“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!
Autocon 2011 Coverage…Part 4…The Conclusion…
Time to close out the Autocon 2011 coverage with a bang…Today we will be taking a look at the remaining cars of the event. I felt that Autocon was a great success and with a more knowledgeable and more organized staff, it’ll be even better in 2012. With that said, let’s get to the photos…
In case you missed the previous parts, here are the links that will take you them…
If Ly Say with the red TSX owned a Subaru STI, I imagine it would look exactly like this one from Royal Origin because they both share a similar color and wheel set-up…it’s definitely a good look…
Mazda 3 from Royal Origin on Rotiform TMBs…
Another Mazda 3 from Royal Origin, this one with Work Emitz wheels and fender flares…
Gerald Reyes’ Acura Integra on Work Equip 03…
Chivas’ sunburst orange EM1 on Sprint Hart CP-R…
White 2nd gen. IS on Junction Produce Scaras…
Keychain aka Keith from It’s JDM Yo!!! recently got his lip kit on his Accord sedan repainted and the car is looking fresh…
FG2 Civic coupe on Work Equips…
Instant Gentleman S14 coupe with MMR wheels…
Yellow 1st gen. Lexus IS on Rotiform NUE…
Black 2GS with way too much fitment…fenders just look absolutely haggered…fucking terrible looking…Just.Awful…
This LS430 on the other hand, looks exceptionally good…
S13 convertible on some AME Tracers with a gold roll bar and pink steering wheel…
Liked the cement grey tone on this BMW…
Liberty Walk Lamborghini Murcielago from Japan…
Brandon Burke’s slammed and static S13 coupe on SSR Professor SP1…
A pair of Subaru Legacy wagons…
Lloyd Morales’ Vertex-kitted Kouki S14 coupe…
Loved the color combo and the red overall on this Hyundai Genesis…They’re just great looking cars in general just slammed on some wheels…
White on black two-tone Chevy Camaro on Rotiform wheels…
Tjin Edition Ford Explorer….
Tjin Edition Chevy Camaro…
Tjin Edition Chevy Cruz…
Clean BB6 Prelude with gold Volk Racing CE28Ns…
Ranz Motorsports Mazda RX-4 with 2JZ-GE swap and retro-fitted Lexus IS300 dashboard… To read more on this wild RX-4, click here…. or here….
Ranz Motorsports 1st gen. Toyota Celica aka “The Dark Knight” featuring a Honda S2000 F20C powerplant…To read more about this build, click here….
Ernie’s timeless 1st gen. Acura Integra on classic SSR EX-C Neo…
Porsche Panamera representing Heavy Hitters on DPE wheels…
G-Power twin-supercharged yellow BMW M5 on HRE wheels aka “Sabine”…Many non-BMW guys like me don’t know much about this car but there’s actually quite a bit of extensive work done to this thing. Even the rear quarters have been widened but the lines are so subtle, it’s hard to notice…check out the build-thread here, trust me, it’s pretty sick…
Custom widebody BMW M5 by Ranz Motorsports aka “Gunther”….This Lamborghini-white M5 features a catalog of Radenergie parts and wheels and rocks 355-series tires in the rear…nuts…if you want more info on “Gunther”, peep it here…
Chevy Camaro with a Extreme Dimensions kit, Vortech-supercharged on USW forged wheels…didn’t even have to Google shit to figure that out like the Beemers above…haha…
Ryan Deguzman’s FD3S RX-7….
R-Rydes’ custom widebody G35 with Kenstyle aero, Vortech-supercharged, and 21-inch Modsport S1 3-piece forged wheels…
Varis-kitted EVO on AME Tracers…I think this might be the first time I’ve ever been to an event where there was more than one set of AME Tracers…One of the most slept on wheels EVER…
No idea who this is but I was more concerned with what the dude behind her was up to…just mildly creepy looking, that’s all…
FC3S RX-7 from the crew “Nuisance”…they were parked to some other crew that called themselves “Aminorannoyance”…
I really wanted to get a closer look at this EVO since it looked like it had a nice collection of parts on it, but I couldn’t get close enough since all the cars in this section were invading eachother’s personal space…
After Jamarri Whiteside from Auto Concept Elite defeated the Chrysler 300Camaro at “Ye Old Hot Import Nights in LA Conventionshire”, a new challenger appeared for the next duel, in the mystical purple form of a Chevy Malibu with a Cadillac CTS-V front end…The epic battle was Swift and Elite….in the end, I have no idea who won because it was cold as shit and I left early…
JonJon’s supercharged VIP IS350 on WED’s Kranze Vishunu…
One more shot of Michael Mao’s Acura NSX on TE37s…
…as well as another shot of Wilson’s Carlsson E-Class Benz on BBS wheels…
A couple more of Big Mike’s Prelude and its new look…
Andrew Lim’s beautifully-built Toyota Supra on DPE wheels…
Gonna close out the Autocon 2011 coverage with a shot of Alisa Ali Marie posing next to Andrew’s gold Supra…
Well, that’s about it…4 parts, over 200 photos,…it doesn’t get any more in-depth than that…Hope you guys enjoyed it… Thanks for looking. Make sure to check out the previous three parts if you missed them…
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…
Hot Import Nights 2011 Coverage…Part 3 of 3…
Time to close out the 2011 Hot Import Nights coverage, brought to you by the one and only stickydiljoe.com….
By this time, the show was about to begin and a majority of the lights were turned off so spectators could be blinded by strobe lights and camera flashes. It was probably around 3:30pm at this point and all the exhibitors were finishing up their displays and the models were strolling into the model showcase area. Today we will be taking a look at the final car shots I took, and the rest are either of models or random things that I saw while I was walking around. I spent a majority of the time just hanging out inside the It’s JDM Yo!!! booth but there were spurts when I got bored and walked around to see what sort of debauchery was happening. I went to the show super early to avoid the crowd and shoot, but my original plan was to leave around 6:30-7pm to pick up May from the airport. She had flown out to Dallas, TX for work and her flight was supposed to come in before 8. I found out later that evening that her flight was delayed in Phoenix so I stayed at the show much longer than I anticipated. There was no point in going home because the LA Convention Center was pretty close to the airport, so I just stuck around. I think I ended up staying until around 9:30 or so. I got there at 2:30 that day so being at HIN for 7 hours was more than enough for me. By the time I left I lost hearing in one ear and had no idea where I had parked earlier in the day. The back exit was closed off so I walked out of the front gate, got lost for another 30 minutes, and eventually stumbled upon my parking spot. Anyways, on with the photos…
I don’t know if you guys are viewing these photos from your work and I don’t know how strict your work is about this stuff, but there are some photos at the end of women that are scantily-clad. I’ll warn you guys one more time before I start rolling out those photos but you’ve been warned, haha…
Now let’s move forth with photos…
I love everything about Ryan Deguzman’s ’93 FD3S RX-7…From the paint to the wheels, engine bay, audio, and everything, it’s executed to perfection…
Every time I see that yellow FD, I know that Ka Wong’s AE86 Corolla isn’t too far behind. These guys are always parked together at events so I knew Ka’s Corolla is only a couple steps away…His 86 is definitely one of my favorite builds of all time. It’s just so well done with great attention to even the smallest of details…
Ka Wong saw me passing by so he walked over to say what’s up to me. He asked me if I had a chance to check out his new audio set-up and walked me over to the rear hatch of his Corolla. I don’t know why I didn’t notice that his trunk was open when I was getting a shot of the exterior before. He didn’t have audio before so it should have clicked right away in my brain that he probably had something new. As you can see above, the audio set-up flows very well with the rest of the car and isn’t wild with all kinds of fiberglass everywhere. The custom enclosure still follows the straight lines of the older Hachi-Roku…Well done sir…
Flared-out TSX with Mugen front bumper and SSR Professor SP1s in SBC finish…
Another shot of this clean FC3s that I posted up in part one of the HIN 2011 coverage. Great looking build overall, very simple, and everything follows his two-tone white/black theme. The interesting thing about it is the engine bay though…
…because the owner decided to paint the bay purple. There could be a possibility that this car may have been originally this color, but it’s unlikely since the paint looks pretty clean in the bay like it had been re-sprayed. It’s definitely not a bad look but cause he has other purple accents in the bay to match but if I didn’t tell you that this was the engine bay of the FC above, you would almost think that it was a different car altogether. Execution is impressive though, regardless of the purple bay….I’m a fan…Especially considering all the junk-ass cars that were at HIN, this one was one of the cleanest by far…
Yellow widebody EVO X posted up next to some random Dubbed-out Escalade…
I found two things interesting about this EVO X….one, being the random pube near the bottom of the gas door, and two, the AeroCatch hood pin on the gas door itself…I’ve never seen one of these used on a gas lid so I’m lead to believe that it’s there because maybe the lid doesn’t latch anymore after the widebody was done. My initial thought was that it’s used to lock the door but there’s no lock on the AeroCatch unit itself so it couldn’t be that….Maybe the owner lives in the bad area where they steal gas or something, haha, I don’t know…the combination of the hood pin and the lone pube serves as a deterrent to gas thieves…
This Scion xA should have come with an epileptic seizure warning sign but it made for some cool photos…
S2000 on white Work VS-XX…
Junction Produce LS430 from BP VIP…
GS430 also from BP….
Austin aka Amoney47′s Y33 Q45 on VIP Modular wheels…
BB6 Prelude on some step-lipped Work Equip wheels… I can’t wait to get my Equips back and throw them on my car…
Karl’s EM2 Civic on CCWs posted at the Fatlace showcase area…
Jon Jon’s IS350 that served as the booth display vehicle for It’s JDM Yo!!!…His feature in Performance Auto Sound magazine just dropped this month so make sure to pick that up and check out this build…
Oh this was fucking random as hell. I was staring at this Scion tC on 26′s or whatever with the Tjin brothers and we spotted this female half-torso thing sitting under the chassis…Crazy but a cool idea I guess, haha. I like how dude hold mirrors everywhere just so you could see all the random things going on under the car…
This was my view for the majority of the evening. Natalia Marie hadn’t shown up yet so we just hung out at the booth… Here you can see Keith and Gilbert from It’s JDM Yo!!! soaking up the club-like ambiance of HIN 2011…Tony had a pretty elaborate display for his booth. He brought out lighting and everything as you can see from this photo…The booth was very well-lit throughout the night so many were probably left wondering why there was a bunch of dudes sitting in a booth meant for models….
Okay, so this is the point in the coverage that may or may not be “safe for work” for you guys. I don’t know what you guys do for a living but if it’s not okay to look at scantily-clad women at your job, you should probably close this browser now and resume viewing when you get home…
You’ve been warned…
I really have absolutely no idea who a majority of these girls are, but thanks to Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!! and the Autocon 2011 model line-up, I was able to match up a lot of faces to names. If I for whatever reason get your name wrong, it’s probably because I don’t know who you are…Ready?…
Stacie Li…
Michelle Sanchez modeling for Fatlace….
Holly Lee and Tracy Linh…
Lily Wang…
Raquel Estrella…
I am unsure of her name but she was a part of the Capistran swimsuit showcase…
Brian Filoteo from Auto Concept Elite with his fancy purse…
Sherry Tee…
Cara Skye modeling for Auto Concept Elite…
Veronica LaVery…looking angry and then slightly less angry…
Another shot of Michelle Sanchez after Yogi from Fatlace hooked me up with some stickers…
Big Mike and Sloppy…
Neil Tjin showing his mechanical prowess by not being able to remove spark plugs from a display cylinder head in the UTI booth…
Ali Marie with a hoodie of herself…
A little while later, Natalia Marie showed up at the It’s JDM Yo!!! booth and the whole outlook of the booth changed. Before, it was just us hanging out there looking all sad and shit and after Natalia showed up, the booth was crackin’ with all kinds of pervos…
Emerging from the darkness of HIN was the creepiest perv of all… Do you guys remember this photo, where I snapped this shot of an old man doing a jerking motion to good ol’ Titla McBoob?…I guess he is quite the import model/asian girl fanatic and attends all these shows to spread his creepiness…I shall call him…. “Old Man McJerkin”….There was one very distinct difference at HIN that I noticed right away when the models starting showing up. You have your car enthusiasts, and then you have the dudes that follow the import models everywhere they go and are not into cars whatsoever…
Old Man McJerkin’ doing the thumb-up stroke while posing with Natalia Marie…
Ela Pasion and Nikita Penalosa came by to say hi to Tony…
This photo was not conveniently cropped…
Another shot of Stacie Li…
Oh these are cool…. If you guys have an iPhone 4/4S, make sure to head over to the It’s JDM Yo!!! storefront to pick up one of these cases featuring some of your favorite models. What was really nice of Tony to do was to include The Chronicles logo on the cases that feature images that I shot for them. So if you grab one of these, not only are you supporting It’s JDM Yo!! and the models, but also showing your support for The Chronicles… peep them here and buy a couple, they make great stocking stuffers…
By this time, it was already 9pm or so and I had to pack up and take off to the airport to pick up May. The show was still pretty busy and there was a line to enter as I left…
Before I took off, I made sure to get a shot of Natalia Marie at the booth…She’s a cool chick. During some moments when it wasn’t stupid crowded at the booth, she was talking to all of us about her previous car show experiences as well as stuff that was going on with her regular everyday life. Very down to Earth girl and it was cool that she was there to help Tony out…
Natalia Marie noticed the over-usage of new import models that were trying to dress like Lady Gaga and it infuriated her, so she Hulked out and started smashing shit. I wanted no part of it, so I left…
That’s a wrap on HIN 2011. It was an interesting experience no doubt, would I go every year? Ehhh…
Thanks for looking…
Hot Import Nights 2011 Coverage…Part 1…
I’m sure all of you have heard that Hot Import Nights is making a return to our beloved import automotive community. Some were very skeptical about it’s comeback because the last couple years that it was around, it just wasn’t the same anymore. Many of the new generation won’t understand, but HIN was once the top tier car show to attend in the early half of the 2000s. Back then, you looked forward to two events every year, Import Showoff and Hot Import Nights. HIN was so huge back then and were making so much money, that they even tried to buy the Showoff series at one point, but Ken Myoshi turned them down because he wanted to keep the show grassroots. It turned out to be a good decision because inevitably, HIN was sold itself and the whole show just changed and shifted another direction. The new owners didn’t want to do the shows indoors anymore in an attempt to save some money and it somehow hooked up with the NOPI series which was the worst fucking idea EVER. Now, apparently, the original owners of the HIN brand have brought it back and are hoping to bring the show back to it’s top tier status…
This past weekend’s HIN event was held in the venue that helped make the show huge back in the day; the Los Angeles Convention Center. Maybe by bringing the show back here, it’ll conjure up the same excitement that enthusiasts once had for the event. What they didn’t mention to people was that the show wouldn’t be held in the larger hall where the once epic Hot Import Nights show called home…it was in the adjacent smaller building next to it. I was honestly a little surprised to hear that it was back at the Convention Center myself, because renting out a venue of that magnitude is not cheap at all, by any means. Plus they get a chunk of your gate, insurance, etc., etc… When I arrived the night of roll-in and Tony told me that it wasn’t in the larger hall, it made more sense to me. They dubbed this show “The Return”….as in Hot Import Nights “return” to prominence… Unfortunately, in my opinion, it was more of a “return” like if you were returning a DVD at the videostore. It’s loud, crowded, and you just want to get out of there as soon as you can. I’ve been in the car show scene since the late ’90s so I am very familiar with Hot Import Nights. I was there at the peak of it’s popularity when it was so crowded inside the Convention Center that you could barely walk or breathe. Nevermind trying to take photos because there was constantly people walking in front of you and it was so dark in there that you couldn’t even see the cars. It was a massive….they had concerts with major recording artists and it was the talk of our industry. “The Return” served as a nice reminder of how HIN once was….that is, until you walked through the doors into the actual event. It’s just not the same anymore. It’s called Hot “Import” Nights but line-up of cars were everything but imports and a chunk of the cars were DUB-style, luxury vehicles or high-end exotics. I understand you want to bring these type of cars into the events because they have money and lots of it, but if you want to bring the show back to it’s roots, you have to bring back the cars that people came to see….IMPORTS. I didn’t really expect there to be a big turn-out of Japanese cars because I’ve also seen what has happened to Extreme Autofest over time, and that went from an all import show that turned into a DUB show. There were cars in there that definitely made me scratch my head…I have no idea where these cars came from but I definitely did not need to see them again after HIN…
The Hot Import Nights show has just turned into every possible cliche’ you can think of, of a mainstream COMMERCIAL automotive lifestyle event. Which basically means that it was pretty much a ridiculous music video that you really wanted to end, but you couldn’t find your remote anywhere so you just had to sit there and watch it happen. There were go-go dancers on the stage, DJs at every corner playing music that was way too fucking loud, it was dark as shit, there were rappers “performing”, and there were exotics as well as every car you could think of that could somehow manage to cram 24-inch wheels into their wheel wells. It was fucking hectic in there. I don’t know what the purpose of blasting six different songs at max volume simultaneously was, but it was so loud in there that you couldn’t even have a conversation with the person standing inches away from you without screaming at them. I didn’t even plan on going at all, but I managed to get a free pass from It’s JDM Yo!! Tony so I decided to go do some coverage of the show. From my previous experience, it’s always been incredibly difficult to take photos at HIN while the show was going on because, like I stated earlier, it’s incredibly dark in there and crowded. I knew that I had to get there as early as I could and get as many shots as possible before the show started. The coverage you’re going to see from HIN is basically everything that went on during roll-in the night before, and the day of, but before the gates opened to the public. They won’t look like the typical HIN photos because no one was there yet and the lights were all on. I apologize if you wanted to see the photos with the “HIN ambiance” included but I wanted to make my life easier and not have to fight people to get a good shot. I did take some pics during the show itself, but it wasn’t really car-related, haha. I just wanted to capture what was going on while I was there. At the end of the day, I think the HIN staff did a good job of executing “Hot Import Nights” but it just isn’t the same as it once was, and I highly doubt that it will ever be how it was when it was one of the top shows in the industry. The cars that are there just don’t fit the enthusiasts that once made the show as big as it was and it almost seems as if they want to cater to a different audience now. The younger generation might enjoy the event, but it’s hard to spend $12 on parking and another $35(?) at the gate. It’s more of a DUB show now and the cars there represent that. You won’t see those cars here though because I took the time to weed out the cars that I liked and the ones that aren’t very favorable to your eyes are cars that I captured merely for comedic relief. With that said, thanks to HIN for the hospitality and I hope that you guys enjoy the photos…
If somebody were to ask me to describe my HIN 2011 experience in one long-drawn-out sentence, I would say:
“I went to Hot Import Nights and saw a Chrysler 300C with a new Camaro front end on it and across from it was a Scion tC with 26′s or some shit and a truck that looked like it was in mid-explosion.”
It’s kinda like the new Chrysler commercials where they say that their cars are “imported” from Detroit. You’re not really fooling anyone but it was a nice attempt. I guess if you dim the lights and turn up the music, nobody will notice, but somebody is eventually going to trip over an RX-7 in the dark and ask their friend what it’s doing there…
We’ll kick it off today with the widebody R35 GT-R from Auto Concept Elite. You probably recognize this GT-R from SEMA 2011 sitting inside the ENEOS Sustina booth… This was taken around 6:30pm the Friday night of roll-in when the Auto Concept/High End guys were still setting up their massive display…
Loved this Lincoln that was posted up near the area where Tony was setting up his booth… This is actually one of the few none imports that I was happy to see….
Despite the obnoxious rear arch work on this S14, it was actually pretty well done. I don’t really understand why the rear arch was done like that but it throws off the whole car. The craftmanship itself is not bad at all and it has all the right parts on it. It even has Racing Hart CPF Tune-R wheels on it that you don’t really see utilized that often.. I just wish the owner bought wheels that fit better under all that bodywork…
Carl’s EM2 Civic at the Fatlace showcase area on some CCW wheels…
VIP-themed S14 with an Instant Gentleman kit and MMR wheels…I posted up a photo of this car awhile back and asked you guys to help me find out who the owner was and he actually emailed me, I just barely remembered right now and I need to return his email….
Cody Chan’s widebody Miata that I shot awhile back for Super Street magazine. If you guys follow this site religiously like I hope you would, then you probably caught the unpublished photos from the shoot that I posted up just last week….
Here’s that truck that I’ve been talking about that looks like it’s in mid-explosion, haha…Excuse me for being ignorant towards this style of modification but what exactly is the point of having your hood look like that?…
Widebody G35 that’s been a consistent force in the import show scene…
MaDara’s S2000 with ASM I.S. Designs aero…
Love this race-inspired BMW M3 with Voltex components and HRE wheels…
Wild widebody Cadillac CTS-V from D3 that was also at SEMA 2011 in the Toyo Tires booth…
I found it a little odd that this whole set-up was finished by the time I got to roll-in but when I returned the next day, it was completely different booth with different cars…
Crazy dually that was sitting on the floor…
Matte red-painted 5-Series BMW wagon from VIP Modular wheels…
Really liked the classic-styling of this FC3S RX-7…The two-toned bay was kinda odd and I took a photo of it the following day when the hood was popped, but I’ll save that for later…
Another R35 GT-R…I think this was the second of maybe 4 or 5 that were at HIN…
Top Secret widebody S2000 from Bulletproof Automotive…
This particular section of the show hosted some of the better cars at HIN in my opinion, including this Miata on SSR MK2s…
This Miata was also nice and I had a chance to talk to the owner the following day at the show and he tells me that there’s a motor swap in it from a newer Miata…
This one was a little more wild in contrast to the previous two I posted. It had a polished hood and a two-toned black/silver theme…
This S13 coupe was one of my favorites from the HIN event…I saw this thing posted outside on the dock during roll-in and it instantly caught my attention, even though it’s very basic aesthetically. Crazy how hammered to the floor it is and apparently from watching him drive in, this is his static ride height… I chatted with the owner for a bit and this S13 also has a RB25 swap…More pics of this thing tomorrow…
Tony and friends setting up the “It’s JDM Yo!!!” booth…
Yuta’s S30 240Z from Heart Breaker…
I think a lot of people at HIN slept on this Supra because it was dark as shit in there and you probably couldn’t see it…
…however, you couldn’t miss this thing from miles and miles away….Batman helps to illustrate my shock here when I saw this Chrysler 300C with a Camaro front-end….
This orange Civic hatchback was pretty clean… Me thinks those are Rotas though…
Engine bay is clean and well-done with a K-swap and JRSC…
Lexus SC430 from BP VIP on some Work Schwert SC4s…
2nd Gen. Lexus IS on SSR Professor SP1…
Infiniti Q45 on WED’s Kranze LXZs…
Junction Produce Toyota Previa…
Does anyone remember Greg Leone from the MTV show “True Life: I’m a Street Racer”? Well this is his short bus…
What’s cool about it is that it’s like some make-shift auto-transport for his S13 “drift car”…. The car is whatever and has VIP Modular wheels on it that cost more than the car itself, but what’s interesting is that he probably has more money invested in the school bus than he does on the car…
You see that little platform above the bus? Well during the show, he and his band of buddies were pulling random girls up to the roof and posing for all kinds of ridiculously douchey photos. They had their sunglasses on and some guy had a zebra-printed blazer, it was quite a spectacle…He should call this thing “The Douche Bus”…
A pair of Ruckus’ in the Fatlace display area…
Tony almost finished with his display…
EVO X on gold SSR Type-F….
Not really sure what’s going on with this 350Z… It has WED’s Kranze wheels on it, which are luxury VIP wheels, but then it has this really wide, aggressive body work done to it with a front bumper that looks like it’s too long for the Z33 chassis…I don’t know, I’m confused…
Michael Mao applying some finishing touches to his NSX…
S14 celebrating the spirit of the holidays…
Ferrari 360 Modena on HREs…
Another shot of the BMW as I walked past it…correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that bottom front splitter might be a new addition…
At this point, I walked over to the DUB area where I unearthed these gems…
OH MAN. Words just can’t describe everything that is going on with this 240SX…rainbow zipties….Kouki S14 front end conversion…a hood that may or may not fit the front end..Advan SA3Rs that look like they are trying to hide…
The back is even better…pink zebra taillight garnish…paint-splattered rear hatch…crazy arrow-looking spray-painted sharpie designs on the rear-quarter….AHHHH!!!…
Directly next to it was another S13, this one I’m hoping is some sort of display vehicle for House of Kolor…Fucking thing looks like a rolling acid trip…
I had to do a double take just to figure out what kind of car this was…I believe this is an Eclipse with a Vertex-style Toyota Soarer front bumper and spray-painted wheels…I was walking with Tony and he said that this car looked like it was “Transforming but got stuck half-way”….haha…
I’m not even gonna lie, this MR-2 with ROJA wheels wouldn’t even be that bad if it didn’t all of a sudden grow Nissan S15 Silvia headlights in it’s front bumper…now it just looks odd…
Once I returned to reality, I spotted this Honda Fit rolling into the show…
…and also saw VIPStylecars member “Blitz’s” Y33 Q45 with WED’s Kranze LXZs and a K-Break aero kit…
After that I packed up my gear and headed home. Tomorrow I will bring you guys the photos from the actual day of the show and I swear, they are much better than these. I even brought my tripod out and everything…. Since I went back to the show so early the next day, I had all the time in the world to do coverage because nobody was even there…Anyways, back tomorrow with more…thanks for looking….
Year.Three Coverage…Part 3…Finale…
Just a couple final shots of the Year.Three event…I hope everyone had a great time and if you didn’t, at least you got a chance to enjoy these photos. It’s too far away right now to know for sure if we will do another anniversary meet next year but if all goes well, why not to another one, right?…
On with the photos. If you guys haven’t had a chance to check out the previous two posts of Year.Three coverage, just click back to the previous posts and you will find them there…
Now, to close it out….
Here’s a couple of shots of the front VIP area during the mid-afternoon… We had a great turn-out overall, and I was very happy with the attendance. As I stated before, I missed out on taking shots of a lot of cars because I didn’t start covering most of the event until later on in the day…
One more shot of Angelo Arayata’s EF, this one with the hood closed…
A clean R on white Regamaster EVOs…
Around 430pm, it was time to present the awards… From left to right, we had the “Best Engine Bay” award, followed by “The Chronicles’ Choice”, then “Best Non-Honda”, and “Best Honda”…Another reason why I was running back and forth all day was to judge the cars. I had the help of Rywire Ryan, DPK David, and Big Mike, but it was still hard to determine the winners since there were so many great cars on hand that day…
To kick off the awards, Big Mike and I announced the “Best Non-Honda” award, which went to Ka Wong and his F20C-powered orange AE86 Corolla…I don’t know many builds out there that are as well built as Ka’s Hachi-Roku, so we had to give it up to him… I also ordered some L&L Hawaiian BBQ from him earlier that morning too and brought it out to the meet for close friends and family. Inside the bay at Eibach was a little party we had going on with food and drinks….
The “Best Engine Bay” award was probably the most debated award among our group of judges…there are just so many different style of clean engine bays so it was hard to decide who should really get the award. In the end, we just had to give it to RC Chacon for his wild turbo K-series set-up in his 4-door EG9 Civic… Ms. Holly Lee was helping us in distributing the awards as well as posing for a photo-op with all the winners…
The “Best Honda” award was an easier choice than I had expected…Cooper Boudia aka Skipunk4 had the cleanest Integra there and we all loved everything about it. It’s a very well-rounded build and it seems to have every aspect covered. That and him making the epic journey down from Washington and the car still staying in immaculate condition as it was made it the easy choice as the best Honda of the day…
“The Chronicles’ Choice” aka my personal favorite build at Year.Three, went to a very deserving FA5 Civic SI that belonged to Sam Ip…I absolutely love his car so it was an easy choice as well to present the award to him….
Congrats to all the winners, because you guys are all very deserving of the accolades…
Even though Freddie from Autofashion told everyone that the event wasn’t over yet, after the awards, people started to roll-out. I guess people are so used to leaving after the awards at shows/events that they automatically thought we were done. No matter though because a bulk of the people still stuck around to hang out….
Very clean BB6 Prelude on Volk CE28s…
Sam’s Civic as he was getting ready to put his hood back on…
Always see this red S2000 around at various events so it was cool to see it at Year.Three…
The Leung brothers, both with very nice AWD builds, posted up together…
Red EK on JDM OEM Civic SiR/VTi wheels…
This S13 hatchback wasn’t really parked up front in the VIP area originally but since a lot of people had left and it was towards the end of the day, we didn’t mind it being there. Cool looking drift-inspired look too on what looks to be some new AME wheels…
A couple more shots of RC Chacon’s Civic and his “award-winning” engine bay…
A rear shot of Sintype’s Civic coupe…
A shot of DPK JP’s Civic before he took off. He had to get home before it got dark since he had no headlights…
Twin S2000s…different colors of course but with a lot of matching parts…
I enjoyed this yellow DC2 so I had to get another shot of it as I was passing through…
Random shot of Frank Boys Bolts aka Bolt Boys Frank’s valve cover with the new Skunk2 valve cover hardware kit…
Phaze2 Salem, DJ Murdock, and Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!! checking out some new tees…
Shot of Ka Wong’s F20C…
Really like this hatch….sorry about the shadow bukkake…
MX-5 Miata on some concave TE-37s….
Rear quarter shot of Michael Mao’s NSX…
Mike G’s extensively detailed engine bay…
DPK Henry aka Rick Fox’s legit RHD EG6 arrived a little later in the day, minus his J’s Racing front lip…
Missed this car earlier on in the afternoon but glad I got a shot of it before the owner left…
Band of misfits…
All white errrrr-thang…including that old ass Supra that was just sitting in the background. I don’t know who it belonged to but it was there before we even got there in the morning…oh well, it flows with the photo…
All cleaned-up before we rolled out to dinner afterwards… Not much else happened..we picked up some trash, walked around to make sure the lot was clean, then we packed up and rolled out to Mr. Kebab for dinner…
That’s a wrap… Once again, thank you everyone for their continued support throughout all these years. May we have many many more and may I have a chance to meet all the great people in our community. Thanks for looking…
Year.Three Coverage…Part 1…
Thank you.
There are no two other words in the English dictionary that can better explain my gratitude and appreciation for your continued support of The Chronicles. It’s still pretty wild to think that it’s already been three years since I started this site and how quickly it has grown in that time. You guys hear me talk about this on occasion but to put it in perspective, man, it’s been a pretty wild ride. I started out with no camera, decent writing ability, and perverted sense of humor and in my first month, I achieved a staggering total of like 120-something hits for the ENTIRE month. Since then the site has grown to the point where I can get 120-some odd hits in a matter of 15-20 minutes. I taught myself how to use a camera, got a little bit better at writing, and I guess you can say that I created somewhat of a fan-base. Throwing meets and events have never been my thing…I like going to them and having the freedom to do as I please without worrying about who is going where, what’s happening, or anything related to organization. Last year, when I did the 2YRS two-year anniversary event, it was mildly stressful. I had never put a meet together, I really didn’t have anything planned, and up until a month or so before the event, I didn’t even have a venue! Luckily Ryan from Eibach Springs was kind enough to offer me the Eibach Springs facility and everything just sort of fell into place. People had a good time, and that’s what mattered.
This year, I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to do an anniversary meet. Everyone kept asking me when I was gonna have it and I told them that my goal was to only throw an anniversary meet if the site got bigger and I was happy with the direction of The Chronicles. We are sitting here now talking about the Year.Three event because the site has continued to be successful. I have met so many incredible people throughout these three years and it’s actually only right that I was able to get everyone together to celebrate not only the success of the site, but also to celebrate the great relationships that have formed because of the site. It’s the people that matter to me and I honestly do appreciate the friendships that have developed throughout these three years. I’m not just talking about people from California either. I’ve met and spoken to people from all over the world…Japan, Canada, Australia, and all parts of the United States. Last year’s meet had such a great reception and positive feedback that it was an easy decision to bring it back to the Eibach Springs facility. It’s a gigantic open space that everyone knows of, because of the annual Eibach Honda meet, and it’s tucked away in the industrial section of Corona, CA where no one unrelated to the event would be able to disturb anything that was going on. I hit up Ryan from Eibach and he was more than happy to let me use the Eibach lot and the planning began. I didn’t want to do anything drastically different from last years because everything went so smoothly in 2010. One thing I wanted to do this year was bring along some vendors and friends of the site for the ride as well as doing something that nobody expected, which was to present a small set of awards at the show. I like to show my appreciation for great builds every year with the annual Top Ten Hondas list so I thought that it would be a good idea to have some awards to spotlight some of the best builds that came out to the Year.Three event.
Everything really couldn’t have gone any better. I would say that I am about 97% happy with how everything went down at Year.Three, with the remaining 3% left to the incredibly hot weather that day as well as the horrible traffic leading to Eibach, both factors which were completely out of my hands. As for the coverage, I spent the majority of the first couple hours that day setting up the booth, making sure everyone else’s booths were situated, and parking cars. There were quite a few cars that I didn’t get a chance to get photos of simply because they left before I was able to. I didn’t really get to start shooting until maybe halfway through the meet and I wish I could have covered the entire day. The same thing happened last year but there’s just no other way around it. I didn’t want to burden others with having to help me out just so I could take pictures and I’m lucky that there were already more than enough people lending a hand. I pretty much got the bulk of the meet though as far as the cars that were up front in the VIP section. I walked around the side and rear of the building to check out the cars but that wasn’t til the end of the day when I was taking out the trash and cleaning up. If you don’t see your car in the coverage, that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate you being there, because that just isn’t the case. I either just plain missed you, or I was busy chatting with people that were coming up to me. I can’t thank everyone enough for coming out to support Year.Three. You guys make this possible and you make it fun. Let’s keep the positive vibes going into 2012 and we can do it even bigger next year…
With that said, we should probably start getting to some photos. I’ll continue talking your heads off in part 2 of the coverage. You do come here for the spoken word and commentary, you know? Any other site can just post up photos and move along. I’m here to numb your mind with non-stop rambling and some decent photos…Enjoy…
Huge shout-out goes to Tony Jackson and Ryan Hoegner for taking time out of their weekend to be a part of this event. Without these guys Year.Three wouldn’t be possible. Ryan even coached his daughter’s softball game before making his way out. Tony was there bright and early waiting for May and I to show up to set-up the meet. When I got there at 11:30am, he was the only one on the lot and he was trying to set-up a canopy on his own…Thank you guys…
Here’s a look at what the front vendor area looked like a couple hours into Year.Three…This year’s meet was way bigger than last years but it still had the same, laid back, chill vibe that I really wanted…
I was happy to see some of my favorite cars out, and I was really happy with the amount of love I got from enthusiasts that came out from my hometown of San Diego, CA….I would say that probably a 1/3 of the event consisted of people from San Diego…Bryant and Ly’s TSXs are some of my favorites from back home…
Another car that I was overjoyed to see was Sam Ip’s 8th gen. Civic…
Gumby also apparently is a supporter of The Chronicles…
Tony from Phaze2 stopped by after work in his daily VIP 1GS…he recently got new wheels for it and was anxious to bring it out to show us…Here he is taking a moment to chat with Arnel from Phaze2…
Tony’s 1GS laid out on the ground…
RC from Arizona made the trek out to show us his updates on his EG9 Civic…The last time we saw this car was at Nisei when he parked in my “GENERATIONS” section…More photos of this build will come later…
Random shot of DPK JP helping out in May’s “Walk for Hope” Cancer Walk booth…
What I liked about this year’s event compared to the 2010 meet was the variety of cars that showed up. I’m a huge fan of all sorts of different cars so it was cool to see equal support from non-Honda heads…
The lovely Ms. Holly Lee on hand at the “It’s JDM Yo!!!” booth…
These two guys made the trip all the way down from the state of Washington to check out the meet…I had been exchanging emails with Greg (left) leading up to the event but I really regret not being able to chat with them more because I was busy running around everywhere…
May had a cool purple-themed set-up at her own booth to raise money for her Cancer Walk on November 6th…
Keith aka Keychain from “It’s JDM Yo!!!” reppin with his Stickydiljoe.com Chronicles tee…
I had a huge turnout of Accord enthusiasts last year so I was honestly a little bummed to see that they didn’t come out for this year’s meet, but luckily, a huge number of TSX owners represented and I think a lot of people that day were surprised by the quality of all these TSX builds…
Arn Reyes kept his Integra at home for the day and instead brought out his Mini…He was posted up front alongside DPK JP and Enrique Rosario’s cream-colored hatchback…
Absolutely love JonJon’s IS350…
I wasn’t really sure if any of the ATS Garage guys would be able to come down from Norcal so it was a pleasant surprise when I showed up at the Rywire facility that Friday and saw Ryan Der and his EK….
Freddie and the Autofashion crew not only supplied the music and entertainment but also brought out a pair of Honda Ruckus’…The guys from Standard Functions also came out and brought a large group of Ruckus’ as well…
Good to see JP’s Civic coming out of hibernation and making public appearances again…
Really nice Acura NSX that was posted up by the front gate. The owner wanted to purchase a VIP spot and park closer but we all felt that it was perfectly placed where everyone could see it…
A couple guys checking out JP’s “Bling Gauge” on his carbon headlight cover…
Enrique Rosario’s Civic…this guy has always been a huge supporter of The Chronicles. I still remember when he had a green valve cover and a Chronicles sticker plastered on his spark plug wire cover…
Arn’s Mini on SSRs…
Good to see DPK Jared’s S2000 in a near complete state. This car spent much of the year out of commission because Ryan was busy doing a wire tuck as well as custom brake lines and custom radiator…
Here’s an updated shot of the engine bay after everything was relocated, hidden, and the entire bay resprayed…
One obvious change since you guys last saw it is the Mugen air intake…
Downstairs Frank from PG+K…
James Nguyen aka OldManJames’ S2000…
Michael Mao’s NSX on Volk CE28 Genesis wheels…
I was happy to see my favorite AE86 build of all-time at Year.Three…Mr. Ka Wong also helped supply the L&L Hawaiian BBQ food that I ordered for all the close friends and family of the site….
Big Steve’s LS teleported from the magical land of Narnia and mysteriously appeared at the meet….I went from never seeing this car to seeing it three times in one year…it must be some sort of miracle…
Another angle of Phaze2 Tony’s 1GS on Work Varianza D3S….
Take another look at RC’s engine bay and tell me later on if you think that this car deserved to win the “Best Engine Bay” award….
Yogi from Fatlace along with some of the other Ruckus guys getting set to take off…
The line-up as they rolled out…
Rodrez from Honda Tuning magazine getting some video footage…
On that note, I’m gonna cut it off for today with the video that resulted from what was going on in the image above…Thanks goes out to Rodrez for taking time out of his day to create this cool video…
Back with much more tomorrow!…
Air Runner Open House 2011 Coverage…
Spent the early Saturday afternoon at the Air Runner facility for their open house event this past weekend… The turn-out was probably less than stellar since it was planned and advertised everywhere but it was a good time for me because it gave me the opportunity to talk to some of the homies that I usually don’t get to see often. I think this event wasn’t as successful as it could have been because I feel that the general consensus from enthusiasts is that you have to have like a super VIP’d out ride on Air Runner suspension to attend this event…and that certainly wasn’t the case. I mean, they threw this event in the hopes that all kinds of enthusiasts would show up, not just luxury VIP guys. I guess maybe it should have been stated when the event was advertised but I think that the Air Runner guys just automatically assumed that that was the case. I didn’t arrived until a couple hours into the event and I was told there were more people and cars in attendance earlier but it didn’t matter, I stuck around, did coverage and hung out. My main reason for going and supporting Air Runner is because I’ve worked personally with Shin Okamoto before. I shot the 5Axis GS460 on Air Runner suspension a year ago and Shin was kind enough to pay me with some Air Runner gauges and switches for my Infiniti Q45. I have them on my Q now and I couldn’t be happier with them. Since that time I shot the car, I’ve run into Shin at a number of events and we’ve always taken the time to chat so I felt that it was the right thing to do to go and support his event, regardless of how the turnout was. At the open house, I asked him how he felt about the turnout and he seemed a little down about it, but I explained to him that the main reason was enthusiasts’ mindset that it was probably only tailored to VIP luxury car owners. I told him that once people see the event coverage online, maybe they will understand that it’s an event for everyone and next year’s will be much bigger and better…
Below are a couple shots from the open house. I captured basically whatever was there that caught my eye and then hung out for a couple hours before taking off to go eat lunch and spend the rest of the evening with May and friends… Thanks for looking and if you guys want high quality air suspension components, please make sure to consider Air Runner…
Big Steve decided to stumble out of bed and bring his LS out for the event…
White-on-white S2000 on BBS LMs….definitely not a VIP platform but it was on hand for the event…
It’s JDM Yo!!! model Holly Lee was there to show her support, posing in front of Big Steve’s LS…
A couple more shots of Holly…
Pancakes aka Oscar’s Q45 posted up next to a Junction Produce GS…
GS with a Job Design kit…
VIP Modular had a booth set-up…
F50 Q45 on VIP Modular wheels…
2nd gen. Lexus IS on Junction Produce Scara wheels…
Saw this GS with really extreme, ridiculous camber pull up to the meet…
JonJon’s supercharged IS350…
Neo-chrome Endless brakes sitting behind a set of Weds Kranze Vishunus…
Lexus IS on 5Axis wheels…
5Axis GS460 on Air Runner suspension…
Really liked this IS on SSR Professors… just a simple lip kit and great wheel fitment…
The overall stance on this GS was a bit overwhelming for me…I mean, I’m more into the traditional VIP look and it seems guys are more willing to make sacrifices like having haggared-up fenders to achieve a certain look…It is definitely an extreme look, especially since he drove with half the tires not even making contact with the pavement…
Infiniti M on some Work Varianzas…
Really liked this Lexus RX..this cars look so awkward in stock form but when you take the time to do some proper modifications to them, they look great…
Scion xB with a Gulf livery that belongs to Mike Ma and M2 Motoring…
Another shot of JonJon’s IS350…
Lexus LS430 rolling up to the meet…
Make sure to visit the official Air Runner site for all your air suspension goods…
One more shot of Holly Lee holding up a limited edition “It’s VIP Yo!!!” decal…
That’s all folks, thanks for looking…
Exclusive Content…Unpublished Photos of Peter & Theresa’s LS14 from Super Street Aug. ’11…
Got some unused shots from the August 2011 issue of Super Street for you guys today…I’m sure you guys have seen plenty of this car by now. It’s been at all the major Socal car shows and meets this entire summer and has been a consistent winner of award. It’s a very basic set-up in terms of modifications, with a different mix of styles. The build is unique in that it encompasses style traits from a drift-themed S14, with a touch of Japanese VIP styling, and an all-American GM LS1 motor under the hood. One of the coolest things about it is that the car is driven a majority of the time by it’s female co-owner. Peter and Theresa built this thing together but she’s definitely the one that sees the most seat-time in it….
When I first shot these photos, I was pretty happy with the results. It was a pretty quick shoot at a very quiet location. Since the car had a lot of Earth tones to it, I tried to edit the photos in a way where it had a similar feel. For the story, I wanted to have a little fun with it and went a different direction than what most are used to and I think the story complimented the photos well. Overall, I was really happy with how it came out when it hit the newstands. The owner(s) were easy to talk to and chill, the car was easy to shoot, nobody drove by and bothered me while I was shooting since it was a pretty secluded spot…all in all, I had a good time doing it. It’s one of those shoots that remind me how fun my job really is. When the magazine dropped Peter and Theresa couldn’t have been happier with it so that makes the satisfaction of producing a good story even more gratifying. Below is a link to the original story on the Super Street website. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you take a couple minutes to read it because it’s a pretty cool story. The published photos are also on their site in a pretty large format as well. The ones I have attached are the shots that weren’t used and at the end I’ve also included a 1080P-sized wallpaper for you guys…
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ORIGINAL STORY FROM SUPER STREET MAGAZINE
Same rules apply as usual, click the links below for higher resolution, larger format images…
Widescreen desktop shot for you guys….
Widescreen Version (1920×1080)
Thanks for looking…
Nisei Showoff 2011 Coverage…Part 6…The Finale…
Alright, time to close out the 2011 Nisei Showoff coverage with some random photos towards the end of the show, the awards ceremony, and at the end I’ve attached some of my favorite photos that I took from the show. Those won’t be in any particular order, they’re just shots that I thought were good. Overall, I think it was a great event. Foot traffic of course was a bit slower than in year’s past, but that was expected because of the 3-week block of shows. It’s really unprecedented to have that happen and definitely a first, but I’m happy to say that I was able to go to every show during those three weeks and was able to experience each of them. It’s crazy that it wrapped up with the Motion show because that was probably the most anticipated event of the summer. That’s not taking anything away from Nisei Showoff though. Nisei has and always will be a staple in our community’s history and it was more than kind of Ken Myoshi to have me be a huge part of it. I hope everyone enjoyed the 6-part mini-series of Nisei Showoff. I like to cover these events in such a way that you get to see not only nice cars, but also details behind their builds and stuff you may miss if you aren’t actually there in person. The GENERATIONS line-up came together quickly and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I think the general consensus from every Honda head that was there was that it was a positive move in bringing everyone together for one show. Hopefully in the near future I will be able to do the GENERATIONS line-up again but with even more people participating and more Hondas that we have all grown to know and love throughout the years. With that said, thank you everyone for coming over to The Chronicles to check out the coverage and I am appreciative of your continued support…
Now, let’s move onto the last batch of photos…
Lance Uchida, who helped drive Billy Shea’s IS300 out to the show, packing up along with some friends before awards took place…
You can’t look at Billy’s HKS-themed IS300 without taking a look at the amazing engine bay…
Billy’s HKS T51R turbine…
Sportcar Motion’s newly-built drag K24 Civic…I think a lot of people are misinformed when they see this car since they have become so used to Sportcar’s involvement with time attack. This is purely a drag car for their personal use. Nothing but pure straight line racing…
The motor currently makes around 350whp but plans are already underway to boost the K and make even more power. As of this week, the parts from AFI Turbo have already arrived at the shop and tear down will begin shortly…
Speaking of turbo Ks, one more shot of RC’s work-in-progress 4-door Civic…
Mike G. and DPK Jared having some fun and posing for a shot…
Mike G.’s buddy had this pristine real deal Civic Type R park with us since I ended up with an extra parking space when Will from Circuit Hero let us know that he couldn’t make it out…
Rywire Ryan and ATS Angel discussing some future plans, whether it be car shit or what to eat for dinner…
ATS FCB with his son Jaylen…
May and I were at the show for the whole day watching over The Chronicles booth, so we didn’t get an opportunity to go walk around J-town to grab a bite to eat…Luckily there was a sketchy-ass cart right outside of the front gates to Nisei Showoff where they sold “Danger Dogs” aka bacon-wrapped hot dogs. Definitely not the safest thing to eat, especially considering that there is meat being cooked on a rolling cart and mayo has been sitting out all day, but hey, sometimes you have to live dangerously…
As unsafe as it sounded, the thought of eating a bacon-wrapped hot dog inspired everyone’s appetites so the homies also went and bought some dogs…If there’s germs, the hot ass peppers are sure to kill them right? Haha…
Rhett and friends taking a closer look at Anh’s ITR…
Miss Chaba with an impromptu pose…
Rom, Jared, and Ryan beginning the sticker-removal process so that Jared and drive home with clear visibility…
After that came the hood re-install…Apparently it takes 5 dudes to put on an S2K hood…
WheelFlip model Tina striking a pose…
One more shot of Big Mike’s Prelude as the sun was making it’s way down…
Dennis from Team Hybrid’s STi that was near the front stage where the awards ceremony took place…
Even though Ken doesn’t have any major sponsors backing the Showoff series anymore, it doesn’t mean that he’s ever skimped on the awards at his shows. He’s always been more than generous with the number of awards and awards classes and appreciative of every make and model that participates…
It’s JDM Yo!!! x 1-Up, Tony’s super crew (aka The Vanguard Collective), anticipating some awards…
Peter Vong holding up his 3rd place trophy in the Nissan/Infiniti Class for his LS14…
Salem from Phaze2 holding up his 3rd Place Acura Class trophy for his J’s Racing TSX….
Big Mike with another 1st Place Honda trophy…
Jonathan “JonJon” Usaha holding up his “JDM VIP Showoff” award…
Jaylen and Fred from ATS up to receive the Integra/RSX showoff award for Anh Truong’s Integra Type R…
Sam Ip winning back-to-back years in the “ES/FG Civic Showoff” award with two separate cars…
Chris Sakai won the “EK Civic Showoff” award…
Mike G. with his “EG Civic Showoff” award. These awards are given to the best of that particular chassis at Showoff so it was cool to have Mike, Chris, and Anh win in their respective classes. It was cool to see Sam win again as well and the “EF Civic Showoff” award (if I remember correctly) went to the 4-door red EF Civic and that was definitely deserving…I didn’t get a chance to snap a photo of Angel winning his 2nd Place Honda Class award because I was busy shooting off a mini-confetti gun at him…
Peter up to grab the “Team Showoff” award for It’s JDM Yo! x 1-Up, which was given to the best car crew of the event…
We were all watching the Toyota and old school class awards fly by with no mention of Ka Wong’s name and we were honestly all a bit surprised. Ka of course is the owner of that beautifully-built F20C-swapped orange AE86. He’s usually a lock at almost every show to bring something home like Billy’s IS300 so we were thinking that maybe he was overlooked by the judges…
…and then they called his name and he walked up to the stage to win the coveted “Custom Showoff” award, which is the 1st runner-up to what basically is “the best of show” honors…Very well deserved. Ka’s Corolla is a remarkable build and a contender for best of show at any import event…The guy is also one of the most humble people ever as well so he couldn’t be more deserving…
…and the winner of course for the best of show, known as the “Showoff Auto” award went to Billy Shea’s HKS IS300. The photo above is Lance picking up the award since Billy couldn’t be there. It’s practically automatic for him to win because the car has it all, exterior aesthetics, performance upgrades, interior mods, custom paint, and custom audio…Congrats to Billy and the rest of the winners at Nisei Showoff 2011…
I was pretty happy with the results that the GENERATIONS line-up was able to produce… Integra/RSX Showoff, EK Civic Showoff, EG Civic Showoff (not pictured), 3rd Place Acura Class,2nd Place Honda Class, and 1st Place Honda Class…Doesn’t sound like much considering we had over 20 Hondas but you have to remember that these guys were pretty much competing with one another in the same classes…
After the annoying ass announcer was done promoting his own shit while giving out the awards, we walked back over to finish cleaning up and saying buy to everyone before they took off…
Here’s one more shot of Jorge Hernandez’s gold EG as the night quickly approached…
…and a shot of Mike Schietroma’s EM1 and Ejay Adriano’s DA Integra…
Ryan snacking on some JDM crunchy peas as we were getting ready to take off from the downtown Los Angeles lot…
Nothing to exciting happened after we left…We all went home to shower and take a break, then we headed down to the city of Irvine to go have dinner together and talk about the show….
Gonna close it out today with some bonus stuff for you guys. Below is a video of Nisei Showoff 2011, created by Honda Tuning head editor Rodrez…peep that. And when you’re done, I’ve included a couple of photos that I really liked from Nisei but in a larger format for your viewing pleasure. Thanks everyone for looking, thanks for supporting The Chronicles, and thanks for supporting Ken Myoshi and the Showoff events…Until next time…
Click on the links below each photo for larger versions…
History in the making… Larger Version (1400×933)
Fin.
Spocom 2011 Coverage…Part 1…
The following may be considered “NSFW”, just a fair warning to all of you who should be working but are on The Chronicles instead…
Just a quick 2-part mini-series of coverage for you guys from the Spocom 2011 show. I didn’t stay very long, maybe just 2-hours or so because I had a birthday party to go to later in the evening so the coverage is very minimal. It’s pretty much just whatever I saw at the moment and no real thought was put into it. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it because I walked through it as I was walking over to Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!’s section and there just weren’t very many Hondas there. There was a good mix of cars, don’t get me wrong and a lot of really nice builds but the show was just lacking overall. Maybe people were gearing up for Nisei this weekend or the Motion show the following weekend so the turnout wasn’t all that impressive, compared to previous Spocom shows. Many of the major crews came out, but I can see why people would hold off on doing all three shows, especially since the fees are so high these days. If you did all three shows this month, it would cost you over $140 alone in just registration fees and not including stuff you’ll need for your cleaning supplies, display, etc. It was cool though, people were telling me that it was dead inside as some people were walking out but I mean, the show didn’t start until 4pm so I really doubted people would rush over there if the show was going on until 11 that night. Anyways, here is the coverage. As with every Spocom show, it has a very heavy focus on the import models and the coverage reflects that. I didn’t get a photo of every model there but I did snap whomever was in front of me at the moment. I don’t know many of their names so you’ll have to excuse me if I act like I’m ignoring who they are. I just have no idea who these people are because that’s not my focal point when I come to shows. You’re better off asking Tony Lee if you really want to know a girl’s name because that’s his steez…. Okay, on with the crappy photos. I’m not very happy with the way the shots came out because of the poor lighting in there but whatever. I don’t know shit about photography and you’re probably here to just stare at tits and rims so you’ll be happy either way…Enjoy…
One of my personal favorite builds of all time…Ka Wong’s F20C-powered AE86 Corolla. Also one of my favorite cars that I have ever done a story on in Super Street mag….
Voltex-equipped Evo on Volk CE28 Genesis wheels…A very good look. I don’t know who the owner is but I see the car around all the time at various events and it looks amazing…
This Subaru STI belongs to Dennis from Team Hybrid. I shot this car a couple weeks ago for Super Street and the feature should be dropping next month. Very nice car with some cool interior touches and good wheel fitment…
Somebody stole her clothes…
I believe this is Julie Mai from San Diego…I’m familiar with her because she usually rolls with the AutoFashion guys…
No idea who this is either but she was doing some modeling for the Dsport Model Search…
One of the few times I’ve seen a modified Lexus HS250h…
Always been a fan of this FD3S RX-7 from TWC…
Interesting color combo on this 350Z…
Lloyd Morales’ Vertex S14…I hit this dude up on Facebook a couple weeks back to shoot his car possibly for a story but he kind of ignored me…haha…
Infiniti M on AME Shallen wheels…
A couple of Hondas that were put in the corner by the front entrance of the show…Thanks to the two red hatchbacks for supporting The Chronicles and rocking my decals…
Always liked this widebody G35…
Danny from PlusOne’s coupe…DPK David and I ran into Danny in another part of the building and he was like “Dude, you gotta see the car that’s parked next to mine…BEST.OF.SHOW…” and he chuckled a little…When we finally had a chance to walk over to the area where he was at…uhh, I can see why he said that…because…
…BAM!…Haha. I don’t know what ATS Garage was talking about because this is the real “Miracle Whip” right here. How do I know? Because it says so in the bath rug that’s sitting in front of this car…It’s definitely not my style or tastes, but I can dig the hard work that was put into building this car…
Why polished stock brake drums and stock suspension? Because Show Car….
Look at this dude’s marble-painted interior. Everything was done like this inside and out. Even parts of his engine bay like his distributor cap and all were all done in matching white/baby blue marble…
When you look at the back, prepare to get Criss Angel’d because you just got Mind FUCKED with some Scion tC taillights…Look at DPK David on the side staring the bay down so he can get ideas for his bay…
If that wasn’t interesting enough, wait until you take a look at this CR-Z…
Ahhhhh!!! What the fuck happened here?!!…
Would you like to see more…
…Ahhh!!!!1!111! Somebody asked me what the best car was at Spocom and I said “Scroll back up to the top of this post and stare at the girl with no pants on”…
Oscar’s y33 Q45…one of my favorite VIP builds currrently…
AutoFashion-built Honda Ruckus’…including the HKS-themed Ruckus I spoke of a couple weeks ago…
Kitted-out Camaro that won a trophy for being the only Camaro at Spocom with a trophy…
This Civic always makes it out to every event. Love the valve cover work…
Honda Z600 on some very old school Volk mesh wheels…
Infiniti G37 on some Volk TE37 G2 wheels… I almost thought it was a Hyundai Genesis for a quick second…
The custom “Wesley Snipes Edition” Lexus LF-A…black on black on black…fucking thing is darker than 5 midnights…
Spocom 2011 should have been called “GTR-Tit-Com” because it was pretty much all focused on models, some cars, and like 50+ R35 GTRs, with a majority of them being stock…This one was one of the nicer ones…
I love TE37SLs and they look perfect on this STI…
FD3S drift car on display at the APEX’i booth…
Gonna close it out for today with this model who was trying to show her titties but really wasn’t. I don’t know what was going on here, it’s like eating a Cheeseburger with the wrapper still on it. That analogy doesn’t make any sense but oh well, come back tomorrow for more, and then come check out Nisei Showoff this weekend for “GENERATIONS”!!…
Thanks for looking…
It’s JDM Yo!!! One-Year Anniversary Super Meet Coverage…Part 2…
Finally back with part 2 of 2 of the It’s JDM Yo!!! 1-Year Anniversary Meet coverage…The order of the pics are pretty random just because I was running around doing random things throughout the day. By this time I was trying to walk to venue and get photos of everything that caught my eye. It was a rare opportunity to actually talk to Tony that day too because the guy was all over the place making sure everything was running smoothly…
Here’s the man himself making announcements about the raffle with Natalia Marie…
The best part of this photo is that DPK Darryl is in the background and he’s all smiles. Funny because the only time we ever get a glimpse of him showing any kind of emotion is when the camera is out of focus, haha…Here Tony is raffling off a t-shirt from BRIDE….
Here’s a candid not so good shot of Natalia Marie. Probably pondering life or something of the sort…
Raffle prize winner posing with Natalia Marie…she gave out complimentary cans of NOS too for every winner, which was pretty cool. I actually walked by and jacked one but she’ll never have to know…I’m not a very big fan of most energy drinks but I like how NOS makes my liver tingle…
The guys were calling her “The bootleg Falken model”…haha…
Keychain aka Keith from It’s JDM Yo!!! doing some of his own coverage and wearing the limited edition Amy Fay It’s JDM Yo!!! t-shirt…
Clean Z33 on matte black Work Meister S1s….
Speaking of Amy Fay, here she is posing for a shot that Keith was taking and rocking her new ‘do…
Black Pie aka Low Fat Pie aka Giant Carlton chatting it up with Amy as she looked towards the camera…Amy signed Pie’s left hand and there’s a dirty joke in there somewhere but I’m just gonna leave it alone, haha…
International celebrity and social butterfly Big Mike was doing an interview for Bite Me! TV…
Oh this is cool…Remember that shoot I did with Amy Fay about a month or so ago? Well Tony liked the photos so much that he went and turned them into full on banners for Amy’s booth and they came out amazing…The banners were super clear and looks great printed, even in this large size….You can see Amy Fay’s website address in there too. I think the site is in beta stages right now but it should be fully functional soon. Be sure to check it out if you’re a fan…
The banner guy that both Tony and I use, Cary, even took one of my images and made it into a giant vinyl layout for the hood of his own G35 coupe…
A couple of VIP-themed builds from BP VIP…
GS on Leon Hardiritt Ordens…
Another look at the Amy Fay Edition It’s JDM Yo!!! t-shirt…image provided by your’s truly…
Mastermind’s Spirit Rei Odyvia…
EM2 Civic from AS1 on CCWs…
Rywire NSX…his “beater”….
Takeshi from Type_K Autosource in Japan was still in town from his trip to Eibach 2011 so we invited him to come out and chill with us at Tony’s meet. Here he is with LFP, Rywire, DPK Darryl, and Supertwinz John…
Big Mike and a really tall asian chick…Rumor has it that Lil Wayne made a song about her called “6-foot 7-foot”…haha…
Always liked this MR-2 but could never figure out why he doesn’t have the rest of his wing on. Every time I see the car it’s missing the center piece of his rear wing…The car would look so much better if it was just complete…If someone knows this guy and can enlighten me as to why he chose to have his wing that way, please let me know…
Interesting looking Toyota Yaris…
A couple of xBs…
…and a Nissan Cube…
GS with what I think is a TTE front lip and BBS wheels…
It’s rare to see modded Z32 300ZXs nowadays so it was kinda cool to see this one. Nice wheel fitment on the Volk GTCs…it’s not like overly aggressive like a lot of these “stanced-out” cars these days. If those cars are considered “aggressive” then I guess this Z has “passive-aggressive” fitment because it’s not apeshits stretched and wrecked…
Brian Filoteo from Auto Concept and Freddie from Auto Fashion smelling eachother’s fingers…
Matrix I’m sure you guys have all become familiar with from Team Praxis. If you look in the back, you can see that the Spocom “Model” booth was a ghost town…No real idea where the models where that day but I really didn’t see any there… 
Sorry for the blurry pic but this M belongs to a buddy of mine from highschool…guess he’s doing bigger things than I am these days haha…
Pancakes aka Oscar’s Y33 Q45…
Natalia Marie doing some interesting things with the NOS drink carrier thing…
My long time homie Kevin’s old Junction Produce LS400 that he recently sold. It was crazy because I saw another homie post up a pic of this car and realized that he bought the car…Crazy small world because these guys have no idea who each other are and aren’t remotely in the same parts of Socal…
Phaze2 Henry sitting on his Corolla…
Photo of Amy Fay at her booth while I was making my last trip around the venue to take pics…
Ejay and Downstar Frank…this pic would have been much funnier if Frank was on the other side and was behind Ejay…haha…
One more look at the Rocket Bunny xB…
Keychain’s Accord…
One last shot of my Q45 as I was setting up the lights for our group pic…
Closed out the day with a group shot of everyone that was in The Chronicles hall that day…
That’s all folks, thanks for looking…Wekfest Long Beach this weekend!!
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….
Eibach Honda Meet 2011 Coverage…Part 5…
Back with the final two parts of the 2011 Eibach Honda Meet coverage…Before I begin, I gotta give a huge shout-out to Tony from ItsJDMYo!!! for pulling off an amazing event this past weekend. His one-year anniversary meet was off the hook and things couldn’t have gone any better. I’ll throw up some pics of that after we’re done getting through the Eibach coverage so expect that to come this week. Today, we’re going to take a look at some of the cars that I haven’t posted up yet that you guys may be familiar with, as well as some better pics of some cars that I went back and took. More people had left by this time and it made it much easier to get better pics…
Here’s a shot of the crowd before most of the people left though. As you can tell, it was a packed house. Imagine trying to take a picture of a car in that crowd…
Finally had a chance to get some better shots of Anh’s Integra…
Rywire’s CR-X…It’s starting to be more obvious that Ryan is sort of in a “whatever” mood about this build because he’s so excited about his upcoming ITR project, but to the rest of the Honda community, it’s still one of the great CR-X builds of all time…
I never get tired of taking or looking at pictures of these two guys’ Civics. Every time I walked by I snapped a photo of them…
Chris Sakai chilling under a Mugen umbrella along with ATS Fred and ATS Mike Jones…
A mix of ATS Garage and DPK guys with Supertwinz John, Nick, and some random guys from SF…
Rywire’s NSX on Jared’s Mugen M7 wheels…It’s a cool look but I personally think that the Regamasters look better on there…
Sunny from Franklin Autobody’s Honda Insight on JLine wheels….
Track-prepped S2000 with the largest Voltex wing I have ever seen…
Stopped by my booth to get a drink and got this shot of Salem’s Volk RE30s and J’s Racing big brakes…
Mugen/Spoon combo S2000 that I showed you guys a pic of earlier in the coverage…
RSX on some GTR-face Rega EVOs…
This boosted Integra was really nice and I think a lot of people slept on the car at Eibach. I didn’t really see that many people look at it and it’s actually a really nice build…
Took a couple extra pics of Jeremy’s 4-door Integra since I didn’t get a chance to earlier this year at the Norcal Wekfest event. It was in an area that had so much foot traffic that I didn’t have a chance to look at it at all. This time around, I waited until people left and I had all the time in the world to check it out…
Really liked all the neo-chrome stuff along with the green Enkei wheels and Porsche brakes…
Another car that I didn’t get a chance to get pics of at Wekfest. Very similar styling cues to Jeremy’s Integra because the two are buddies. It also has some cool little details to it like the neo-chrome Benen two hook. I don’t think it had the front lip the last time I saw it but it’s a good addition. It completes the look…
Not really sure what was going on here and I’m pretty sure that I’m better off not knowing. Danny and his friends were all over the place at this point and doing all sorts of “interesting” things…
I was trying to get a picture of Mike’s Ferio, which I apparently didn’t even know was there to begin with until I saw Jeremy and his homie’s cars…
…and all of a sudden Mike comes flying by, getting rear-naked choked by his friend. I’m calling the guy his friend because Mike didn’t look like he was in any real imminent danger. The choke was pretty tight but Mike still had his soda firmly in hand and had a pinky up, which usually is a sign that he’s not about to tap out…
After Mike passed out, I had the guy choking him drag him to the right so that I could get a pic of his car…
Thank god he finally took those hideous Volk Racing C-Ultra wheels off his car and put the black Weds back on…Talk about having the perfect wheels on a build…it doesn’t get any better than this combo for Mike’s Ferio. I don’t even like black on black but I learned that I like it more than I like C-Ultras on ANY car…haha…
Love everything else about his car though…The engine bay is money…That Chronicles sticker doesn’t match anything else on the car though, but that just shows how much of a die-hard supporter he is…haha….
Coupe from Vegas on some all white GAB wheels and K-swapped…
I’m a big fan of Chivas’ Civic coupe so I was a little surprised to hear the back story on the build. Apparently I put him on blast a couple years back at an Eibach meet because I saw him rolling on some fake Sprint Hart CP-F wheels with stickers. Word got out that I made a comment about it and it got back to some local Vegas Import forum back where Chivas was from and it caused quite a bit of uproar. People were getting all mad at me for saying something and even Chivas was angry about it. Eventually he decided to not be angry and used it as motivation to make his car better than ever and this is the end result. I mean, I didn’t mean to really make a big deal out of it but I’m happy that he used it to make his car better. The coupe is a neck breaker now and gets looks every time he pulls up to an event. The Maziora-colored bay is not everyone’s taste but it almost sets the car off in a way…
Interesting shock tower modification but it gives him plenty of clearance so that he can drive much lower…It’s crazy that he drives back and forth from Vegas to Socal at this ride height…
What a long way this car has come…
Gonna close it out today with a shot of Keith from ItsJDMYo!!!’s Accord… Back tomorrow with the final installment of the 2011 Eibach Honda Meet coverage…
Thanks for looking…
Some Guy’s Q45, This Other Guy’s Corolla, and Introducing Sheila…
Well, the last couple weeks off have been good but work is starting to trickle in again so I’ll be back to my usual late nights writing and editing away. I have a shoot for Super Street this weekend too and it’ll be my first time shooting this type of car for print so I’m actually pretty excited about it. The car isn’t a Honda but the owner actually knows of this site and follows it regularly, which is pretty cool. There really hasn’t been much Honda news lately or any major events for me to post up coverage of so I’ve been spending my time helping out Tony from ItsJDMYo!!!. He’s had some time off work recently as well because he was recovering from back surgery but he’s really been trying to get his site moving again since he’s been able to walk around without any pain. He’s got a huge 1-year anniversary meet planned and he wanted to get some cars together so that his photographer Gilbert could take some shots to possibly use for the event flyer. He’s also been wanting to shoot my Q45 for the longest time for his site as well but we just haven’t been able to get around to it. Tony knows a guy over at Power Toyota in Cerritos and he convinced them to let us use their warehouse to shoot inside. The warehouse is also where his event will take place so having Gilbert shoot the flyer shots there made perfect sense. He asked that I bring my car over so that it could be a part of the flyer and since we had access to the warehouse, it was an opportune time to shoot just my car as well.
Tony was pretty happy with my shots of Amy Fay and the Spirit Rei/Mastermind Odyvia so he asked that I shoot my own car for the site as well as for a possible poster. He was model scouting at one of the cafes a couple months back and he spotted our model today, Sheila, and asked her if she was interested in possibly doing some work for his site. She was cool with it so he decided that he would use her for the shoot with my car and here we are today. She had never done any kind of “import modeling” before, which made her really nervous during the shoot, but we made it work. I just do the work behind the camera so all the posing and what not and conversing with the model was left up to Tony. I think we ended up with some pretty good photos. It’s weird shooting my own car but I guess it’s finally nice to get some decent shots of it for my own collection. Tony has already posted up is flyer for his meet and I’ll probably post details up of it on here if you guys haven’t already seen the flyer floating around on Facebook as well as other parts of the web. Noel and Bert from Phaze2 were there as well that day and I already posted the shot of Bert’s STI a couple days back. You can go back a couple posts and read about why there was only one shot of his car and how much of a shitty day he was having. Noel however, is a photographer for Canibeat and was on hand to help me out with setting up. Big Mike is usually the guy that helps me but he was too busy talking to Sheila that day so he was no help, haha. That and he was responsible for driving DPK David’s Civic to the shoot that day and he was mad that David’s coupe wasn’t starting for whatever reason. The first shots are of my car and Sheila, wearing a dress provided by Lalaboutique and at the end I’ve included some shots of Noel’s Corolla with Sheila again, wearing a different outfit. Sheila works at Cafe Temptation if you guys ever want to stop by there and chill. She’s a cool chick…and I think she did a good job her first time doing some modeling. Anyways, check out the photos…same rules apply as usual. Click on the links below for larger images…
Both Tony and I usually like to get a group shot during the shoots. Ryan from Rywire showed up that day to hang out with us as well so that’s why he’s in the shot. The Barnum brothers didn’t want to be in the picture because they’re either scared of girls and/or larger sized asian dudes…
It was a good experience overall. I always enjoy helping Tony out and doing shoots with him because it’s genuinely just a good time. I really want his site to grow and get better so I’m always down to help him out…thanks for looking. That’s a wrap for today…
“It’s The Chronicles of a Mastermind…Yo!!!”…featuring Amy Fay and Chaba…
Alright, so I got a call maybe a week and a half ago from my boy Tony Lee over at It’s JDM Yo!!! about an offer to shoot the twin Spirit Rei Odyvias over at Mastermind. One of the Odyvias (the silver one) was set to return to Japan a couple days later so the guys over at Mastermind really wanted to get some shots of the car before it left. I had mentioned to Tony a while back that I really wanted to shoot the cars but it was locked down by some other websites/mags/etc. so it just wasn’t going to happen. Tony came through though and called me as soon as he got the word that the guys at Mastermind where down. Tony wanted to print out some new posters with these cars to give out at various events for promotional purposes. If you guys have ever come by The Chronicles booth then you will probably remember the posters that we usually give out to people. Those posters came courtesy of Tony of course and featured Phaze2 Tony’s NSX and model Chaba. The posters were a hit so Tony really wanted to get some new ones out before the show season in 2011 hit full force. One of his other photographers that shot the poster the first time around, Keith aka Keychain, couldn’t make it to the shoot so Tony asked if I could go down there and assist him since I wanted to get some shots of the Odyvias anyways. Tony has done probably a million things for me in the nearly ten years that I’ve known him so I wasn’t gonna just turn down the offer, even though I was pretty busy that week. An added incentive was that the Mastermind facilities were really close to me so it wasn’t a problem for me to get over there…
To set-up the shoot, Tony once again invited two of his favorite models, the lovely Miss Amy Fay and Chaba. These girls have always been down to support Tony and his site so even though it was short notice, they came out to shoot. Tony’s resident model photographer, Gilbert was on hand to do all the shots for his site and his videographer, Daizo, was also there to capture video of the whole day. There stuff should go up soon as well but today, we’re going to take a look at the shots I got that day. Before we begin, you should be well informed that this post is probably not safe for your viewing pleasure at work. The girls aren’t like all naked or anything or even remotely implied. I just don’t know how your boss feels about you staring at photos of females at your job on a site called “Stickydiljoe.com”, if you know what I mean…haha. You should also know that I am no model photographer. All you import model fanatics should be familiar with guys like Steve Bitanga or Rey Trajano or whoever…I am not any of those dudes. If anything I should be in front of the camera because of my boyish good looks and charming personality, haha. I just merely went out there to help out Tony and to capture some shots of my own for the site. I brought out all kinds of lighting equipment that I usually use for shoots of cars for the guys to use but Gilbert had his own equipment that he was pretty set on using so I just used my own equipment. Of course Big Mike was out there to be my assistant as usual and to chat it up with the girls…
The Mastermind guys were more than a pleasure to work with as well. Those guys over there are very generous and even bought food and everything to feed everybody. I’ve dealt with Mastermind before when I first ordered my JDM Nissan Cima front bumper from them, which unfortunately, was lost in the Midnight Garage fire. Even back then when they had no idea who I was, they were incredibly helpful and I couldn’t ask for better service. Big shout out to those guys for their courtesy and allowing us to move all kinds of things around in their facility so that we could shoot. It was a tight space but we managed to make it work. Even after the shoot we were all just chillin’ and chatting it up with them about cars and the industry and what not. If you guys need anything imported from Japan, whether it be something you saw on Yahoo! Auctions or Upgarage, be sure to hit them up. They can get stuff fast and they can basically get anything from overseas….
Check out the Mastermind website here…
I have to thank Tony of course for inviting me out there to experience the whole thing. I like working with Tony because he gives me a lot of freedom to do whatever I want at shoots and whenever we have collaborations with one another, things usually go very smoothly…
Can’t forget to thank the girls as well, they were extremely easy to work with and very professional. There were moments in the beginning of the shoot when it was a giant clusterfuck and we couldn’t decide what went where and how the lighting worked out but they were so patient and willing to wait until we got everything set. Amy was on a bit of a tight schedule because she had to go to a Laker game later that day which we all found out later that whoever took her to the game tricked her because she ended up at a Clippers game but it’s all good, everybody knows that the Clippers were more exciting to watch then the Lakers anyways…haha…Anyways, Amy was easy to shoot because I have the terrible shakes and can’t take any photos without a tripod so I just set it on a timer and walked around while she did her thing. I don’t have that many shots of Chaba because Gilbert did most of the shots for her and I was still trying to figure out my equipment while she was getting shot…
The shots are pretty random actually. I ended up only getting some shots of the car and most of the shots were of Amy. The majority of the car shots as well as the video were all done by the guys over at It’s JDM Yo!!! so consider this post more of a “behind-the-scenes” type of deal. The majority of the shots where just test shots and I’ve never really shot people outside of a candid setting so don’t expect anything great. There are also various other shots after the shoot when the Mastermind guys had some fun with one of the Odyvias in the back of their closed lot…
Enjoy, and make sure to look out for links to larger versions of the pics below. Not all of them have larger versions but many do. The ones with my usual watermark are just regular sizes. At the end I’ve also included some like “alternate” edits of various shots just because I was playing around with them in Photoshop one night when I was half asleep and they actually came out pretty good…alright, enough talking…on with the pics…
This Odyvia belongs to Mastermind and has a 500+hp LS6 motor in it, unlike the silver one, which is from Japan and has a carb’d Nissan L28 motor…
Amy Fay of course…Larger Version (933×1400)
I think this one might actually end up being the poster shot… Larger Version (1400×933)
Chaba with Amy Fay…. Larger Version (933×1400)
Rockin’ the Mastermind tees…
Group shot of everyone that was there that day at Tony’s request. The Mastermind crew with Big Mike and I and the It’s JDM Yo!!! crew. Ross from Midnight Garage was there because he likes to stare at models…haha… Larger Version (1400×933)
…and a shot with the girls and the Mastermind staff… Larger Version (1400×933)
Okay, so at one point during the beginning of the shoot, Tony pulls Gilbert aside for some secret meeting. I was wondering what they were up to but it turns out that Tony was trying to get a particular shot for the poster that he wanted. He didn’t know how to describe it to Gilbert so he took a marker and attempted to draw the shot that he wanted…the picture that he drew resulted in even more confusion. I took the liberty of taking the marker and adding hair but this is what he came up with…
…I was eating a slice of pizza when I saw this and was like “what the fuck is this?” I couldn’t possibly end the day without getting Chaba to do that exact pose though to make Tony happy…
…and this is shot that we got, down to the hair and all…haha…You can see how terrible of an artist Tony is because his drawing of the Odyvia looks like an angry train…
Now for some stuff that I got after the shoot. This was when Gilbert was getting more shots of the cars and Daizo was doing his video stuff…
Vertex steering wheel, and a MSD 6AL ignition box built into the Kenmari Skyline dashboard of the S13…
Uncommon L28 swap from an old Datsun Z…
Last shot of the car before it returns to Japan… Larger Version (1400×933)
Renderings of the Odyvia that hung on the wall of the Mastermind offices…
Test shot from my camera while Gilbert was shooting with his…
Amy Fay and Big Mike pinky-swear collabo…
Below are the alternate edits that I was talking about earlier in the post. Just some “artsy” I guess you can say, style of edits that I did while I was falling asleep. Came out pretty cool I think so I thought I’d share them with you…
Really liked this one… Larger Version (1400×933)
Candid… Larger Version (1400×933)
That’s all for today folks, thanks for looking and have a great weekend…
Skunk2 Unmeet 2.0 Coverage…
This year’s “Unmeet” at the Yorba Linda Regional Park was basically on point with last year’s. There wasn’t anything really major that needed to be changed from last year’s event so this one was much the same. There was no pinata this time and the crowd was slightly different but again, for the most part, everything was exactly the same. Strangely enough, even the weather was eerily reminiscent of 2010..meaning that it was kinda fucking hot. Temperatures in the mid 80s-upper 90s is pretty hot for us in Socal, especially considering how the days before it was in the high 60s. Weather has been kinda random but hanging out in the park in warm weather isn’t too bad, especially if there is a tree or something to stand under and relax. It was better off than staying at home, that was for sure because my place tends to get a little hotter than normal since I am on the second level. I actually decided to wake up earlier than usual to meet up with DPK David so that we could cruise out together. I asked Ross if he would wash my car for me and he was nice enough to put in some work for me so I definitely appreciate that. With all the rest I hadn’t been getting leading up to the meet, washing a big ass car like mine would have just killed the rest of the day for me. Anyways, we cruised to the park at around 11 or so and when we got there, the crowd was pretty big already. Everybody was eating the free food that Skunk2 provided so we decided to join in on the festivities…
May was at a bridal shower so it was just David, Jackie, Ryan, Jared, and I at the start. A couple of the other homies showed up much later and Big Mike was busy running around the meet making sure everything was going okay….
One of the highlights of the day for me was the hot links that PlanB Mike brought. Those things were delicious but by the end of the night, I regretted throwing down three of them at the BBQ because I was sitting on the toilet and shitting fire for a good 20 minutes…
DPK David and Ryan talking to Aaron Bonk from Skunk2…
Brandon aka Lost is Black working the grill and making sure everyone was fed…
The cars were uhh…interesting. There was most certainly a different mix of Hondas. Of course you had Big Mike’s Prelude…
…and you also had Civics like this, which look like they are themed from the “tuner” style car toys they have at Target, Wal-mart, etc., all the way down to the “HKS” intercoolers. I don’t often see Hondas put together like this nowadays but it’s interesting to see them pop up at Skunk2 events. I guess it shows that they have more of a broad audience than some other companies, or at least a broader audience than what we’re accustomed to seeing. I was standing around taking pictures and some guy even came up to me and asked me what I was taking pictures for and where they were going to be posted. I told him it was for a site called The Chronicles and he looked at me like I was fucking crazy. Haha…
Okay so you had some pretty detail-oriented builds like Big Mike’s and then you had the Civic above which is like “Fast & Furious” styled, and then you had some more simple Hondas like this hatchback. I really liked this car because it was really clean and subtle. Kinda reminds me of Phaze2 Arnel’s hatch back when he first started working on it…
Not really a fan of the whole unpainted carbon fiber fender look but this car looks like it had quite a bit of work into it…
These guys looked like they were straight from Jersey…
Do these wheels look authentic to you? I’ll admit, it was a good attempt at fooling people into thinking that it was legit, but it’s not by any stretch of the imagination. Hopefully the owner of these wheels didn’t purchase these thinking they were authentic Sprint Hart CP-Rs because they are fake. There are really obvious things that you should be able to spot right away that will tell you that it’s not authentic, but I’ve taken the liberty to point two key points out that show that they are Rotas, or whatever replica wheel it is…
Besides the two items that I’ve listed, you can also tell by looking at the finish of the lips as well as the lack of the “HART” word that should be in between two of the spokes. I’ve owned an authentic set so I’ve become pretty familiar with what the real ones look like. The fact that it was a one-piece wheel was the real dead giveaway. The real Harts have a two-piece welded design so you will clearly see a gap between the barrel and the face. This was honestly one of the closest fakes that I’ve come across. Again, I don’t care if you rock Rotas or not…it’s not my style but the issue that I have are the ones where people try to play them off as real shit and I will point that shit out every time….Funny thing is that one of the guys there told me that they even have fake Rotas in the Phillipines now, called “ROCA” wheels or something…shit, what’s the world coming too…haha…
Rywire’s NSX on Regamaster EVOs…
Another of Big Mike’s…
The red hatchback from earlier… Nice car but I didn’t really get why he had to drive around the lot repeatedly…
Pretty nice S2000 on RE30s that cruised up…
Everything about it looked pretty good so I decided to take a closer look at it…
Loved how it had some meaty ass tires on it…
Very well done overall..the only bad thing about it was the alignment of the exhausts but I think the owner mentioned to DPK Jared that it was going to be fixed soon…
Nice Integra sedan on BBS wheels…
Uhh…
Civic with the carbon fiber fenders that I mentioned earlier…
Big Mike and Rywire together…
The front end of my Q…
A couple others showing up later in the afternoon…
After the majority had finished eating, the Skunk2 guys decided to hold various contests to give out some Skunk2 merchandise. They had a hot dog eating contest, which I didn’t really feel the need to get pics of, and they also had a pull-up contest…
Brandon doing some work on the bars…
…as well as Ryan…
Nit arrived in his purple S2K…
…along with some other SD heads like Enrique and his cream colored hatch…
Enrique’s Civic is looking better and better everytime I see it…
Ejay decided to make the hour long drive out to chill with us…
Brandon getting some video footage of the meet for Skunk2…
Pretty nice stance on this 4-door on Rota Grids…
Clean FA5 or whatever you designate these things…
DPK David and I…
Always a fan of this DC2…
Since Big Mike is a vegetarian, he didn’t have anything to eat at the BBQ. Luckily Tony from ItsJDMYo!!! was a nice enough guy to pick up some food for him on the way…
Another clean newer model Civic on some Hayashi-looking Axis OG wheels…
A couple guys playing with an NSX R/C car…
DPK David was a little sad to see his old Integra again. When he had it, it was like silver with a white front end or some shit and the new owner decided to paint it and then resold it to it’s current owner…
Tes and Rodrez arriving to spend some time with the homies…
Salem and friends…
Aaron from Skunk2 chatting it up with Salem, Dougie, and Ryan…
Tony and Keychain Keith from ItsJDMYo!!! discussing upskirts and all things perverse…
Big Mike’s buddy snapping some shots on his board…
Band of misfits…
Carlos aka Mugen Boy from DPK and his S2000 CR on Mugen MF10L wheels…
Honda Tuning CR-Z…
Rywire is still hard at work on finishing up Jared’s S2000 so he’s been driving around in Tom Selleck’s Porsche…
It was Dougie’s birthday the day before and he received some Skunk2 coilovers for his birthday. He’s been itching to start on his project for awhile now and we’re all anxious as well…
That’s pretty much all for the meet coverage. I’m gonna close it out with this shot of Keith saying bye to Ejay as he was leaving to go get ready for his birthday party later that night.
Thanks for looking, time to get back to work on some other photos..
RPM 2010: Irvine, CA coverage…Part 1…
Oh man…let’s see, where do I begin with this show…Uhh..I guess roll-in was a bit of a pain in the ass. We were supposed to roll into the venue on Friday night but I couldn’t make it and it turned out to be for the better. They scheduled roll-in from 8-9pm but I heard that the majority of the people didn’t get to leave until around 2am in the morning. After I heard about that, I slept comfortably knowing I didn’t have to go through that but expected there to be a shitload of cars there. I mean, if roll-in took 4-5 hours longer than expected, that must mean that there were so many cars that they didn’t know where to put them right? So I get up the next morning, bright and early, and head down to Irvine to bring my car in. From doing this show, I have learned that I never want to do another show on grass and mud. Shit was not the business…Anyway, so with the mess that was roll-in the night before I get inside the venue and a majority of it was empty. I mean, it’s a pretty decent sized lot and the event was completely undersold. There was literally a gigantic portion of the grass area that wasn’t used. There was also patches of mud where people would get stuck too (I’m foreshadowing Tony being stuck in the mud)…
Cars overall were pretty weak. Aside from Auto Concept, Euro Projektz, our group, and a few vendors, there was absolutely nothing to look at or snap pics of. They also had a very large group of motorcycle guys showing, which was weird. I’m not just talking about like street bikes and crouch rockets. Not even Ruckus’, even though they showed as well. I’m talking like big ass Harley’s and custom choppers. Shit was weird. I felt like I was at a NOPI event in the midwest or some shit. The whole show was just a little odd for my tastes. I guess because I’m used to being on concrete and not having to hear guys with choppers revving their motors every 10 fuckin minutes…
I also heard from Tony that the RPM spokesmodel, Misa Campo, didn’t even bother to show up to the event because she had been out late the night before or something. You know there is something wrong with your show when your own spokesmodel doesn’t even want to show up for it. I don’t know her nor claim to know anything about her, but I spoke to another promoter who has also had issues with booking her and dealing with her attitude or something. I don’t wanna elaborate on it any further but I guess she’s not the easiest person to get ahold of. That may or may not be RPM’s fault. Funkmaster Flex was supposed to be there as well as stated on the official website and he also didn’t show up. That’s a real issue when people you book for your event don’t show up. I mean, come on…
Overall, I don’t think I would do a show like this again. I was supposed to do coverage for Super Street as well and I honestly couldn’t give them anything that they could really use because there just wasn’t anything out there. No matter what though, whenever we are together with the homies, there is always some crazy shenanigans that occur and it ends up being a good time. There was definitely some firsts though that I experienced at RPM that I didn’t see before…There was like, mini sandstorms throughout the day and I saw a couple canopies go up in the air and land on cars and fly over motorhomes, shit was ridiculous. I’ll get more into it as the pics go up…
Since there wasn’t really any cars other than the ones you usually see on here, there won’t be much car stuff. They did put us near a model booth though, which is never a good idea for us. Because we get bored and we go creep and just take pictures of models at the show. This makes The Chronicles a very NSFW environment. Haha…make sure to be ready to see some stuff that you shouldn’t be viewing from work. Even with the small amount of cars there, I still managed to get a shit load of random pictures, so be prepared for the onslaught of pictures…Anyways, enough talking…enjoy…
DPK David’s bay…before tanned ass found it’s way onto his intake manifold…
Milton aka CamberSC hawkin me in the background…what a weirdo…
Tony from It’s JDM Yo putting stickers on DPK David’s car. This guy was the one responsible for getting our spots at the show so we gotta give it up for Tony…he was pretty worn out that day so I took on the responsibility of creepin’ for him…
Big Mike fulfilling his sponsorship duties…
This dude had a pretty elaborate display. Strange, but yes, elaborate. I guess since he was parked on grass, he decided to do a “Farmville” theme with fake wooden fence, fake bricks of cheese made out of wood, and a Got Milk sign. He was parked next to us so we were watching him and like 14 other people assemble the thing, it was crazy. Not a bad looking car though…I could do without the fake Recaros and the green cage that looks to be made for another vehicle but overall, it’s a clean street car….
Plenty of custom Ruckus’s were there. I wish I would have taken more pictures of them but I honestly don’t now what I’m looking at…
Nice S2000 with a CR front bumper on it. I haven’t really encountered too many of these with the fender and CR bumper combo…not sure how it’s supposed to fit because it looks like there are some issues in the corner. For the most part it looks pretty good. Love the wheels too…
West Coast Customs was there on display and they brought out their 2-door Charger…this thing is baaaaadddd…
Travis was there but I didn’t see him much that day. He was probably running around showing his cauliflower ear to models and threatening to suplex small children…
Phaze2 Tony thinking about what to do to his NSX for the next show season…
Make sure to remember this moment…because all the later pictures of her is her withouth much clothes on…*creepy wink*…I honestly had to go back and check because I didn’t recognize her with clothes on…
This is Tommy’s M45 with his new Accu-air suspension done by Midnight Garage. You don’t know him and he doesn’t keep up with this site because he’s too cool, but his M was the car that was inside Midnight Garage when it burned down. This isn’t the same car of course because the other one was destroyed but he went out and got another one and this one probably ended up coming out better than the other one did…I mean, without the fire…
We went to grab some food and that was one thing they did have a lot of. It looked like a mini fair with turkey legs, bbq, shaved ice, etc…
HeyTinaaaa…
Big Mike got a “chicken burrito” that ended up being more of a lettuce wrap because there was no chicken to be found…
I saw this model applying lotion all over herself so I agreed to watch her do it…She was very thorough…
…then her friend next to her was like, “go stand really far away and eat chili cheese fries with May and take pictures of me signing stuff and I’ll pretend not to notice.”…I agreed…
GReddy 350Z…
Goldmember’s new fender flares…
Matty’s xB…
BJ Jaraba’s Fit…I really wish he would have kept it the way it was after his cover in Honda Tuning magazine. It was perfect then…
We were at the main ItsJDMYo tent throughout the day and this one was on the opposite end of the 25 cars that parked with us…All those guys in that tent were the guys from Team Praxis…
Caught Brian from Auto Concept spitting game at this girl…I waited for the long conversation to end before I showed him this pic…
…of the same homegirl pickin’ her teeth HARD…haha…
1st Place Best Engineered Haircut at RPM…
Big bikes…
My good buddy “Guy with Dickies shirt on” posing with “I think I’ve seen her asshole online” and “girl I thought was Maureen Chen”…
That AngelsnBabes booth was right next to ours so I would always walk over there to see what randoms hit I could find… Eagles were spread…
Clean CR-X from Praxis…
Went with Big Mike to go creep…
She was probably the most active throughout the day…walking around and taking pictures with whoever asked…like how “models” are supposed to be before they get too big headed and don’t pose with cars any longer. Yeah, some are actually like that…
Euro Projektz had this whole like summer beach theme going on so their models were all in bikinis and stuff… it was a good idea except that the members themselves thought it would be a good idea to play along as well, which lead to a lot of pale asian dudes walking around with no shirts on… =P
They made this girl do everything…while she was wiping cars down, the shorter asian one was climbing all over people’s cars and shit…
Black Pie enjoyed the view…
Auto Concept Supra… Everytime I took a picture of a car, I turned around and saw this…
There’s more…
…Auto Concept RX-7…
I think she caught me creepin’ right here…either that or she found the topless asian male to be funny…
Auto Concept STi…
Still putting in work…
G37 sedan on R35 wheels…
…
Auto Concept G37…as wild as it gets…
This was the clickable picture from yesterday so if you guys want to see the larger version of it, go back to yesterday’s post…
Auto Concept K-powered titanium everything Mini…this car consistently wins Best of Show at car shows over here, and deservingly so…
Auto Concept Top Secret Supra again…
Really clean TSX parked in the Platinum VIP section…
Linda’s Matrix from Praxis…
Jimmy’s FJ Cruiser from Praxis with 5 6-lug Gram Lights…
Be cr-ack tomorrow with more pics…yay puns…
Thanks for looking…
“It’s JDM Yo!!!” presents the Power Preview meet…
On Sunday, I went out to Power Toyota Cerritos for the “It’s JDM Yo!!!” Power Preview meet. The homies put the meet together last minute and it came out really well. It’s not a Honda thing or Honda event at all but it’s still good to go and check out some nice cars. I’m a fan of all things automotive and even though I have a deep appreciation for Hondas, anything that’s built the right way will always catch my eye.
Here is Tony from “It’s JDM Yo!!!” blog’s description of how the meet came about…
“Last Monday my friend from Power Toyota Cerritos approached us about helping them throw a car meet but with only 2 weeks notice. Something we weren’t too thrilled about. Reluctantly we agreed to help them only because depending on how this meet does they’ll let us host the next meet which they want to use as a kick off to what will eventually be a monthly meet. Pretty much how Norm Reeves Honda next door has their monthly Honda meets. Another reason we want to help them is because this location is pretty bomb. They have a 3 story parking structure above the service department and with the popularity with indoor parking structure shows we see great potential here…”
I had already ate earlier in the day because my parents came out to visit but from what everyone was eating, they had some great food at the meet because it was all catered and what not. The meet was a great success and I’m sure the future ones will be better and better. On with the pics…
Walked over to the Midnight Garage booth area and saw Tony’s NSX. If you’re wondering why an NSX is at a Toyota meet, I couldn’t tell you. I guess they invited him out anyway just because they wanted to see his car in person and they gave him a nice spot inside the building…
Then I saw this thing roll up…pretty crazy set-up. I have to say it’s one of the craziest soarer/SC builds I’ve seen…
…after it parked I looked closer at it and the paint could use some work but I think once that’s taken care of, it’ll be a badass car. It has all the right stuff on it and I look forward to seeing more of it in the future…
Freddie and the Auto Fashion guys were out with the Airrunner booth….
Random fighter pilot getting food from the catering section…
Kinda wish I woulda jumped on the food so I could have eaten this…
Billy’s IS of course. He’s also one of the guys that runs the “It’s JDM Yo!!!” shindig and he helped put this meet together with Tony Lee…
…here’s Billy doing some coverage…
Goldmember’s new set-up. He completely redid the entire car and it’s all kitted-up now and everything…looks great…
Matty’s xB of course…
Serious business discussion…
The other man behind the meet. This guy right here had been stressing all week over this shit and it all paid off in the end…
Mikeyyyy and some bBSquad guys…
No gold bay, trust me…
Dancar’s JDM everything bB…hopefully I’ll get to take some more indepth pics of this car soon…
Always good to see Emerson…he stopped by because he had to bring his aunt some lumpia…
Nick’s Supra… I think he was drinking somewhere…
This guy ate tacos…
I didn’t take this.
Randoms….
That’s a wrap.
