the bay since. Fuel lines look complete now and it’s close to it’s first crank in years…
We hung out at the shop a bit more until Ryan had to finished whatever he was working on and then we went out to dinner at Guppy’s… Takeshi had never tried it before and he seemed pleasantly surprised with the food. He seems to be happy with wherever we take him though so we’re pretty much just going to make him gain 20 pounds before he flies back home to Sendai, Japan…
That’s pretty much it for now…thanks for looking….If the some of the sentences don’t make sense, it’s due to the fact that I am sleeping while typing this…okay bye.
The Chronicles Ver. 4 BLACK t-shirts now back in stock!!..
With all that’s been going on lately, I almost completely forgot to pick up my second batch of black t-shirts. If you guys read-up on the Wekfest 2012 coverage, then you know that I sold out a majority of the black shirts at Wekfest before the gates of the show even opened-up. I was pretty surprised by how quickly they went so when I came back home to Socal, I immediately ordered more since I know many of you were waiting to pick one up. I got a text during dinner time today notifying me that they were ready to be picked up so I shot over there and grabbed them before they closed. I’ve updated the inventory on all the shirts so they are now 100% accurate. I had a bunch of white tees up on the store the week after Wekfest IV and even those flew out of the store quickly. I’ve also restocked some of the more popular sizes in white too so you guys have the option of black, white, or even both now. Thank you guys for your continued support. Grab these while they are hot because they may sell as quickly as they did during the show. I made a little more of the most popular sizes in black but there’s just no telling how long they will be up in the store before they are sold-out…Oh I don’t have any shirts in SMALL right now because I didn’t make that many and they usually don’t sell. If you want one, please let me know because I’m going to be ordering a couple for the Tactical Art guys in Japan…
I got a couple other new items coming this week too. I’ll update accordingly when they become available to me…
Anyways, CLICK HERE to take you directly to the storefront page for shirts…
Quick Hitter…
I honestly apologize for the lack of updates the last couple days. I’ve been furiously working on knocking out all the stuff for this weekend’s Wekfest event in San Francisco and just haven’t had much time to work on anything else. I have a long drive tomorrow and I just really want to get everything done early so I don’t have one of those nights where I get zero sleep and then have to drive 7 hours to Northern California. If you guys have been following my activities lately on Facebook, then you know that I’ve been pushing out a lot of new merchandise for this year, just in time for the show this weekend. I have a bunch of new stickers, new shirts, etc., and I will update you guys with some images of the stuff so you can know what to expect for Wekfest if you plan on going or plan on buying stuff next week when the storefront opens up again. I’m really happy with how everything came out so far so hopefully it does well this weekend…
I have been working on stuff for the site though. In the process of trying to complete everything for the show, I’ve been going through photos that Shimomukai-san of Tactical Art sent me from the recent Osaka Auto Messe event in Japan. It’s a big show very similar to Tokyo Auto Salon, just not as large in size and quantity of cars. There is some really cool stuff in there though so I’m excited to show you guys the photos. I’ve gone through maybe a quarter of it so I will post up part 1 tomorrow (hopefully), and then I will get the rest up during the beginning of next week when I am going through my Wekfest SF coverage… Though it has been slightly slower here on the site, there is all kinds of stuff coming next week…
In the mean time, I thought I’d toss up some behind-the-scenes photos from a shoot I recently did for Honda Tuning. I took some photos of this car not too long ago so you should recognize it, but I went ahead and knocked out the photos for it last weekend in LA for a future issue. Man, I have to say, black cars are such a pain in the ass to shoot…. It took longer than expected but I am confident in saying that I am pleased with the photos. Below are a couple shots early on in the morning before I started to shoot. I like to get some behind the scenes stuff every now and then and I especially like capturing some candid moments of the owners and their builds. Sam is good people so it was a pleasure working with him to get this shoot done on his Civic Si sedan. It also happens to be his birthday today I believe so a big shout-out to him on his big 2-1. He’s probably off getting wasted right now so he probably won’t even see this until tomorrow. Even though I’ve been busy with everything, I wanted to make sure I set aside some time to do his shoot before he headed up to Norcal for the show this weekend. It’s such a long drive and God forbid anything happen to it, but I just didn’t want to take a chance of the car seeing any damage along the way so I had to shoot it. Plus a lot of pieces on the car were freshly painted too so it would have been a waste not to capture the car in it’s best moments…
I really liked this shot from early that morning. I had just finished setting up the lighting around the car and was waiting for the sun to come out. Sam was on Facebook already on his phone and I snapped some test shots while I walked around to scope the area….
One of the lights hadn’t been turned on yet, but I didn’t realize it until I took this photo of Sam wiping down his car… Apparently it had rained early that morning so there were spots all over his car and with the bright lighting, it was easily noticeable every time I took a photo…
A little while after the sun came out, our friend Sloppy showed up in his Honda Fit with breakfast so I decided to get some photos of his car after I wrapped up with Sam’s Civic…It was nice of him to bring breakfast but that place where we were shooting at was so grimy that ants were all over our McDonald’s in no time…
After getting some photos of Sloppy’s car, we cleaned up and I headed home before I went to the Evasive Open House (which I posted coverage of on Monday)…
Oh speaking of candids, I captured this shot of Sam randomly while I was shooting, haha…
Happy birthday Sam….
That’s all for today. Back with more stuff tomorrow. If you don’t hear from me, you can find me at Wekfest SF this Sunday…
Holly Lee x It’s JDM Yo!!…brought to you by The Chronicles…
I figured now would be as good a time as any to post these photos up. It’s the weekend so many of you won’t have to deal with the perils of sneaking a glimpse at work and possibly getting your ass in trouble. I shot these photos back in November of 2011 but just haven’t had much time to get to them until now. Tony has been wanting some new poster shots as well as some shots of Holly Lee for his site so he hit me up to see if I could do him a solid and snap these photos. The days leading up to it, I had been working a lot and the night before this, I didn’t even get a wink of sleep. By the time I knocked out the stories that I needed to do for work, it was already time to meet up with Tony and the gang so I grabbed my stuff and headed out to the shoot. Tony had planned for us to shoot at this fancy mansion up in the Yorba Linda/Anaheim Hills area and when I got to the house, man was it something…. It wasn’t ideal to shoot at noon obviously, but we made it work. Though the sun was out in full force, it was still a bit chilly so I was surprised to see how down Holly was to shoot. JonJon brought out his IS350 for the shoot but you’ll barely be able to see it in the shots, haha. I do have some wider shots with the car and all but I’ll most likely save those for the posters that Tony wanted to print for future events…
Anyways, I know how many of you out there are Holly Lee fans so I’m happy to bring you guys these photos. I’m normally more of a car photographer but it’s interesting shooting people. It’s completely different so I’m gradually starting to learn more about it. I want to thank Holly Lee and the It’s JDM Yo!! crew for organizing all this. Holly was incredibly easy to work with and Tony well, he’s up to his usual stuff and making girls do uncomfortable poses, haha. Like I always say though, the uncomfortable angles usually make for the best shots. I don’t know shit about photography so I basically made up the last statement but Holly believed me and the shots came out pretty good. Haha…
Let’s see, what else…Oh I’ve attached links below each photos as usual so you can grab the higher versions of them. If you’re going to re-post them, can you please do me a favor and not cut out my watermark. I hate it when people do that shit, I swear. At the end I’ve included a couple extra shots we did around the house when Gilbert from It’s JDM Yo!! was doing his shoot with her. The very last photo I may have posted up before already, but it’s a 1080p-sized desktop version for you guys that like to constantly change your wallpaper on your computers. Enjoy and thanks for looking…
If you guys want to see more of Holly Lee, I hear that she’s going to be Canibeat’s official Wekfest SF spokesmodel next week…Thanks for looking…
TSX Lovers Rejoice…
Not gonna lie, I spent much of the last two days researching and writing a story on the TEC-ART’S Black Limited Trueno from Japan for Super Street magazine. It’s a pretty cool build but writing stories from cars over in Japan can be difficult at times because of the translation issues that arise. Often times I get no more than a spec sheet with parts on it and nothing else. No back story, no history on the car, etc. It’s hard to get a hold of the owners because they don’t usually speak English so I’m left to do research on my own to see if I can come up with a story. The research part is fun though because I always manage to learn something new and I enjoy the challenge of creating an entire story out of nothing but a parts list. I also really enjoy writing stories on builds that are from Japan because they are very different from the builds you see stateside. The mindset of some of these guys are just a far cry from enthusiasts here so I love being able to dig a little deeper to see what is going on in their heads….
All the late nights of internet research is time consuming though and that’s why I haven’t been able to find a moment to sit down and update the site….
Luckily, my buddy Murdock is always out and about shooting cars and he got together with a couple of TSX owners yesterday for a night time photo session. You’ll recognize one of them right away because he is a close buddy of mine but the other two will be fairly new to you guys. You’ve probably seen them in some photos at various events but today, you’ll get to have a closer look at them in better detail. Murdock already started a thread for it on NWP4LIFE so I won’t bother posting all of them here. Just click on the links to see all the images. I know I don’t post nearly as much TSX content as I should. I’ve always been a fan of the first gen. TSX and with more builds popping up, I should definitely devote more time into checking them out. The three that Murdock shot are some good ones and good examples of what direction the TSX community is headed towards. Even if you aren’t really a fan of TSXs, why not expand your horizons and take a look? Who knows, maybe you’ll see something that will make a fan out of you. Time for me to get back to work so peep the link below. Thanks to Murdock for taking these photos…
Me angry about stupid shit…
Ah man, things are pretty slow lately. I’ve been getting consistent work, which has kept me pretty busy, but site-wise, there just isn’t much to post up or talk about. There is one particular issue that has been a huge topic as of late on the internet, but you know what? I am not going near any of that mess, haha. I have nothing to do with any of it and I am not trying to hurl myself into that giant flame. Anyways, since it’s slow, it got me thinking to back in the early stages of this site back in the day when I really had to sit down for hours and generate my own content. Long before I knew how to turn on a camera, this site was around and I was busy writing about stuff related to our import community. The site was heading in a different direction back then but I’m happy with how much the site has grown over time. Now you guys get a plethora of photos to look at, accompanied by some written content that is decently entertaining…
One of the most popular topics from back then was a series of post that I called “An indepth look at horrible ideas”. This series was about fads that existed then (and now) that I wasn’t particularly fond of. I would talk about various things that were happening that I didn’t like in an angry fashion with a dash of some humor. Looking back at it now, there were some posts where I sounded like I was super angry about shit, but that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t fuming about it and losing sleep over it, I just felt that it was worth noting and something interesting to touch upon. A lot of times, my older viewers related to these posts because they felt a similar way and was happy to see someone finally be vocal about it…
Today, I will post up the series so that some of you newer viewers can take a look at them. You may agree with them and you may totally disagree with them, that is fine…I never created this site with intentions to make people feel a certain way about anything. It is merely a site created based on stuff that I see and things that I have experienced. If you think the posts are stupid, that’s also fine and dandy. I can’t hate on the fact that you have a varying opinion of certain matters. These were meant to be semi-informative and a little comical so read them knowing that there may be points that you don’t like. Take it with a grain of salt if you will… Things have also changed over time so there may be some instances where information may not seem all that correct. Just remember, these were created back in 2009. A lot has changed in 3 years but for the most part, my opinion on these matters have not changed at all. I don’t really do posts like this anymore because I’m not really all that angry about that much shit these days, haha. There are a couple things that I would like to touch upon, but I’m still debating on writing about them…
Check it out, if you don’t like it, move along. If you become enraged and think that I’m stupid for saying what I said, you don’t have to come back. The door is always open for you to come back whenever you like…. Oh, you should probably know by now that I am not a big fan of fake shit, and fake wheels in particular. If you are a big fan of knock-off replica wheels and parts, you probably shouldn’t read some of these posts. Thanks, you’ve been warned. I saw a lot of people getting angry at Jay from JDMEGO a couple days ago for his stance on fake parts and all kinds of people were disliking his blog and leaving. That’s fine too. We don’t have to agree. If you got some stupid shit to say, don’t bother, I don’t really have time to read it…
Okay, click, read, enjoy….At the end of the day “To Each Their Own”. Like what you like and do as you please…
“An indepth look at horrible ideas…Part 1: Stock Wheel Whoring”….
“An indepth look at horrible ideas…Part 2: Uh…Widebody?…”
“An indepth look at horrible ideas…Part 3: New/Old Driver Badges…”
“An indepth look at horrible ideas…Part 4: A Salute to APC…”
“An indepth look at horrible ideas…Part 5: Tow Hook ‘Charms’….”
“An indepth look at horrible ideas…Part 6: Fake wheels with authentic stickers…”
“An indepth look at horrible ideas…Part 7: The DIY Fail…”
“An indepth look at horrible ideas…Part 8: Fake seats…”
Oh and this one could be included in the series too…
“A Nostalgic Moment…The Supra taillight conversion…”
..and I’m kinda sad I never got around to finishing this…
“The Creation of the Infamous Rotamaster EMO wheel…”
Maybe someday I’ll get around to it…
Thanks for looking…
Outsourced…
Well there isn’t much going on out here this weekend. Just taking care of some personal stuff and prepping for Wekfest SF in a couple of weeks. Being that there is nothing really interesting going on over here. I’m going to pass your attention onto some great photos provided by Gawa who shoots for Illmotion, a blog that covers the automotive scene much like this site, but is from Canada. He was kind enough to share these photos from his recent trip to Japan for TAS 2012 and took the time to visit some of the more notable Honda-related tuning shops out there, i.e. Type One, FEEL’s, J’s Racing, etc. Pretty cool that he got to see all that in one trip…I can only imagine how much of a blast it would be if I had a chance to be in his shoes during that trip. Anyways, the links will take you to the NWP4LIFE.com forum where these photos were posted up. I figured there are still a big chunk of you out there who don’t regularly peruse NWP so here’s your chance to see some great photos of stuff you would rarely get to ever see. Big thanks to Gawa/Galen for snapping these photos and also make sure to check out Illmotion.com to read the write-ups on all the shop visits as well as other great content they provide regularly. I know I made a comment awhile back regarding the fact that it’s hard for me to keep up with the automotive community in Canada, but luckily Illmotion provides great content and keeps all of us up to date…
Click here to check out photos from Gawa’s visit to Type One, FEEL’s, and Seeker in Japan…
Click here to check out Gawa’s visit to BackYard Special and J’s Racing…
…and make sure to check Illmotion’s official website here….
Thanks for looking…
Making Moves…
It’s been a pretty slow week online for the most part…I wish I had more event coverage or features and what not to toss up here on The Chronicles but there hasn’t really been any events and the stuff I’m shooting is usually for work. The lack of any major update on the site may make it appear that I am not doing anything and just sitting on my ass, but I’ve actually been pretty busy working on numerous things. In just this month alone, I think I’ve shot about 4-5 cars for work as well as for the site. You won’t see all of it right away because it takes time for them to get published, but believe me, I’ve stayed busy. I’m trying to grind harder than ever this year and get as much work as I can. I just want to be able to have some extra resources so that I can either use it to travel or just to have money in my pocket later on. The site will continue to grow because it’s still a really big part of my everyday life. Even when I don’t update, I am consistently working on ways to improve the site or to add content that you guys want to see. It should be pretty obvious to many of you who have been around for awhile that I’m always trying to make things better, whether it be work, play, or just life in general. I know I’m not the greatest photographer, but I’m still learning and hope to someday be up there with some of the best guys in the industry. Writing comes pretty naturally for me, but even so, I am always looking for ways to make stories more interesting for you guys. There’s no better feeling than getting feedback from a fellow enthusiast who has had their car featured and for them to tell me that I did a good job of telling their story to the world. I’ll never be a “workaholic” by any means but I am most certainly on the grind constantly…
Whenever I have some spare time, I’ve been focused on getting some new merchandise for the Chronicles Storefront as well as for the upcoming SF Wekfest event. Wekfest is undoubtedly one of the biggest events of the year and I will be having a booth there once again so I really wanted to have some new stuff for the supporters of the site…
One new thing that I will be adding that I haven’t had in previous years are these new digital die-cut stickers. I’ve always done my own stickers by myself here at home on my plotter but I thought it would be cool to try something new. These stickers are much easier to apply and much smaller so you can basically slap them on anywhere. One of my favorite designs from the past has always been the Robocop/Unicorn Stickydiljoe.com design so I used it to make these die-cut 4-inch stickers. They were honestly a pain in the ass to cut on my machine back then but since they were being printed this time around, I was able to re-do some of the artwork and added more detail. They were a pretty good seller but I stopped selling them because they were so hard to weed-out and put together. You can see in the pic above that I’ve added little details here and there to make Robocop stand out more. I drew in new lines in his arm and leg area to make it look more like the original Robocop design. Minor details that most wouldn’t notice but hey, I’m a man of details and I think it looks much better now. These will be a lot cheaper than my usual vinyl stickers so make sure to stop by the booth at Wekfest where they will debut and snag a couple of them…
For those of you who haven’t been a Chronicles fan very long, I design and print a new shirt every year. We are heading into the fourth year of The Chronicles, so we are now on the fourth tee. These are limited in production so after the first initial batch, I usually don’t print more unless the demand is great. The version II shirts did really well, so I made a second batch of those as did the Hurt Feelings shirts. For this year’s shirt, I wanted to go back to my roots and went back to the original Chronicles logo. To this day the original logo is still my best selling sticker so it was only appropriate to use it on this year’s shirt…
For the back of the shirt, I’ve added the logos of those whom have contributed to the site the most throughout the years. The three car crews; Phaze2, DPK, and Premium Garage Krew were the ones that built the cars that helped bring attention to this site from the very beginning. People wanted an inside/behind-the-scenes look at what these guys did and they were and remain an essential part of this site’s success. I’m proud to have these guys represented on the back of The Chronicles shirt and I hope you guys support the site by representing these new shirts year-round. They will also debut at SF Wekfest and will come in both black and white versions. You’ll also notice the new “No Rival, No Equal, Est. MMVIII” logo on the back. I’ll elaborate more on it later but it should be pretty self-explanatory…I’m pretty excited about these shirts and I can’t wait to get them back from the company that’s doing my shirts….
On a random note, I went down to the Extreme Dimensions facility yesterday to meet up with Bisi Ezerioha to shoot the Bisimoto 2012 Civic for an overseas publication. This doesn’t really apply to anyone stateside because we don’t get that particular magazine here, but I thought some of the overseas Chronicles fans would get a kick out of this. A UK-based publication known as “Total Honda” wanted to feature Bisi’s Civic in their magazine and hit me up to shoot it. I’ve never done anything for any other overseas mag so I thought it would be cool to try it out. I’m pretty familiar with the car and communicate with Bisi regularly so I was the right guy for the job. They wanted to put the car on the cover and wanted to post a little teaser on their Facebook page so I shot the car, came home and processed the photo, and sent them the image that I felt would be good as a cover image. I’ve never shot a cover before so it was pretty cool to have the opportunity to do it. The people over at Total Honda seem really nice and enthusiastic about working with me so we will see how that plays out in the future…
Here’s a behind-the-scenes pic from the shoot yesterday. Extreme Dimensions has a huge lot with a lot of industrial buildings surrounding it so it made for a cool backdrop…
I was pretty surprised by how quickly they put the cover image together, but here is what they put up today on their Facebook page. It’s still a mock-up image so some changes will be made before it goes to print, but I think it looks good so far…
Not bad, right? Again, we don’t get that publication here in the states so you guys won’t see the feature later on, but I think there are ways to order single issues from them if you were really interested in checking it out. For you guys overseas that do get the magazine, I believe this issue drops on February 23rd, so stop by your local newstand or wherever you guys get magazines from and support my ass as well as Total Honda Magazine….
Thanks for looking…
Weekend Wrap-up…
For any of you who ever wondered what “NWP4LIFE” stood for, it started out as a small internet message board for a small group of Honda enthusiasts that hung out at a pizza place in Irvine, CA. That pizza spot was known as “Northwood Pizza”. When that group of individuals decided to come up with a name for their forum, they decided to name it after the spot that hung out at regularly, thus the name “NWP” aka NorthWood Pizza. It seemed like ages ago but now the forum is one of the most notable Honda enthusiasts forums in the entire world and has more than enough members to consider it the “small group” that it once was. Awhile back, I want to say maybe a two years ago or so, Northwood Pizza was bought out by the owners of the Yogurtland next door and while it remained a pizza place, numerous changes were made. The entire restaurant was re-modeled but what always stayed the same was the pizza…up until last year that is. For whatever reason, the new owners decided to shut down Northwood Pizza and turn it into a seafood/crawfish spot and NWP would be no more. The forum still stuck around of course, but the pizza was GONE. When we found out that it was closing down, we headed down there for one last slice before Northwood Pizza was no more. It was always an important spot to us because the food was great and the location was a landmark for a lot of great times that we had. We even took one last photo outside to commemorate the occasion…
This was back in May of 2011…
Everyone thought that Northwood was done for good until a couple months ago when we heard that the people that worked at Northwood so long would be bringing it back. They got the rights to re-use the name and would re-open Northwood Pizza in the same shopping center, just in another building. This location would be much smaller than in the past, but much easier to manage. It would serve more as a take-out pizza spot, but there was still enough room to accommodate a small gathering. What was best about bringing Northwood Pizza back was well, the great pizza…When we all caught wind that it was returning, we all decided to plan a get-together and have a small meet there like the old days…
Everyone seemed to have very different schedules, but it was finally decided that last weekend would be the weekend that we all went out there to eat Northwood Pizza. It was a bit of an impromptu gathering and wasn’t heavily advertised, so we expected it to be a small and poorly planned. It didn’t matter though and people didn’t even have to bring their cars. It was just more about getting together again and catching up with old friends…
The original sign and all, just in a different location…
Even though it was late notice, the turn-out was still pretty good…
One big difference since the original Northwood closed down is that we have a new addition to our stable of friends…Everybody seems to be getting a little older and progressing on in the journey through life…
Pie eating some yogurt from the Yogurtland next door…
Mike from PlanB Motorsports rolling through in his Evo X…
Larry Le’s pearl white Integra LS with ITR front conversion…
Andy Hope, who is an amazing driver and also previously the head editor of Sport Compact Car magazine, got a chance to enjoy some Northwood Pizza for the first time and brought out his clean EF Civic on Precedeo CST wheels…
Our old pal Jared from DPK, also enjoying some self-serve yogurt after devouring some pizza…
Many of us ordered a pile of meat with a side of pizza…
People made the trek out from all parts of Socal…
…including Bryant Nguyen from San Diego. His TSX on air was a little dirty but nobody cared…we were just happy to see him there…
Collin brought out his BB6 Prelude with a very rare Wisesports/Wisesquare front bumper…
Overall, it was just a nice chill day…no drama, no worries about people doing stupid ricer fly-bys and burn-outs. Just old friends, nice cars, and great food. A lot of guys also donned their NWP4LIFE gear to represent….
That pretty much summed up the weekend. On that Sunday, I woke up bright and early (actually it was still dark) to meet up with Mark Sutakajana and his 4-door DB Integra. As you know, he was the #5 spot on The Chronicles Top Ten Hondas of 2011 so it was just a matter of time until he got his chance to be featured in print on the pages of Honda Tuning magazine. We’ve had our eye on his Integra for quite some time now so it was good to finally be able to get the shoot done for HT. He injured his leg a couple weeks ago so he was unable to drive his car, but luckily for us, he’s got good friends and his buddy was willing to wake up early to drive his car out there with him…
I love being able to capture a moment when an owner stands by his creation, soaking in the moment and realizing that he’s built something great…Congrats to Mark and make sure to keep an eye out for his feature in an upcoming issue of Honda Tuning magazine….
I also had a chance to meet up with another favorite Honda of mine a couple days before that. Sam’s FA5 is coming along nicely and he wanted me to get some quick shots of it before he adds the final touches on his build. He’s got some big surprises in store so keep an eye out for his car. He is also Honda Tuning-bound as well but we all want Sam to be 100% content with his build before we put it in print…
That’s all for today, thanks for looking guys…
Just Because…
…You ain’t got shit to do on a Saturday anyhow, so why not just come out to Northwood Pizza and grab a slice with some of your fellow car enthusiasts. We’d be hanging out and eating regardless of whether or not you came, but it would be cool to chill with good people and great pizza…
It’s gonna be a good week…
No time for a big update today with it being Chinese New Year and all, but here’s a preview of things to come this week. As with the previous weeks, we are going to have a lot of good content coming your way…
I’m gonna kick off the week with coverage from the 1st ever “So you think you can Stance” event, brought to you by It’s JDM Yo!!!…
It was definitely an interesting event and the first of it’s kind…I was surprised by the turn-out and people looked like they were really into the “competition”…
The best thing about this event was the variety of different builds that showed-up…There were definitely some cars that I had never seen before…
I also have some photos that the guys from Tactical Art took when the Super Street staff stopped by to check out their shop and shoot some of their cars…
It looked like an interesting day over there and they also had a couple new cars pop-up that we had previously unseen…
I have to head out for now but make sure to check back tomorrow for the first chunk of updates….
I’m also visiting the Rywire facilities as well because Ryan had a chance to spend some time over the weekend to update his ITR build, shit is going to be crazy, stay tuned!!!…
Happy New Year…
What’s up guys, I know it’s been a little slow over here this week but that’s because I’ve been busy finishing up work for Super Street and also because I’ve been trying to figure out this whole Top Ten Hondas list for 2011. I started compiling a list of cars a couple months back for potential cars that would make the list and now I can honestly say that I am happy with my picks. The main issue that I’m having to deal with at this point is what order the cars should go in and who goes in what place. Last year, it was much easier because their were some clear cut builds that belonged at the top. 2011 has been a much more well-rounded year. There were definitely some stand-out builds, but I feel like there wasn’t like, one guy that really stood out above the rest of the crowd, you know what I mean? The cars were great, but the level and quality of the builds seem to be pretty even across the board. If I can’t decide on which build is “better” than the other, I then have to take into consideration how much impact each owner/car had on the community as well as how many events and appearances it made during 2011. It’s tough because there are some Hondas in regions where they don’t have a lot of events and certain parts of the country have way more going on than others. Take for example, the number of great builds that come out of Washington up in the Northwest. The quality is right up there with any other state, but they just don’t have any events. They have meets here and there but it is few and far between. That being the case, then you have to think about how often you see these cars on the net, and even that is a toss-up….
Ehh, it’s going to be tough but the list should be finalized by the new year, like it has been for the past 2 years. I want to say I have about 12-14 cars right now with a couple having to be cut off the list, then I will have to arrange them from 10-1. I started working on the graphics and photos for the list already so that won’t take up too much more time. I already know that there will be some cars that won’t make the list that some of you will complain about but the cars that made the list, made it because they fit my criteria of what I’m looking for. That and there were a couple builds that were great, but didn’t come out until later on in the year. This is the Top Ten Hondas of 2011, not the “Top Ten Hondas of 3 Months Ago”…
On another note, December marks the greatest statistical month we have ever had on The Chronicles. We broke the record for hits in a month a couple hours ago and we still have one more day left in December. It’s been a great year, thank you all for your continued support and I look forward to what is in store for 2012…Happy New Year’s everyone and keep an eye out for the Top Ten Hondas of 2011!!
Do Work.
Shot two days before Christmas, in the middle of nowhere hours away, on a morning when it was so cold that the water in the dirt tire tracks was frozen ice…it was definitely a interesting morning for sure. I worked through the holidays and am now finishing up the story now (it’s around 3:30am)…During the last couple days, I also finished up another shoot/story where I rented a car and drove out hours away to San Luis Obispo, CA to meet a fellow enthusiast who drove out from Washington state. I also have a loving girlfriend who is my heart and two separate families that we had to go make time to see during the holiday weekend as well as friends who are important to me. It would have been very easy to just refuse work, rest, and hang out for the holidays, but this work isn’t going to do itself. You know what I mean?
This is a random ass post, but it’s been brought to my attention that there are some kids out there who are drowning in self-entitlement, chomping at the bit to critique and speak ill of others when they have nothing to show for themselves. These individuals aren’t talking about me, but I’ll use myself as an example to show you that there are people out there grinding and working their asses off to make something of themselves. Not hype-beasting, gathering Facebook friends, and using other people’s content to make themselves “known”. It’s a shame that you can even try to tell someone that they aren’t doing something correctly when you haven’t figured out how to do it on your own. It’s a shame that there are some kids out there these days that have replaced humility with self-entitlement and the glorification of pride that’s never been earned. To have humility, to be a humble human being, is not something you can wait in line to buy like a fucking pair of Concords….it has to be LEARNED.
It’s very easy to criticize the work of others, but appreciate the dedication to their craft. I may not be the best around, but I fucking love my job. Go blog about THAT….“Things may come to those who wait…but only the things left by those who HUSTLE.”
Closing out the year with a bang. Thanks for looking, and thanks for your support…
