“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…
“So You Think You Can STANCE?” Coverage…Part 1…
Well this was different…haha. I mean, in terms of just being “different”, this event takes the cake so far. When Tony first came up with the idea to do this whole “Stance” competition, I was really up in the air about it. The whole name is something that we’ve been throwing around as a joke for the last year or so now, but when he decided to dub his event “So You Think You Can Stance?”, trust me, it was met with a collective “what the fuck are you thinking”. Tony is a pretty smart guy though with some pretty innovative ideas…he’s a massive pervert, but still, he is a smart pervert. If you don’t know which Tony I am referring to, I am talking about Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!. He’s always been a great friend and a huge supporter of mine so whenever he comes up with an idea, no matter how out of the box or random it is, I will support him….
Michael Mao’s Acura NSX on Volk CE28 Genesis…
The whole idea behind this “So You Think You Can Stance” event was very basic in principal…almost too basic. We were to have a pretty aggressively sloped driveway, in which people would sign-up and attempt to show everyone how they could go in and out of the driveway with their slammed/lowered/stanced-out vehicles. The original driveway that was chosen for the competition was over by the Rywire facility. It’s got a pretty big slant to it, but it wasn’t impossible to get up and down. DPK David takes his Civic coupe to work on occasion and has little issues getting in and out and even my Q45 aired down to about 40-50psi with a big kit and get out pretty easily. There are a number of cars that come through the shop and I’ve never really seen anyone have any problems. Being that the venue was also good enough to host a small meet though, Tony decided to use it for the event. What he would do would cone off a large chunk of the driveway, and as the competition progressed, the driveway would become smaller and smaller…
Linda’s Toyota Matrix on VIP Modular wheels from Team Praxis…
How it would be judged would also prove to be pretty interesting…There would be a panel of three guys who would determine the winner…Keith aka Keychain from It’s JDM Yo!!, Noel Barnum from Canibeat, and Yogi from Fatlace. These guys know about all things low so they would be good judges. Yogi I don’t think has ever really had a car that low..his Accord never moved and now he drives a Nissan pick-up, but still, he works for Fatlace/Illest so he encounters his fair share of lowered vehicles. I don’t know what was a point of emphasis for judging, nor do I know what they were looking at…I really didn’t want to know because then I would wonder if they were judging it correctly and with this being a first-time competition, there are a lot of unknowns. Even after the event has come and gone, I still have no real idea of how they judged this. There were so many different types of cars and they all went about going up and down the driveway different…it’s one of those things that can have real open interpretation. In the end, I believe a 1st generation Lexus GS300 won so congrats to the owner. I believe Falken Tires was a co-sponsor of the event and the winner got a set of tires. The other co-sponsor was VIP Modular wheels, which offered a significant discount (20-30% I believe) on a new set of VIP Modular wheels…
350Z on SSR Gartmaier wheels fro Royal Origin…
On the days leading up to the event, Tony realized that there was a chance that the event would be bigger than originally anticipated. I guess he had more than enough responses on social media outlets where he believed the event might be larger than the Rywire parking lot could hold, so he changed the venue entirely. Instead of having it at Rywire, he moved the event over to the city of Santa Fe Springs, inside an industrial section of the city that was quiet and had plenty of space on a Sunday. Overall, I think the event worked out great. The whole idea of it on paper just sounds kind of silly, but man, people fucking love all things “stance”. You can literally throw the word “stance” into any event name or website and there’s a high possibility of it being successful. As much as people love to talk shit about stanced-out cars, it’s become a genre in our community that has become quite popular. I’m a fan of everything as long as it’s done right in my eyes or in moderation. There are some absolutely ridiculous looking cars that showed-up… as with every stance-related event, there are often times when people just try way too fucking hard to be cool and somehow totally fuck up their cars in the process…
VIP Modular booth on display…
If you want my honest opinion of this event, I would kind of relate it to like pro-wrestling and figure skating, but without the excitement of wrestling and without the grace of figure skating…haha, if that makes any sense… I didn’t think that many people would be into the competition side of the event but damn, people were on edge after the first couple cars did their driveway sessions. I think many of us were skeptical but eventually we were also into it and wanted to know who was going to win. I knew that the meet portion of this event would be good because Tony’s events always have good turn-outs. He can bring a good crowd in just by blasting the event on Facebook. The competition was cool, but like I said early on, there’s a lot that needs to go into judging criteria if Tony and crew decide to put another event like this on again in the future…
Lowered cars going up driveways is something that every enthusiast has to go through practically everyday…turning it into a competition just sounds totally absurd…but you know what? It just works…haha. Congrats to Tony and the It’s JDM Yo!! crew for putting on another successful event…
Standard Functions brought out a couple of really nicely-built Ruckus’ for display at the Fatlace booth…
I spotted my favorite car early on in the day…DPK David and I were walking around while I did coverage and stumbled upon an AE86 on HRE wheels…
HREs are not a typical wheel that you see on an AE86…this one might be the first one ever actually…You don’t see these wheels on Corollas of any kind because they are often times worth more than the cars themselves. It’s a high end wheel that belongs on more appropriately high-end automobiles. Anytime you see something like this though, it’s definitely a cool sight…
Turns out that this beautiful creation is actually owned by Mickey Andrade who works at HRE. David and I were a little shocked at first to see a perfectly fit set of HREs on a Corolla but after speaking to him, it all made sense. The car itself was built by John Russakoff from JSPFab in Vista, CA…
John Russakoff’s claim to fame, besides being a talented drifter in Formula D, is performing S2000 F20C swaps on older Toyotas like the AE86. He has a whole kit that is made just for the swap and even has this custom made F20C spark plug wire covers with the Toyota 1600 insignia on them…pretty cool stuff…
I’ve seen this EK with purple Work Meister S1s various times before online…I believe it’s from Northern Cali…
The It’s JDM Yo!! booth with an assortment of the latest It’s JDM Yo!! gear…
The Z33 from above on SSR Gartmaier wheels…
Jay Borcena’s Acura TL on VIP Modular wheels and Accuair suspension…
The guys having a moment…(From left to right: Jay Borcena, Big Mike, Noel Barnum, DPK David, and Noel’s girl Emily…)
Ms. Sheila working the NOS Energy booth…
3GS on Auto Couture wheels…
A good-looking wingless Mitsubishi Evo X on concave Volk TE37s…
JonJon Usaha’s Job Design Lexus IS300 representing It’s JDM Yo/Vanguard Collective…
S2000 from Infinit Wheels sitting on CCWs…
2GS on Work Eurolines, also representing Infinit Wheels…
WRX rolling through with some aggressive blue Work Meister S1s…
Powerhouse Amuse-inspired Honda S2000 on Enkei PF01 from DTM Autobody…
Clean Boso-style Corolla wagon on really clean old school Super Advan Racing wheels…I dig the red interior on this thing…
Keychain cruising up to the event fashionably late…
Noel Barnum taking a seat on his Ruckus to check out the event…
I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason why the intercooler on this S14 is cock-eyed…probably insert a “Because Drift Car” or something stupid here…
Antonio from Motormavens was in charge of MCing the event but also had his camera and massive lens on hand to do some coverage for his site…
This G35 on white-faced Work Meister S1 wheels was just stunning…Shows that you can have a clean set-up on aggressive wheels without making your shit look absurd with haggered fenders…
Yogi from Fatlace/Illest standing the in the middle of the street with a giant “Illest” flag…
A couple hours into the event, it was time to begin the competition and people got together by the driveway in anticipation…
Evo X on green Volk CE28s posted-up on the side of the street…
Here’s an incorrect way to be “stanced-out”….fake TEs, chewed up tires inside and out rocking two gigantic wheel spacers just to be “flush”…What is that shit, like 50mms wider now??…
Jimmy from Team Praxis rolling through before the competition started in his FJ Cruiser…
RHD CR-X from Infinit Wheels lined-up and ready to compete…
Milt from Low N Slow was the first car on hand to try his way up the driveway…he and his crew took the competition seriously and had their team flags and shit all up in Milt’s Z…
Milt’s license plate was a popular topic of mention at the event…
The judges and Antonio huddling-up and discussing the rules…
Milt and his Garson Deep Racing wheels ready to go…
…Judges ready…
…and….
…back tomorrow with part two of the “So You Think You Can Stance?” coverage!…
Stay tuned and thanks for looking!
“Race Day” at Racer’s Edge Indoor Karting Coverage…
While there was actual racing going on over in Fontana, CA. at the IDRC International Finals, I was over in the city of Burbank for “Race Day”. There was certainly racing going on over here as well, but of the go-kart racing variety. This small show/meet was held inside the compound of an indoor kart racing facility known as “Racer’s Edge”. Norman, who is also the head of local Socal car crew AS1, set-up this entire event and all the homies as well as other fellow enthusiasts came out to show their support. The lot didn’t seem very large but they were still able to squeeze in a pretty large amount of vehicles. Norman and crew had expected more cars and were planning to use every possible open space to fill it with a car but the fire marshall notified them that they wouldn’t be able to house as many cars as they could due to fire code. It certainly didn’t have too big of an effect on the show though because there was a very good mix of different builds present. Hondas, Nissans, Subarus, you name it, there was probably one in attendance. There were even some very nice old school rides present, which is always a pleasant surprise. One of the coolest things about this show was that people were also able to go karting inside for a discounted rate. Being able to race and watch others race inside also provided shade from the intense heat outside. I don’t really know what’s going on with this weather, especially in mid-late October. There’s no reason why it should be getting this hot. All in all, it was a good show. Big Mike, DPK David, and some of the other homies ended up spending a lot of their time there judging the non-Honda categories and some of the other guys showed up just to hang out. May and I arrived around 2pm and I began snapping away at whatever I saw…enjoy the photos and thanks to Norman for organizing this event…
This was one of the first cars I spotted when I got to the show…Pretty cool looking MK5 GTI on air and Bentley wheels…Kinda liked this photo so I included a Larger Version (1200×800)
Integras were abundant at “Race Day”…
I thought this MX-5 Miata on TE37s was interesting…
Classic look for a DC2…R front end conversion, R wing, Spoon SW388s…
Another good looking DC2…this one with clear housing JDM Integra headlights, front end, and Mugen MF10Ls….
Always been a big fan of this 4-door Integra…I like the simplicity of it and the contrast of the red Bride interior on the white…
The engine bay is very traditional…no crazy tuck or shave or anything…still retains ABS, air conditioning, stock battery location, etc…
Very nice interior…
Teddy’s white EK with his newly-mounted First Molding front lip…
This coupe was pretty clean…the engine bay is pretty random and I can’t say I’m really a big fan of that whole style but I can appreciate the amount of labor involved in creating it…
The bay was so busy I almost didn’t notice the ITBs…
This Corolla was really clean…I didn’t get a chance to see what was under the hood but the outside looked pretty mint. Even the Watanabe wheels looked like they were brand new straight out of the box and on the car with original center caps and everything…
Another AE86, this one on SSR Longchamps…
Here’s another old school Corolla…this chassis is the one that preceded the AE86 chassis….
Loved this RPS13 hatchback on SSR Professor SP3s and Top Secret aero…
Sil80 on SSR Professor SP1s…
Legacy Wagon on Blitz Technospeed Z1…it was so hot that the tires were sweating, haha…
Sloppy aka TGIJoseph’s Honda Fit on Spoon wheels…
Clean Subaru STI on polished Volk CE28s…
White EG Civic on what looks to be Mugen sideskirts (could be Wings West), and Spoon Sports-style front lip….949 wheels with caps also and Recaro seats…
4-door Civic on Mugen NR10s…the name of the front lip escapes me right now, but I think it might be a Vision-style carbon fiber EG9 Ferio lip…
This was tucked away in the corner at the show but I thought it was a good look. The blue on blue is not that common with Subaru-owners and it doesn’t hurt that the wheels are aggressively sized Work Meister S1s…
Spotted this RSX at various events in the past…
FA5 Civic on Yokohama Super Advan Racing Ver. 2 wheels…
I walked inside to the karting area and spotted Salem from Phaze 2′s TSX parked inside the track…pretty cool but with the way some of these kids were driving, I would have been a little worried…
One of the interesting things to note about this event was that Racer’s Edge had a separate building inside the parking lot that made it possible for Norman to park some cars inside of and out of the sun. While this was cool for the people inside because they could escape the burning sun, it made for crappier photos…
Here’s a Civic that I’ve been keep an eye on. It has a cool, track-inspired look and the guy actually takes it to the track…It just needs to be painted and it’ll look like a completely different car…
DPK David’s EJ1 coupe…
DPK JP’s Civic…
Crappy photo of Arn’s Integra…looks like he parked next to the fucking sun or something…
Phaze2 Arnel’s 4-door with the lip kit paint-matched….this thing is starting to look better and better…
AS1 Karl’s EM1 Civic on CCWs…
A “photoshoot” that was going on in the middle of the show with one of the girls that was working the Race Day event…
Jose Romo’s Audi A3…
This was pretty interesting/random…authentic right hand drive Datsun Bluebird that was tucked away in the back corner…
Mugen CR-X Pro.2 from GSpot Automotive…
Brian Arias’ Civic that was featured this year in Import Tuner magazine…
Civic from GTS Auto that you should all be pretty familiar with by now…
Arn brought his wife and baby out to hang out at the show for a bit before it ended…this little guy always looks like he’s surprised, haha…
Leon also brought his newborn baby out for the first time…it’s still pretty crazy to think that Leon is a dad now…
Chaba was working the event inside the karting area throughout the day but found some time to come out and hold Leon’s baby… On most other sites, you will see her doing poses and modeling at events at what not…on The Chronicles…YOU WILL SEE HER HOLDING A BABY. Haha…this ain’t “It’sJDMYo!!!” We got models holding babies over here…
Anyways, it was nearing the end of the day so it was time for the awards to be presented…
Norman, the man behind the event, holding up one of the awards…he also does his fair share of holding babies because he’s a father of 12…
DPK David won “Best Honda” and Chaba was happy for him…
DPK JP won “Best Honda without headlights”/”People’s Choice”….
A bunch of other awards were given out too but there was already a photographer on hand to cover that so I just sat back and didn’t do shit the rest of the time…oh I clapped…that should be mentioned I guess…
Group photo with the award winners…Arnel actually won “Best Stance” but he was nowhere to be found so David is holding up the award for him. He was either smoking a cigarette or not caring, or something related to not standing there at that moment…Congrats to all the winners though, smokers or not…
That’s pretty much it. YEAR.THREE is this weekend! Get your cars some what in presentable condition!…
Thanks for looking….
Motion Auto Show 2011 Coverage…Part 3…The Finale…
What’s up everyone, time to close out the third and final installment of the Motion Auto Show 2011 Coverage. Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. I was running around taking care of some everyday shit like getting new tires for my beater as well as doing some product photography for Rywire. Judging how the hits have been lately, it seems as if everyone is happy with the coverage up to this point. Any time you have a combination of cars and girls with their asses hanging out it always makes for good hits…
Umm, not really much else to say about the show…it was definitely one of the best of the year so far but there wasn’t any crazy funny stories going on or anything dramatic. Gonna probably just close this out with the last bit of photos now…enjoy…
This was what I was talking about in part 1 with the girls standing inside the engine bays and shit…In all my years of going to shows, this had to have been a first…Hope it doesn’t become a regular occurrence at events because then you will have girls trying to climb into engine bays at local car meets and outdoor shows and shit where the engines are going to be hot…haha, nothing good will come of that. It’s not like they can just like hop out and shit either. I mean, that leg gets caught in a hot ass exhaust manifold, that shit is DONE…or like a girl with her ass hanging out trying to sit on a valve cover that’s been sitting out in the sun…uh yeaaah…
Ryan’s NSX sitting in the Falken Honda display section…
Ms. Maureen Chen was modeling for Team Hybrid that day but took a moment to walk over to the PASmag model search area…
Playboy mode Julri Waters did the same…
Here she is with Joselyn Cano at the Sony or something or other booth….I’m not sure if that’s really her name either so if you go and Google her name and an old lady with 2 crusty vaginas show up, it’s not my fault…
APR widebody G35 from TWCompetition…
Toyota MR-2 from Team Hybrid…
Lexus LS460, also from Hybrid, with wheels that look too small for it…
Chameleon-ish 350Z…someone should tell the owner that chrome vinyl will fuck your paint up pretty bad if you apply it directly to your car. That’s why I always tell people to put the stickers on the windows and glass instead of on paint…
I don’t know if you guys remember this WRX wagon or not but I did a story on it for Super Street a couple months back (towards the beginning of the year I believe) and it used to be silver. I had no idea he had the car repainted so it was a little surprising to see it at the show… it’s a cool build. Originally meant to be a beater wagon, then he started adding all kinds of shit to it, even customizing Voltex aero pieces to fit on the wagon chassis…
Crappy ass shot of Sheepey’s S2000. I honestly forgot the car was there entirely until Sheepey came up to the booth the hang out. By the time I got over there to get a shot of it, everyone was cleaning up already and the hood was closed…
S14 from Garage Boso…
Saw this really nice Mazda RX-2 towards the back end of the show. I missed out on all these cars at Nisei Showoff so I had to get a shot of it at Motion…
This one looks like it’ll fuck some shit up…
Spotted this NSX during roll-in the night before…the kit itself is really aggressive but I kinda wished he would have gone with more “fitting” wheels…if you know what I mean…Not only in terms of sizing and all but just the style of the wheel in general…
Oh okay, so here is a shot of one of the trophies that were specially designed by Troy Sumitomo from 5Axis for the Motion Auto Show… It’s pretty wild. Like one of those things where if you left it in your living room and then tripped and landed on it, you might rip your neck open…
JonJon’s IS350 from 1-Up…
Charles’ widebody S2000 from 1-Up…
Jose Romo’s Audi A3 on Work VS-XX wheels…
One more shot of Dennis’ STi while they were taking the tent down at the Mizu Cooling Solutions booth…
I think a lot of people slept on this Hyundai at the Motion show. I first saw it at the SEMA show in Vegas last year when it was parked in the Hyundai area in the center hall. You wouldn’t really think much of it, other than the kit and the HRE wheels but when you look at the back of it, you can tell that there’s so much more going on…
This is a crappy photo but if you look into the rear hatch glass, you can see that the motor is actually mounted in the rear…
You can see here how the exhaust is mounted through the rear bumper and how the vent has been added to the rear hatch where the emblem sits…Also notice the vents where the glass runs along the shoulder of the car…pretty sick build…
Abraham’s Civic, absent are the females that were crawling all over/inside it…
Arnel from Phaze2 recently installed a new lip kit to his 4-door….
2GS from Infinit Wheels…
Not really sure how I feel about this new look on Ejay’s DA….I really loved the SSR Super Mesh and I felt that it was the perfect set of wheels for his car. He said he has these on now instead because he doesn’t wanna have to deal with camber and ride height issues anymore…Ehh..I don’t know…
Downstar Frank’s right-hand drive EG on SSR Shumachers with optional center caps…
Top Secret Supra from Auto Concept Elite…
Billy’s HKS-themed IS300…
Mini from Auto Concept Elite…
Another angle of the Auto Concept line-up…
One more shot of the Falken Tire Honda display…
I loved the Motion Auto Show but I was scratching my head when I saw this DA inside the show by the back gate parked next to this stock Mustang…I like, stopped what I was doing just to take this photo…
Here’s something to make up for that last photo…haha…
That was pretty much it for the Motion show. After that I kinda just stood around and chatted with people until the awards ceremony ended and they let the cars out…I didn’t really go to the stage to check out what was going on for the awards because the majority of our guys were not competing that day since they were a part of the Falken Tire display…
Here’s a shot of ATS Angel’s S2000 as I was walking out to the vendor parking lot to pick up my 4Runner…. It took quite a while for me to get back inside with my truck since they wanted all the show cars out first but eventually they just let me in so we packed up the truck, said bye to the Falken Tire staff, and then took off..
Since the Long Beach Convention Center always has strict regulations regarding how much fuel can be in a car that’s parked inside, the guys had to get gas right after they left the venue…
One more shot of Ryan’s NSX while it was posted up at the gas station…
After that we all met up back at the Rywire facilities to drop off the cars, then we met up with the girls at a local Vietnamese food spot to have dinner. We hadn’t really eaten anything the whole day so we grubbed like no tomorrow. Nothing crazy went on once dinner was finished. We just talked and hung out and then everyone went home to get some rest….
That’s a wrap…thanks for looking…
Motion Auto Show 2011 Coverage…Part 2…
Uhhh….possibly….maybe….most likely…NSFW…
Here we go, part 2 of the 2011 Motion Auto Show coverage. Pardon if the coverage and photos seem to be all over the place. As you should know by now from reading PART 1, I was running The Chronicles booth all day and only walked away to take photos whenever I had the opportunity to…
ASM I.S. Design aero on this yellow S2000 that belongs to S2KI member “MaDara”… Good looking S2K, I actually stood here for a good 10 minutes waiting for this one fucking guy to get out of the way so I could take the photo. Guy wasn’t even looking at the car or anything, just standing there like a floating douche…
Edgar Lozoya’s G35…Why I have a rear shot of it and not a front shot I will never know. Probably because someone came up to me and started talking or something, I’m not sure. It’s a nice, clean G though. Not really sure why there’s like a random sticker raked across the trunk but oh well…
8th gen. Civic Si with a FD2 R conversion…
Cyrus Raaga’s Honda S2000…This car has been quite a hit since it started making appearances at all the Socal shows. Apparently he has full carbon ASM doors too on top of everything else that you see…Not really sure how functional the water-cooled turbo set-up is on a street car but it looks cool nonetheless…
Walked over to the PureHotModels booth to see what was crackin’ over there and installed my new Canon see-through lens to test it out on some of the models…It has this auto-focus feature that makes the top layer of clothing disappear, as shown in this photo…
Haha, seriously though…imagine if they actually had something like that? Shit would be pretty cool. I don’t know if you’d want to get past just the first layer of clothing though. If you had it where you could see through the bra and shit, then the titties would look all weird cuz they’re all smashed together…haha, just imagine a set of titties pushed up against a glass but there’s no glass, it’s just floating around and smashed together and shit…one would be pushed higher than the other and it’d look all cock eyed, weird…
Anyways, here’s another shot…I believe her name is Alecia Rabaya…
Varis-kitted Evo X…If I remember correctly, this Evo used to have bronze Volk CE28s on it, which I think is a much better look…
This is the same model that I took a photo of in part 1 when I went off on a tangent talking about how she looked like Rachel Roxxx…As I was walking back to the booth, I snapped this photo of her posing on this Scion…I don’t know if she knows anything about cars or not, but it’s safe to say that this car probably wasn’t her first choice of cars to pose with. At one point the owner asked her to like point at their crew sticker and do like a thumbs-up or some shit, it was totally awkward… I mean, any time a Scion with lambo doors pops up there’s an immediate sense of awkwardness anyway but this was just magnified because there was a group of guys just hawking at this girl point at some Scion crew logo and trying to look like she’s cool with it…You can tell by looking at her expression in this photo that she’s half pretending to be happy and half trying to hide her “I think I might have just smelled a fart” face…
Dennis from Team Hybrid’s STi in the Mizu Cooling Solutions booth…
Mercedes Benz CLS55 AMG from TWCompetition…
Voltex-equipped Evo from Team Hybrid also at the Mizu booth next to Dennis Kongvongsai’s STi…
Alex Doan’s Honda CR-Z…
Honda CR-Z built by Eibach Springs…
This matte clay colored-looking Bentley sat at the DUB booth…
Once I got back to the booth, me and the rest of the guys just sat back and hung out for awhile. A couple people came by to purchase some goods and then this girl who started hanging out at the It’s JDM Yo!!! booth and started doing some posing at the Takeda booth in front of us. Loi and I were just sitting there anyway so I picked up the camera to capture the moment…
It’s like every girl there decided to call the night before to let each other know to have their asses hang out at the Motion Auto Show…
Stopped by the NOS area to pick up another sample…This NOS model’s expression says “This job probably pays well but having to pour hundreds of cans of NOS through this ice sculpture seems a little ridiculous”…The girl on the receiving end is probably thinking, “She’s doing a good job but all this pouring makes me want to urinate…”
As I was leaving the NOS area, I walked by the PureHotModels area again and saw Tracy Linh posing for a photo while holding up some random ass flyer for this guy…I don’t know what the flyer was for and I really don’t advertise for people so I took the liberty of changing it to a photo of me sitting on the shitter and talking on the phone…
Spotted this S2000 on one of my random walks through the show. I really liked the pearl white paint and the contrasting red/orange wheels and cage…I don’t know how I feel about the widened front fenders though and then the rear quarters being stock. It almost looks incomplete that way….Like if you just widened the front half of the car, it almost sort of a front staggered look to it…
Kane Chan’s EJ1 coupe at the DC Sports booth…
R35 GTR with some deep concave wheels…
370Z at the Venaci wheels booth…Never been a real fan of the half carbon front end look…You can also see here that the car was originally blue too with the hinges and the area under the front fenders exposed…
My flash was acting up all day, possibly because of a battery issue, and that’s why this photo of Natalia Marie was ruined…
Didn’t expect to see Julri Waters at the Motion show…1. because I’ve never seen her at any import events before…2. I didn’t really recognize her with clothes on…She’s been in Playboy a couple times in some of their like special edition issues or whatever. I don’t think she was ever a Playmate though. If you Google her name you’ll find plenty of her photos. I’m not down to post up or link any of her Playboy photos because that shit will get me in all kinds of trouble…trust me, she’s all over the web…
Some photo shoot action with Steve Bitanga (I think that’s him) at the PASMag area…
A closer look at some of the vehicles from High End/Auto Concept Elite…these cars took home the majority of the awards at the Motion show…
Liked the front aero and fenders on this Evo X, not really feeling that rear quarter section that much though…The Wedsport wheels are a good look…
Saw Frankstar aka Mexican Zach Efron chatting this young lady up later on in the day…wonder if anything good came out of it…haha…
A couple shots of Gabby Jeanne…
Top Secret Supra…
After taking a look at the Auto Concept Elite cars, I went over to say what’s up to Anthony Do and the Infinit Wheels crew and saw these two girls contorting their bodies to try to fit inside Abraham’s engine bay…
She was probably looking down because her heel was caught inside one of the fins on his radiator or something, haha…
That’s that new import model shit right there, sit on the engine, lay your big ass heels on the radiator support…just be all over the car. This photo is deceiving because there were more girls inside the car. One girl had a titty in between the steering wheel, another girl was standing upside down and her pussy was hanging out of the sunroof…Abraham’s hood is airbrushed and some other girl figured out a way to airbrush herself into his hood…just madness everywhere…one girl like removed one of his seats and then positioned herself in such a way that she looked exactly like his passenger seat…fuck, it was wild…some girl took her pubes and shaved them in a way where it looked like dry carbon fiber and then laid down on top of his Spoon wing and managed to camouflage herself…haha, okay I’ll stop…
Back tomorrow with the final installment of the 2011 Motion Auto Show coverage….
Nisei Showoff 2011 Coverage…Part 5…
Just one more section of Nisei Showoff 2011 coverage after this one. I honestly didn’t even realize I took so many photos until I got home and went through them. Overall I’m happy with it and I think it’s a good representation of what was at the show. My only regret was not taking some more time to look at all the old school Mazdas that were there. There was a whole line-up full of them and I just completely missed them. Ah well, next time. I think I spotted a couple of them at the Motion show and I did snap some pics. In any case, you guys are probably here to see Hondas and shit anyways so all the other non-Honda stuff should be a plus. I just try to capture what please my eye so if you don’t see something that you like on here, I either missed it or we just have differing tastes…
Today we are going to be taking a further look at some of the other cars at the show and at the end I’ll give you some more detailed shots of various engine bays with some details that I really liked. Enjoy and I hope all of you have enjoyed the Nisei Showoff 2011 coverage…Tomorrow will cover the end of the day and stuff like that and there won’t be as much car content….
Always been a fan of Linda’s Toyota Matrix from Team Praxis. I think this car often gets overlooked and doesn’t get enough credit simply because it’s not a very popular platform. It’s definitely a top quality build though and it’s nice to have seen it progress to this point…
Linda’s VIP Modular wheels…
TRD Supercharger and custom wire-tuck and harness via Rywire.com…
Jay’s TL on Work Varianza T1s…
Michael Johnson’s 1st gen. Acura TL…
Joey’s Scion tC on Jline wheels…
Robert’s Civic with a custom front end adapted from a Mugen-style RSX front bumper…
Jared checking out some wheels at the Infinit Wheels booth…
DPK David once again…
Kane Chan’s girl Annie’s DC2 Integra on white Advan RGs…
Another shot of Parnell’s DA…
1st gen. Toyota Celica…
Mark II Toyota Celica Supra….
It was cool to see all the old school Toyotas parked along this row with a brand new Lexus LF-A in the middle to show off all the different generations of Toyota sports cars…
Wald IS-F…
Dennis Kongvongsai’s Subaru STi representing Team Hybrid…
350Z also from Team Hybrid…good looking car but I do feel like vinyl roll calls along the side of the door are a bit tacky these days…
Really liked this Miata on SSR MK2 wheels with the original caps…The custom rag top over the cage was a really cool idea…
Always see this hatchback from GTS at every show. At Nisei he ended up placing in the Honda category as well I believe…
This EF is always in immaculate condition and was recently in Honda Tuning magazine a couple months ago…
Always been a fan of the Lexus RX chassis. I’ve never seen this one before but it was definitely a pleasant surprise… There was an EK next to this car that I really liked too but there was this hoard of people around it and I could’t wait very long for them to move out of the way for a photo since I had to go back and clean up…
Charles from 1-Up x Its JDM Yo!!!’s Honda S2000…
Andrew Lim’s gold Supra…
Andrew’s brother Jason’s IS300 and JonJon’s IS350…
Old school Skyline GT-R…
Jose Romo’s Audi A4…
Lowfat Pie attempting to sexually assault Jared in The Chronicles booth…
Gonna close it out today with some engine bays like I mentioned at the top…
Arn Reyes’ white on white on white engine bay in his DC2…
A couple more shots of Sheepey’s turbo set-up since I saw some photos over the weekend of a particular S2000 owner on the east coast who is basically copying Alex’s exact turbo set-up…You’re welcome for the shots… If you guys are wondering who it is…think of a S2K out there that looks almost identical to ATS Angel’s S2000…haha…
Mike Schietroma’s bay with a Spoon Sports valve cover signed by Ichishima Tatsuru…
Ryan Der’s new white valve cover and coil over plug set-up…I love the blue beauty washers that are used throughout the car, from the interior to the bay all the way to his ignition coils…
Chris Sakai’s wrinkle black-themed bay…
…his breather and catch can set-up…
…and his custom Trick Flow fuel set-up…Note the hardware and the spacers used for fuel pressure regulator position in relation to how the fuel filter is mounted…all very minor touches that add up to a great overall bay…
Custom teal powder-coated horns for Anh’s individual throttle bodies…
Closing it out today with a shot of ATS Angel’s matte black TE37s and blue Project Mu brakes…
That’ll be all for today. Back with the final installment of the Nisei Showoff 2011 coverage tomorrow…
Nisei Showoff 2011 Coverage…Part 4…
Damn, it’s a rare occasion when I literally have too many things to post up. There are times when I’ll be up all night trying to figure out what to post here on The Chronicles but likely we have this 3-week block where we had a huge event each weekend. I still have a couple Nisei Showoff 2011 photos to post up and I don’t think I’d be doing my own work justice if I just decided to throw them out and move onto the Motion Auto Show coverage. The Motion show was pretty crazy, when I do get to those photos later on in the week I’m sure you guys will enjoy the coverage. Nisei was a totally different event though; more heavily focused on automobiles while Motion had it’s share of cars, but there were literally flocks and flocks of models EVERYWHERE. The coverage will reflect that as well so be prepared to have an extra browser with ESPN.com open or some shit so you can switch back and forth quickly, haha. Anyways, today we will be moving on with the Nisei Showoff 2011 coverage and taking a closer look at certain builds while seeing other vehicles that were at the show. Special thanks to the people that helped out at the booth that day and a huge shout-out and thank you to May for making everyone refreshing drinks to help cool all of us down during that hot ass day….with that said, let’s move on…
Parnell’s DA with the intercooler tucked away nicely behind his Mugen front bumper…
I really liked this photo that I took of Danny’s coupe…It’s so good to see this car out and about again and all of the major events, seeing that he had so much trouble with getting the car completed in year’s past…
Mike’s BYS front bumper and Jeff Campbell’s stealthy flat black intercooler with a slight hint of intake filter…
Peter and Theresa’s LS14…I believe this car won an award in the Nissan class in all 3 shows in August…
This LS430 looked a lot like Freddie from AutoFashion’s old Junction Produce LS430…
Now we will take a look at some of the cars that were in the Infinit Wheels section…
GS with what I believe is a TTE front lip…
Abraham’s Honda Tuning magazine-featured Civic…
A couple of AE86s in the Infinit area…
A ongoing project on display with Infinit Wheels. Anthony Do, who runs Infinit, was telling me that the owner is saving up for some bodywork and fresh paint. It should be pretty nice when it’s all said and done…
Phaze2 Arnel had his 4-door Civic on display… The very next week at the Motion Auto Show, he debuted his Wings West lip kit…
S2000 on CCWs…
CR-X with a Mugen kit and Mugen MR-5s…
I really liked this red S13 coupe. Panasport G7s aren’t wheels you see all that often and neither is an S13 with a nicely tucked bay…
Drift-spec S13/S15 mash-up…
PG+K Frank-Star’s EG…
Arn Reyes’ Mini on SSR mesh wheels…
Now we are going to take a more detailed look at the “famous EG” aka ICB Matt’s Civic, built by the late “JDM Jon” Tanji and Chad Costelo, which has stood the test of time since it was assembled in the early half of the 2000s…
That “NA is BEST” decal was a huge hit back in the days and was created by none other than Rodrez, who back then had a successful clothing line along with these stickers. Who knew that one day he would eventually become the head of Honda Tuning magazine…
A-Sport individual throttle bodies were one of probably three choices Honda guys had back then. The others were TODA Racing and TWM Induction…Today, enthusiasts have more options now from companies like Jenvey and Kinsler. Tuning was also different back in the days. Guys would either run Hondata systems or tune their ITB set-ups on APEX’i Power FC….Nowadays of course, AEM EMS systems are common place and offer more tune ability…
JASMA-approved Mugen header…JASMA is another name that you don’t hear of nowadays. A lot of guys have custom headers or units from Bisimoto, Hytech, Skunk2, or ANR…Back then you had limited options from American companies like DC Sports, or you looked to Japan for a header from GReddy, Mugen, or other Japanese companies, and they came with a hefty-price-tag and not so great horsepower gains…They had to be “JASMA-approved” in Japan, which was a certification from the Japanese Automotive Sports Muffler Association (JASMA) that meant they were okay for Japanese emissions…A lot of people assumed it was a sort of brand or name and never really figured out the true meaning behind it…JASMA didn’t mean shit here in American though and guys would often get busted for having a header that didn’t have a U.S. Carb E.O. number…
Jorge Hernandez’s Civic, which is another great piece of our communities’ rich history…
There was a photo of Kane Chan’s Civic coupe posted on the Honda Tuning Facebook page recently from the Motion show and some ignorant ass kid was trying to talk shit about it not realizing that this car was built probably when his body didn’t even know what puberty was yet…Respect and know the past and who paved the way for you kids…
Friends and homies chillin inside The Chronicles booth…From left to right…Ryan Der, Fred Chapman, Big Mike, DPK Darryl, DPK Jared, and Maybelyn…
Saw this wild ass Chrysler dipping through the streets of L.A., right outside of the show. Dude saw us staring and started hitting the switches and all that shit…haha…dude looked like he was asian too, definitely something you don’t see everyday…
Derrick Yee’s supercharged LS2 Pontiac GTO with Aussie-spec Holden Monaro emblems and SSR wheels…
Yellow Civic coupe that I hadn’t seen before on some 15-inch Mugen M7s…
First spotted this 4-door DB Integra at Eibach earlier this year…Love everything about it, from the Bride interior to the Spoon Sports-themed bay…
I found this rather amusing because I haven’t seen lambo-doors and Racing Hart CR wheels in ages…
Really liked this Toyota Starlet… I believe it took home an award at the end of the day as well…
Felipe’s green Civic hatchback that came all the way from Tijuana, Mexico…
Enrique Rosario’s hatchback parked alongside his buddy Alex Colon…
Enrique’s build has come a long way from when I first saw it…He has a nice collection of parts and he doesn’t have a particular theme that he’s strictly devoted to but everything works…
Interesting choice of wheel color on a silver 350Z…
DC2 from Royal Origin on Work Equip 03s….
Closing it out today with a couple shots of Chivas Sotelo’s orange Civic coupe…I still remember the first time I spotted this car after it was painted orange, which was at last year’s Nisei Showoff…In fact, here’s a photo that I took of it last year…
A couple things have been changed on it but it seems like so long ago when I saw this car and he was parked with Team Hybrid…
That’s all for today, back with more tomorrow…
Nisei Showoff 2011 Coverage…Part 2…
Back with part 2 of the Nisei 2011 coverage. Today we will be taking a look at some cars that were in the first two rows of the show where my booth was. I was still hanging out at the booth at the time and didn’t really want to move since the sun was blazing hot. Before the event started, a bunch of us even drove to one of the Japanese markets down the street to buy some nice cold drinks to cool down while we waited for May to finish making her fruit drinks. It was definitely hotter than we expected so it was a good thing we had a canopy to be under. I went out in short spurts to take photos and then quickly ran back under the canopy as to not get burnt, so the photos in the first few sections of the coverage are just of the front area. I didn’t make my way through to see the rest of the show until much later on in the day. Anyways, hopefully today will be drama free in the comments section and everybody can just sit back and enjoy the photos…
A couple people are complaining that I always cover the same shit over and over, so to start it out today, I’m gonna post some photos of cars that I have posted before….
Edgar Loyoza’s purple G35 was one of the cars that I really enjoyed staring at all day. I love the SSR Professor SP3 wheels and the subtle aero…
Ka Wong’s AE86 F20C-powered Corolla has to be, bar none, one of my favorite builds of all time. Everything is executed as close to perfect as it gets and to top it off, Ka is a very nice guy and I always enjoy running into him at events…
His engine bay has a lot of little nice touches. Look at the bolts with the purple beauty washers used in every part of the bay possible, even where the wiper used to be mounted…And as weird as it sounds, a Honda S2000 motor looks like it belongs in an 8-6….
Shooting his Corolla and doing a story on it for Super Street magazine was also one of my favorite shoots. I loved the way the photos came out and it’s cool to see that he brought the plaque out with him to display at Nisei Showoff…
ItsJDMYo!!! and 1-UP crew…
DPK David in the GENERATIONS section…Told this dude to move his car back like 16 times because it was sticking out past everyone else’s cars and he was busy DJing in one of Tony’s booths with his friend…
Sheepey’s S2000 parked in what I call “the ditch”…I had the exact same spot last year and Salem parked there. That groove was so deep that Salem’s TSX looked like it was flipped over on its side when he had his front wheel sitting in the groove. We were kind of joking around that Sheepey would be mad his car was parked right there but it wasn’t intentional. That’s how all the cars lined up and he just so happened to be at that exact spot. I was gonna put my booth there but with 22 cars even, I divided it up evenly down the middle and my booth ended up being 2 car spots down from there…
Sheep’s wild turbo, dump tube, and dual waste gate set-up…
Jared talking to Alex from WheelFlip about his custom M7s…
Big Mike talking to one of the judges, Amy, while she was judging his Prelude for the Honda Class category…
Big Mike’s Prelude on freshly refinished Volk SE37Ks…
A quick look at Jeff Campbell’s engine bay…
It’s crazy to think that the last time this Civic made a public appearance was at the 2006 Eibach Meet…Thanks to ICB Matt for bringing it out for the line-up…
2GS that was parked with Infinit Wheels…I liked how the rear fender was modified but doesn’t look haggered like a lot of other guys who are trying to fit aggressive wheels on their cars…
Really loved this BMW with Japanese Voltex aero and HRE wheels…Very nice mash-up of styles…
Says it all…
Mike G. enjoying one of the drinks that May prepared…
Anh’s loves teal…
Frankstar aka Mexican Zac Efron checking out Sheepey’s bay…
Billy’s IS300 came out once again to collect a best of show trophy. I’m starting to think that this car is untouchable in that class and it’s very deserving of the praise….
Engine bay shot of Sportcar Motion’s newly debuted Civic….
Phaze2 Salem’s TSX was a part of the GENERATIONS line-up. Not only does it have the best TSX components that J’s Racing has to offer, it’s also turned into quite a capable weekend track car, as evidenced by it’s great performance at the Super Street FF Battle 3…
Leon Casino’s CR-X was a late addition to the GENERATIONS line-up. I had contacted him about possibly being a part of it but with his baby due any time now, he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to make it out. He called me at the 11th hour of roll-in and asked if I had a spot for him and we made room. I really wanted him to park with the older guys for the “past” section but that area was filled up and I had a spot up front since Will from Circuit Hero no-showed, and that’s where he ended up…
RC Chacon’s newly debuting EG sedan build. He wasn’t quite finished with it yet, as I stated in part 1, but it made for a perfect fit for the “future” portion of my line-up…Interested to see what else he plans on doing to this Civic. Maybe when the 3-year anniversary meet goes down towards the end of the year, he will make another appearance in it’s finished state…
Always enjoy seeing this GR Subaru STI on Volk TE37SLs… I think I use this exact same line every time I post a photo of this car…haha…
PlusOne Danny’s coupe…
Sheeps and ATS Angel…
RX-8 on BBS wheels…
Vincent Shu’s LS400… He used to have a 2GS and I actually bought my AMEs off of him…
TL on HREs…
As usual Socal car events usually have celebrity appearances from time to time. At the Super Street FF Battle 3 dyno day, we saw an appearance by Birdman. At Nisei…
Richard Attenborough aka the old man from Jurassic Park showed up in period-correct attire in honor of GENERATIONS….haha. Loi spotted him first and I asked him which Jurassic Park movie he liked the most, and he clearly enjoyed the second one the most…
Sam Ip’s new black 8th gen. Civic build, which replaces the white one that he totalled awhile back…The container of parts from Japan he was waiting on didn’t make it to the states in time, but he promises that there are all kinds of new J’s Racing parts in there for his car…Looks promising so far and very different from his previous Spoon Sports theme…
Arn Reyes’s Integra with the Hershey front bumper….
Charles from 1-Up’s widebody S2000…
A bagged and kitted Prius that I saw while walking towards the front gate…
Mike Schietroma’s Civic with BYS front bumper…loving the red Vision seats…
Closing it out with a trio of history-making EGs….if these three cars could talk, man, the stories that they could tell….
That’s all for today, thanks for looking…Oh and sorry that some of the tones are off on some of the photos compared to the others. I edited them at different times and they are from different times of the day but I actually went and organized the photos for once to make sure they were in order of what I was talking about and this happens…yikes…
It’s JDM Yo!!! One-Year Anniversary Super Meet Coverage…Part 1…
Quick Edit… Check out May’s coverage of the 2011 Eibach Honda Meet event here. It’s not really car related so much and more based on our friends and what not but check it out, it’s got even more behind the scenes stuff than I’ve shown you already… click here for that…
What’s up everybody, today we’re going to take a look at part 1 of 2 of my buddy Tony Lee’s first ever It’s JDM Yo!!! Super Meet extravaganza. It’s crazy to think that it’s only been a year since It’sJDMYo.com started up and where it has grown since then. There were a couple people in the past that asked me whether or not I was a little bothered by Tony starting up a blog and my answer from now until then has always been a “No”. This whole competition between blogs is a little stupid anyways. I mean, these sites that we do are based merely on our own opinions and views. If someone decides to start one up, would you really see it as “competition”? I don’t think so. If anything, Tony’s demographic is totally different from mine anyhow so even if it were a “competition”, we wouldn’t be in the same genre. What I do here is provide you guys a indepth look at the west coast Honda community and Tony’s focus has always been more about the models with some car stuff sprinkled in there. Our sites probably compliment each other more than they compete with eachother. I provide more of the car shit and he provides the females and their goodies for all to see. I can dig it; some guys like cars more at events and some guys like to stare at girls more, with these two sites combined, it’s the best of both worlds. For the female audience, some girls will like this site because they can look at Hondas and some girls will go to Tony’s site and feel self-conscious and develop long drawn insecurities about themselves, haha. Or they will just talk shit about the girls they see and move on, because girls love doing that shit…Either way, it provides a consistent flow of traffic to both sites and that’s a good thing.
With everything said, Tony has always been a great friend to me personally. I’ve known the guy probably for close to ten years now so I support anything that he does. He got a crappy tattoo one time and I think I yelled at him but I support his horrible decision, haha. I like to think that I’ve done my part to help his site grow to what it is today. Every little bit helps and one of my most clicked on links all time is the link to his site. I also help him out whenever I can with some photography work to ensure that he has good content flowing through the site. I can’t even remember all the things that Tony has done for me over time. The guy is truly remarkable as a human being and he often doesn’t get enough credit for what he does for everyone around him. Years ago, I remember I came up to Los Angeles when I was still living in San Diego to hang out with some of my friends from my old crew that Tony and I were in. I decided to stay the night because there was something important going on the next day where I had to leave my car up in L.A. and Tony actually drove me all the way back to San Diego in the middle of the night just so I could get a change of clothes. It’s shit like that that really shows you how good of a guy he is. For his one-year anniversary meet, he even went as far as to give me my own hall where I could basically do whatever I wanted. We knew that it was going to get pretty crowded that day with all the cars coming but he didn’t hesitate to give me an entire hall, not even knowing if I had enough cars to fill up the building…
The meet was a shining success. Everyone that contributed was actually a little worried that there wouldn’t be enough parking and that cars would end up blocking the streets and getting the meet shut down. Luckily for Tony, he had a good group of helpers and everything worked itself out. It was definitely crowded but the cops came by and just let us continue what we were doing without any problems. I almost wouldn’t even consider this a meet. The way it was laid out with a DJ in every building, food trucks, import models, and the sheer number of cars, Tony’s meet was more of a full blown FREE car show. I wish I could have gone throughout every single building and snapped a photo of every car there but it was just impossible. Foot traffic was heavy all day, plus there were times when I had to watch my own booth with May so it made it difficult to have time to get every car that was there. I apologize for the first couple pics too because they are straight garbage, haha. I was running around everywhere and the times when I was trying to take a photo, they came out crappy because the building wasn’t very well lit and I didn’t make the proper adjustments to my camera to get a better shot. Plus, as you all know, I have the terrible shakes so any time there is low light, like Wekfest or this meet for example, the pics came out like hot trash…
Only two parts to this meet coverage. It consists of things that I observed and some cars that caught my eye. That and the usual homies cars and what not. Enjoy and thank you to Tony once again for hosting an incredible event….
Anytime I have a booth, May always goes out of her way to help me run it as well as make delicious baked goods for the event. At this particular event, she made Chronicles cup cakes and they were a hit as usual…
I had shirts for sale like usual and I cut a small amount of stickers to sell that day. I won’t be doing another booth until Nisei Showoff so anything I made at Tony’s meet would just be an added plus. I’ve just been a little worn down and burned out lately by all that is going on so running a booth is now not very high on my priorities list…
I also invited Rodrez and Tes out to have a booth inside my hall but they too were a little burned out by doing the booth thing so they just brought out whatever was leftover from the Eibach Honda Meet to sell in my booth…
May was thirsty from eating her breakfast and needed some water so I decided to be a dumbass and not ask anyone around me if they had waters or not. Salem even left a cooler inside my booth filled with all kinds of drinks but of course, I didn’t ask him and decided to venture off for what seemed like 45 minutes just to buy water at a meet where apparently no one was selling water. The only place that I ended up finding bottled water at was at the Dogzilla truck and the line was long as hell. Reza was already in line though so he let me cut so that I could buy water. I don’t know why the other food trucks decided to not sell water that day but I did snap a photo of this Outback while I was running around…
There was a point during the morning where I had to go get my own car so I left to do that while everyone figured out how they wanted to park and arrange the cars. David was at the venue the night before so he had already figured out his side but Mikeyyyy had to arrange all the Phaze2 cars once they finally arrived. I was pretty happy with the layout, I thought this was kind of cool how Noel had his Corolla parked next to Henry’s old school Corolla. Kind of interesting to have that generational bridge, if you catch my drift…
Not really sure what was going on here but I guess the guys were trying to figure out how many dudes they could fit under one umbrella…
Tony had a raffle where all the money went to Big Abe, since his daughter tragically passed at birth, so we had raffle tickets for sale all day at The Chronicles booth. Every hour we did a drawing to raffle off prizes provided by the vendors that day. Tony was running around everywhere so he put Big Mike and NOS model Natalia Marie in charge of handling all raffling duties…
Having the raffle inside my hall proved to be a poor decision since no one knew it was going on inside so they eventually moved it outside…
Natalia Marie was supposed to have a photographer that followed her around everywhere but he was no where to be found at that moment so I ended up being the guy to take photos with her and the winners of the raffle. I did a shitty job of course and only got this one photo of this guy who won some lug nuts. Natalia Marie’s favorite line of the day was “Look I am holding your nuts”…true story. Oh and she felt that if you didn’t win the raffle drawing you were the worst human being on earth so she berated everyone around who had raffle tickets and didn’t get their number called. She did an amazing job that day. People don’t give a shit what you say to them as long as you are Natalia Marie…she even made fun of some guy who walked by and announced to the crowd that the guy was wearing daisy dukes and everyone had a good laugh while the dude ran away crying in shame…Again, she did an amazing job. If you want her to host your birthday parties or MC your wedding, be sure to contact Tony so that we can knock that out for you…
Reza came up to me and was like “hey bro, can you take a shitty blurry ass picture of me and Natalia Marie while I rub her lower back and look unhappy to be there?” I agreed and everything went according to plan…
As soon as I turned around, Mikeyyyy said “hey can you take a super blurry ass picture of a momentous occasion where we finally get all the original members of Phaze2 together for one time only?” And this was the result…
Here’s a somewhat better photo of ATS Jay’s CR-X engine bay…
Phaze2 Hubert and his STI, last time his car was in this building was the day he curbed the shit out of his wheels…that’s all repaired now and the car looks better than ever with the new foglights installed…
A shot of my Q45 parked in front of my booth and the DJ…
Phaze2 Henry making a rare appearance after finally getting his Corolla fixed…
Some of the ATS cars were still in town since Wekfest LA is coming up so we thought it would be a cool idea to bring them out to Tony’s meet…
Chris Sakai’s engine bay…Probably tired of seeing it now after all that Eibach coverage I bombarded you with but oh well…haha…
Walked outside for a bit and saw these three cars from team “Jock Me”….Miata was cool but the S2000s are well, not really all that “jockable”…Props for their enthusiasm though with the whole crew name and all…
This Supra was one of my favorite cars at this meet. Love everything about it… I wish I could have taken a better picture of it but you know how that goes….
Love JonJon’s IS300…he’s got some sick stuff for it that didn’t get done in time but the next time I see it, I’ll be sure to get some shots of it for you guys….Just imagine…Neo-chrome Endless brakes…
Walked back into my building and got a pic of the Honda Tuning magazine CR-Z…
ATS Jay’s CR-X…
Mikeyyyy invited fellow bB Squad member Krist to come out and I finally got to take a look at the Rocket Bunny kit in person for the first time…It’s a cool kit, the front lip is a little different and doesn’t really flow that well with the rest of the car but Rocket Bunny is known to have over the top aero like this…
Timmy is the homie and I always enjoy seeing his Accord wagon. The dude has great tastes in mods and cars in general so I decided to honor him with this shitty picture…
HeyMikeyyyy’s xB…
I journeyed off into the other buildings and ran into the Infinit Wheels guys. Here is Abraham’s Civic which apparently is sweating tire shine on to the floor…haha…
Anthony’s CR-X…
Ejay’s DA Integra…
Bisimoto CR-Z…
C10 Nissan Skyline GT-R…
Tjin Edition aLL sTaR Camaro now sans Wraptivo flat black wrap with flames….thank goodness… 
Peter and Theresa Vong’s LS1-swapped S14 that I recently shot for Super Street magazine. Definitely a cool build that you guys should check out….
Headed back over to the booth to hang out and took this photo of May and LFP aka Low Fat Pie…
I decided that it was a futile attempt to take pics with my terrible shakes so I busted out the tripod like Rodrez so that I could finally get some decent photos…Here’s DPK David’s coupe…
Big Mike’s Prelude of course…
Honda Tuning magazine head editor Rodrez…
ATS Anh’s Type R…
ATS Cre18 aka Chris Sakai’s EK…
Rywire CR-X…
May and Tes manning The Chronicles booth….Big thanks to the two of them for taking care of my booth throughout the day…
Gonna close it out for today with a couple shots of Chivas’ Civic coupe…
Oh and this…Rodrez made a short video of the event so take a look at that before you go…It’s pretty much all the cars that were inside The Chronicles hall and a much clearer view of some cars that I took crappy pictures of above…
Back this weekend with Part 2 of 2 of the It’sJDMYo!!! One-Year Anniversary Meet coverage…thanks for looking….
