Okay, so that Thursday of SEMA week in Vegas was an off day for me. May and I decided to go hang out on the strip and just walk around and eat randomly so it was a car-free day for us. It was good just to spend time away from cars and everybody to explore Las Vegas but that night, we all met up again to attend the Falken/Promotion party inside LAX. Normally I wouldn’t really be down to go to the same club two nights in a row but these industry parties are typically just hang out spots and things don’t get too hectic. I saw in one of the comments somebody mentioned that there are a lot of dudes in the club…well yes, clearly, it is an industry party. In an industry that’s filled with dudes, it’s already expected that you’re gonna run into nothing but dudes at the club. I mean, if you go to Vegas to to meet girls and get your fuck on, SEMA week is definitely not the week to go. That’s like going to Vegas during the video game conventions or something. It’s not the fucking porno convention, and even those are filled with creepy guys. You usually just attend these parties to hang out with the homies and to meet business contacts within the industry. If you wanted to fuck then you should probably go grab one of those “girls at your door in 5 min” cards and call some prostitute to come play with your wang a little. Anyways, Rodrez, his girl Tes, May and I all met up a couple of hours before that to go eat dinner with one of Tes’ friends at Maggianos on the strip. That place had some amazing italian food. You will see in these pics of me later at the club where my 8-pack is non-existent. That’s because A. I ate a shitload of italian food and B. my 8-pack only exists in my dreams. After dinner, we got ready and headed back to Luxor for the Falken party. Most of us didn’t have VIP passes but Big Mike and a couple others are really close with Robert from Falken and we managed to sneak into the VIP area…

Some familiar faces in this crowd… This was our view of the party for most of the night. It was actually a lot busier than I expected it would be, especially since SEMA was close to over…

Ryan brought out his cat shirt, which usually means that he’s ready to get fucked up and gawk at girls…

We were hanging out and then all of a sudden, the biggest motherfucker on earth, EVER appeared. Other than Donovan from Vibrant, this guy was the biggest duded in Vegas. I swear, he was so tall, if he picked up Ryan his ears would have popped from the elevation…

Sunny from Franklin Autobody in Norcal was there chillin’ with us all week and buying us full drinks and trying to convince us they were shots. Most of the time when you see Tony fucked up in these pictures it’s because Sunny was cramming drinks down our throats. Normally he’s such a reserved guy, in Vegas he was just trying to get everybody wasted…I’m a Vodka drinker personally but Sunny started giving me Vodka/Redbulls as shots and by the end of the night I went blind from the alcohol poisoning…

I was so drunk that I was convinced that I saw the homie Marqious from the east coast. I don’t know where the rest of the east coasts PG+K guys were at but Marqious always seems to appear out of nowhere whenever there’s an event. Sometimes it’s like he lives out here in the west because I see him pop out of nowhere more than most of my other friends…

Sunny even had Gene Tjin drinking. I don’t know if Sunny even knows Gene but if you were asian or somewhat asian looking, Sunny was giving you a drink….As Sunny screamed out in a alcohol-induced high, “WE ASIAN, WE DRRRINK!!!”…

Tes, Rodrez, and May…The guy in the back is Will from Exospeed Racing. I think his homie was talking to him about Usher and Will was like “Hey man, do you have the 8701 album by Usher? His homie was like “Umm..which one was that?”…and Will did that pose and was like “You know the one where he does this on the cover…”

Now the story makes sense…

Blurry shot of Rodrez and Luke Munnell from Import Tuner magazine…

Sunny, Jared, Tony,and May…and Tes’ hand….

Stickydiljoe and Big Mike…

Ryan getting his bro-on…

Ryan telling me the names of all the cats on his t-shirt…yes, they have names apparently…That one that he’s pointing at is aptly named …”Smokey”…

Salem and I together for a rare picture… This guy is a movie star now. His car is in that new movie “Born to Race”…

Around 3:30-4am, it was time to get out of the club and to go grab some food. Of course, we ended up at Earl of Sandwich again because that shit is fucking delicious. After food, we all separated and went back to our respective rooms. I had to wake up early just to cover the rest of SEMA so there wasn’t much rest for me. Tony had to come with me too because Friday was the last day of SEMA and the cars had to be out of there by 2PM. Big Mike and the rest of them also had to meet up early to go to a magazine shoot for Ryan Der. One of the head guys from Banzai Magazine in the U.K. was in Vegas and he wanted to make sure to feature Big Mike’s Prelude. Ryan Der and Tony’s car ended up getting shot too. I’d tell you to keep an eye out for that but I have no idea when that shit is coming out. That and distribution is really low in the states here and I believe the only places I’ve seen them in are major bookstores like Borders….

I think it was close to 10am when I finally got to the convention center for the last day of SEMA. I wanted to make sure that I got the cars that weren’t inside the convention halls and to check out the cars that were parked outside….

One of the first cars I spotted was this Chrysler 300. On the outside, it’s not anything crazy to look at and the only indication that there was any major work done to it were the Viper wheels. I looked inside the bay and saw that it was swapped with a V10 Viper motor. Pretty cool. I’ve always liked the 300s and having a Viper in it makes it that much better…

 

Nice BMW…not sure about the copper on the red but it’s different…

GS on Weds Kranze wheels…Notice the nitrous bottle in the trunk…

Gene from bbSquad’s xB…

The giant that was at the club with us probably drives this thing…

Another bbSquad member…

A couple of the homies from Team Praxis….

Jon Jon’s IS with Job Design aero…

A couple more VIP builds…I love thos Weds Kranze Bazreia wheels. They might be my next set of wheels actually. I was suprised to see so many cars that had them on at SEMA…

Jose Romo’s Audi A3…I like his car but I really hate those wheels…haha…

…and while we’re on the topic of TSW wheels, these are probably the best looking wheels they’ve done to date…

Tony and I then made our way inside one of the halls to make the rounds to see if we missed anything. Saw this Scion which has the classic Toyota rally livery…

Actually took the time to take a look at the new Scion tC builds since it wasn’t as crowded as the other days before…

I noticed on one of the stickers that it said this tC had a T67 turbo on it…I called Tony over and looked inside the bay and it does indeed have a T67 turbo…I wonder what kind of numbers this car makes…

Walked over to the huge Ford section and saw this crazy ass truck. I really like the little touches of orange throughout the car and the overall scheme…

Tjin Edition Ford Fiesta…

Another Ford Fiesta, this one built by FSWerks…

Twins Turbo Viper…fucking insane. Read more about it here.

WRX sedan that was in the Mackin Industries booth. Love the new TE37SL wheels…way to just take a perfect design and make it even better with better sizing…

Advan wheels line-up that was in the Mackin booth…

Volk Racing line-up in the Mackin booth…

Cut-up Volk wheels to show strength and metal quality and that they’re not filled with cheese…

Center-lock true Volk forged Magnesium wheel…

Lady in the Magnaflow booth…

Around noon, Big Mike hit us up to let us know that they were already letting the cars outside in the Source Interlink section out. I guess they really didn’t need them around anymore so we went outside to meet up with them…

Tony and Big Mike discussing plans after they roll out of the convention center…

While they were doing that I went to go get some better pictures of Gil’s Integra. It was a better time of day and the sun wasn’t coming down yet and casting crazy shadows everywhere…

Gil’s Integra…

His new J’s Racing front fenders…

Gil’s custom strut bar and plug wire cover fabricated by ASC Speed Metal…

Ryan warming up his Civic…

Bisi’s turbo wagon, which he drove out to Vegas…

Random shots of Big Mike’s Prelude…

Even though they were getting ready to roll out, there was still a consistent flow of people coming by to check out their cars…

There was also a consistent flow of people that stood in line to talk to Big Mike…

Alright, I’m gonna cut it off here for now. Next update will include the rest of the pics of these guys as they were getting set to leave the SEMA show and then a shitload more of pictures that I took after they left. I was in the zone and since I was by myself, I just walked the whole SEMA show to see everything that I didn’t get to the days before…There’s definitely some more cool stuff coming…I’m out for now.