“So You Think You Can STANCE?” Coverage…Part 2 of 2…
Back now with the second half of It’s JDM Yo!!’s “So You Think You Can STANCE” event coverage, brought to you by The Chronicles. When we last left off, the competition had just started and people were gathered along the street and driveway to check out all the “action”. By “action”, I mean cars going up driveways slowly…haha. I know an event like this usually has it’s fair share of supporters, and also it’s share of people that just think that it is out right stupid. To be fair, it’s totally okay to think that it’s completely retarded because there is a growing number of enthusiasts within our vast community that is starting to dislike this whole “stance” movement. Any time you mention anything about low offset wheels and aggressive fitment, you will have a number of people that will detest the idea and show their disappointment with where the scene has shifted. The whole stance/hellaflush/fitment scene has become it’s own subculture now within the community and it doesn’t look to be going anywhere any time soon. It just goes with different people liking different things. There’s no definitive right or wrong because people don’t always like the same thing or share the same ideas as others. Being in the magazine industry opens my eyes to a lot of different styles of tuning and I’ve learned to appreciate them. I don’t necessarily have to agree or like what some enthusiasts are doing nowadays, but I also don’t have to always be vocal about it. If you don’t like the “stance” movement, just take a gander at the photos, read some of my stupid comments, and move on. This site isn’t solely devoted to wheel fitment and if you’ve been around for a lengthy-amount of time on The Chronicles, you know that I like to bring you a variety of things. Now let’s just move on with the photos and knock out part 2 of the “So You Think You Can STANCE?” coverage…if you want to read my thoughts on the event as a whole, I invite you to take a look back at part 1…
Now when we last left off, Milt had just kicked off the competition and did his run through the driveway…
He didn’t look like he had very many issues getting up the driveway…
…but coming down proved to be a little more interesting…
As I said in part 1, I don’t know the criteria for judging or what they were looking for, but on that particular run…Milt Salamanca garnered a score of 27 out of a possible 40…I didn’t even bother catching score after this because I really didn’t know what was going on. We all basically stood there to watch people potentially fuck their shit up…
A TSX narrowly missing the pavement as he was barely angling out…You can see Holly Lee and Tony from It’s JDM Yo!! standing in the middle of the driveway because they were basically the markers used to cut the driveway in half….Guy in the photo with the 49ers gear on is either whistling his favorite tune or over exaggerating his shock…
A strawberry-faced S14 240SX on Leon Hardiritt Ordens getting set to make his run….I thought the competition was a little unfair in that guys with aero or front lips already in need of repair competed against guys whose cars were in better condition…I mean, in terms of willingness to take a chance of breaking something to win, wouldn’t you have less to lose if your shit was already messed up already?…Then again, I don’t know how it was judged or scored so I can’t really say anything, just raising an interesting point….
People gradually started to get more into the event as more cars made their runs…Even Holly Lee was using the camera and trying to get some action shots…Tony for whatever reason, was showing off his hella hyphy THIZZ face circa 2006…
A clean white S2000 on CCW wheels stood next in line to make his attempt…
Antonio from Motormavens.com didn’t seem too impressed….Big Mike on the far left was taking a standing nap…
While I was happy to see that this S2K owner’s fenders weren’t fucked-up, his front lip has probably seen better days after this event…
Next up was the RHD CR-X from Infinit Wheels…
The CR-X’s run was one of the more interesting ones because they chose to drive the car straight up the driveway without angling at all and when it came down, it struggled to get traction and created some tire smoke…
Thanks to drifting, enthusiasts these days are conditioned to cheer and go ape shits anytime there is tire smoke so Infinit Wheels got some dap for creating the smoke show…
Armand with the TRD widebody MR-2 decided to participate/fuck his shit up…If anyone had anything to lose in this competition, it was him. His car is in pretty good condition and I don’t think damaging that kit would really be a good idea but he went for it anyway. During a test run, he mysteriously broke the wing off that he had just recently not replaced EVER, so this will be day 837 of wingless widebody SW20…
It didn’t look too bad as he was making his way down…
…but the more angles he had to make to get out, the more stress it was on his front end…if you look closely, you can see his fender cracking where it meets the sideskirt….
Next up was this S2000 with a CR lip and what looks like F-Zero Blue Volk CE28s…
If you ever wanted to know what a CR front lip would look like if it was driven into the ground with the weight of the car on it, here you go…
If that wasn’t enough scraping for you, here is a BB6 Prelude that also participated…Good to know that he had that plastic lip under his bumper to give the driveway more contact patch…haha…
This EF was one of the more ridiculous competitors of the day…not only was he making sparks under his car as he was exciting the driveway, he also was sparking when the car was driving normally on flat pavement. The guy decided to lower his car so extreme to the point where his car would flip over if he ran into a dime. The owner was also very serious about this competition and constantly asked later if he made it into the later rounds. Being low and fucking up the bottom of the car is serious business…
Last time I checked, IS350s weren’t cheap and neither are the parts made for them…Tell that to this guy’s front lip…
After most of the cars had finished their runs, out of nowhere, people decided to start acting like dipshits and revving their cars or driving really fast as they were leaving the venue to show off and/or mow people down who were spectating. Tony and many of us started to get kind of iffy about keeping the competition on an open street, so Tony and crew told everyone to get back inside where the parking lot was. The highlight of douchebaggery was when a 15 year old kid smoking a cigarette driving an STI his parents bought for him pulled in front of a crowd and started revving. Instead of just waiting for people to disperse, he felt it was a better idea to rev his shitty car at people and ask them to move. He was also accompanied by his other douchebag 15 year old friends who think that mounting two 25mm spacers on each wheel qualifies as “aggressive fitment”. The runner-up for master of douchebaggery was some jackass who was sitting on the passenger side window, hanging out of his car while his friend peeled out and hauled ass down the street. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Apparently these kids thought that they were participating in an event called “So You Think Your Parents Will Want to Visit You In The Hospital When You Are A Brain Dead VEGETABLE?”…
People acting like complete idiots sort of put a damper on the event, even though a majority of it went very well and without any real issues. There was a break during the competition to tally up the scores and see who would advance to the later rounds, but I was pretty set on going home. I had just driven back earlier that morning from my trip to Las Vegas so I wanted to get home to get some much needed rest. Before that though, I made the rounds and finished up the rest of my coverage of cars that were at the event…
Michael Mao’s Acura NSX…
G35 on DPE wheels…
A couple more shots of the Amuse-inspired S2000 from DTM Autobody…
…as well as the KE70 Corolla wagon parked behind it…
JonJon’s supercharged IS350 from Vanguard Collective/It’s JDM Yo!!….
Y34 M45 on air…
Oh this was cool…It’s virtually impossible to see a modified Lexus ES300/Toyota Windom EVER so it was refreshing to see one at the event with a kit and old school Work Equip mesh wheels…These cars are terribly unpopular to modify, because they are basically fancy versions of Camrys, but I’ll always have a soft spot for this car because my parents owned one when I was growing up…The last time I saw one of these ES300s modded was back around the early 2000s when I would spot the same one always cruising through LA. It had a HKS turbo kit and everything, shit was crazy and way ahead of it’s time…
Ryan Delosreyes’ Scion xB on old school Work VS wheels…
The Kouki S14 from part 1 with the crooked intercooler…As a whole, this car wouldn’t look bad if it was all one color…
FC3S RX-7 from the most un-intimidating car crew name ever, Nuisance…
Acura TSX from Low’N Slow on gold-faced CCW Classics…
3rd generation Toyota Celica from Low’N Slow…
Armand’s MR-2, post cracked fender…Aspiring breezies in the background doing hoodrat stuff…so hood that the guy photographing them is standing on the train tracks…
The BB6 Prelude on white-faced Work Equips that competed earlier…front lip scuffed up, but still intact…
The most aggressive S2000 ever to park in front of a dumpster…
Real clean EK with a iridescent hood shield…
Hubert Barnum male modeling on the Ruckus he and his brother built…
One more shot of the 350Z from part one on the SSR Gartmaier wheels…
The Barnum brothers’ Ruckus…draped in orange jizzum…
The IS350 that competed earlier on SSR MS1 wheels…
The S14 that also competed earlier…
DPK David’s EJ1 coupe just before he left…
Keith aka Keychain’s Accord sedan on polished MB Battles…
That’s about it…after that I left so I didn’t really get a chance to see who won the whole thing. I believed after things calmed down for a bit, they went back and finished the competition on the driveway where it started. Overall, a pretty successful event I would have to say…It wasn’t really meant to be anything taken too serious and I think that’s what people left with. At the end of the day, it’s just a couple guys showing off how they get out of driveways in their lowered cars. The meet portion of the event was cool. The diversity was good and wasn’t only limited to just beat-up cars on aggressively-fitted wheels. Congrats to Tony and staff for putting together a good event….
Thanks for looking… Back tomorrow with other stuff…
Oh before I go, I had to post this up. It was on Facebook late last night but I figured I’d post it up here since a lot of you don’t have Facebook accounts…
Haha, the expression on this guy’s face just made it too easy…
Autocon 2011 Coverage…Part 1….
Damn…I took a lot of photos at this event. I’d hope to be done going through all of them by now but there’s still a gigantic chunk of it in my memory card that I have yet to touch. I know many of you have come on here the last couple days since the event to see coverage so let’s just go ahead and kick it off today. I’m going into this not really knowing how many parts there will be, but it’ll definitely be more than just 2-3 parts. How I ended up taking that many photos I don’t know, but I think I did a pretty good job of covering the event. Obviously there is some stuff I missed but seeing as how I had a booth at this show, I think you will get a pretty good idea of how this show was…
Now my thoughts on the event…Hmm…I know many of you have already heard about the lack of organization and how the roll-in process was anything less than “hassle-free”. It probably was, I don’t really know because I got there early and set-up right away. A lot of people came by to the booth and brought it up to me, probably in hopes that I would mention it when I posted up the coverage. For all intents and purposes, shit, I have to say right now that it was a great event. I didn’t go last year because I made other plans, but I don’t think missing out on the 2010 Autocon show had any effect on how I felt about this year’s. Foot traffic was great, there was a diverse crowd of cars,…I don’t know, it looked to me as if it went well. If this was an event that I was putting on I’d be pretty happy with it. Okay, roll-in was probably a pain and I did notice how it was kind of unorganized, but you almost have to expect it with guys that are fairly new to putting on events like these. It was definitely under-staffed, but that can be alleviated pretty easily by just hiring more people. Organization just comes with better planning, and as time progresses, I think Justin Fong and staff will get better at it with time. It’s okay to bitch about it as long as you understand that it’s not something that can’t be fixed. I had a good time and it seemed as if everyone else did too.
There were some pretty beat ass looking cars that I don’t think should have been there but I don’t believe there was a screening process so it’s not like you can prevent people from PAYING YOU to show up, you know what I mean? Autocon is off to a good start….will it continue to get better? I would certainly hope so. Will they ever be as big as Wekfest and the other top tier shows of this current generation? Ehh, I don’t know if I want that to happen. I’m cool with the success and all but isn’t this show designed to be for a good cause? Justin originally put on this event as a simultaneously running toy drive. People bring in toys and gifts for children that are less fortunate during the holiday season. If this does turn into a major event, do they just continue to do toy drives at every location they go to, even if it’s not during the holidays? And if they don’t do they just move on as a major car show, leaving behind the original intent of the show itself? It’s kind of a grey area… I mean, if they abandon the whole Toys for Tots things, it would seem as if they used it as a stepping stone to move on and expand the Autocon name, and that doesn’t seem right at all…I don’t know….For now, I think we should all just be happy that this event was a success and everyone there enjoyed it. I also liked the idea of having all the food trucks outside the whole day. That I know for sure took some careful planning and it helped that people didn’t have to be there all day without food or eating some crappy, dry, convention center food…
Anyways, let’s move onto the coverage. Today we will be taking a look at the roll-in early that Saturday. I wouldn’t know about how painful roll-in was because I got there early and went in with It’s JDM Yo!!! Tony. If anything, if it was pain-free for me because I didn’t have to wait long and I took the spare time I had and shot photos…There are a lot of random photos mixed in with the cars because I had a booth and I tried not to leave it after it was set-up. Everything that you are seeing in the first couple parts are just things that happened around me and stuff I could capture from a distance….Enjoy… If you don’t like it, go log onto some other blog where they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and have no comprehension of sentence structure…
We rolled out early in the morning and got there around 7:30am. I had no idea where It’s JDM Yo!! Tony was so I just pulled my camera out and started shooting until he came and got us…This yellow BMW M5 on HREs was one of the first cars I spotted…
First generation Toyota Celica waiting in line to roll-in…
You can see here how the R35 GT-R dwarfs the original Mini Cooper….
Evo X on CCW Classics…
I’m a big fan of the Powerhouse Amuse kit on the 370Zs…I liked how this owner added the black on the sideskirts to add some contrast and also to match the black lines of the front…
BMW E46 M3 on CCW Classics…I’m not gonna lie, Autocon 2011 was probably the only show other than Import Alliance this year where I saw this many sets of CCWs…Most of them were found on BMWs too, which was really interesting because I never thought CCWs were that popular in the BMW community….
Big Mike used Autocon 2011 as a platform to officially debut his new look…You haven’t seen his car at various meets/shows lately because he’s been busy getting his Chargespeed lip molded to his front bumper, color-matching his mirrors, and getting his wheels powdercoated a high gloss black…
I eventually found Tony…he was busy going over the floorplan with one of the Autocon staffers with Freddie from Autofashion and we rolled into the venue soon-after…
Once we got inside, we waited to see where they wanted our booths to be set-up so I continued shooting…
Ryan Deguzman’s FD3s RX-7 cruising in…
DPK David posted up next to my crappy 4Runner…
The guns and DTA theme I get…what I don’t understand is why you would put crappy Varrstoen wheels on a Porsche…and I don’t really give a shit about the sponsorship argument either…
Buddy Club Honda Fit show/sometimes track car…
Andrew Lim’s DPE S20 wheels on his gold Toyota Supra…
Matte red BMW 5-series wagon from VIP Modular wheels…
S2000 on teal BBS LMs…
TSX on mag blue Volk Racing RE30s…
Another shot of the BMW wagon next to Team Praxis Jimmy’s FJ Cruiser…
Nimbus Grey BMW on custom bronze BBS LM…
We checked the weather forecast early that morning before we left and it showed that it was going to be a pretty cold day… May was all dressed in her winter gear but then we arrived to the venue and the sun started to beat down and it was actually getting pretty warm…
VIP Y34 Infiniti M45…
Another shot of the M3 on Classics…the one parked directly next to it looked almost identical to this one…
Stanced-out DB Integra on some black steel wheels…
Ly Say’s Acura TSX on Work S1R…
Jamarri Whiteside’s award-winning Subaru STI from Auto Concept Elite… This build just won “Best of Show” at Hot Import Nights just a week prior to Autocon 2011…
Auto Concept Elite’s ENEOS-themed widebody R35 GT-R…
Big Mike’s Scion xB…haha…just playing, but they share a similar tone…
Justin and Autocon had advertised that there were free hot-air balloon rides that day and sure enough, there was…
Man, I fucking loved this Toyota Tundra on Volk TE37s…That truck couldn’t look any better…
Scion xB on air and BBS wheels…
Big Mike prepping his Prelude…
Slammed Lexus SC300 from Royal Origin (I think…)….
Chivas rolled out from Vegas with his orange EM1…I just recently finished a story on this coupe for a future Honda Tuning feature so keep an eye out for that…
Gerald’s DC2 Integra on Work Equip 03s….also from Las Vegas…
DPK David all set-up and ready for the show…
JonJon was still busy prepping his IS300…
Step-lipped multi-piece Mugen M7s…
Jamarri Whiteside cleaning the door jams on his STI…check out the door panels on this thing…
Gonna close it out today with a couple shots of Michael Mao’s Acura NSX on aggressive Volk TE37s…
Back with much more tomorrow!! Gotta run for now…
Thanks for looking…
