Somebody jerked off in the parking lot….

That’s all you really have to know about the type of shit that goes on at one of these post-IA parking lot parties at the La Quinta. Apparently, somebody thought it was hilarious to beat off in the parking lot in front of everyone…and that was just on the first night before the event even took place. Haha, whether it’s true or not, I’ll never know. I actually don’t want to know. If somebody decided that it was cool to whip that shit out and start attacking it like it owed him money, then be all means, have at it…but I don’t want to see or hear about it, haha. The fuck is wrong with people these days? Really…For the most part, the partying the first night was pretty uneventful. Hotel management asked the police to come by and shut it down and again, for the most part, people chilled after that. The second night was a bit different, and I’ll tell you more about it further down in this post. May actually really wanted to come to IA with me but since my whole trip was so poorly planned and airfare wasn’t exactly the cheapest, I thought it was best to just tread the IA waters with a couple of the guys, just to see how it was like. Plus I really wanted to get that “complete” experience you know. Figure out how everybody else does IA and see what they were raving about. When it came to Import Alliance, I couldn’t have been happier with the event. When it came to the parties and extra curricular stuff outside of the actual meet itself, I was less than impressed. It wasn’t like the dude jacking off in the parking lot or whatever turned me off from the whole thing, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s just because I’m a bit older now and I’m over the partying stage. From 21-25 or so, I did it all you know. What these guys were doing at the hotel is pretty much an equivalent to like the “college” experience, where you get drunk and go to frat parties or house parties and just act like complete assholes. It’s cool, I get it and again, more power to you but it’s just not for me anymore. Some of the stuff was humorous but the other stuff was just plain juvenile and childish…oh and also pretty dangerous. I think if we had brought the girls along with us for the trip, they wouldn’t be having more than 15 minutes of that shit. Not that they aren’t down, because these girls know how to party too but being in a crowd of what is probably 80-85% males who are drunk and acting retarded is not the best environment for women to be in. I really just wanted to get a sense of what things were like so we stuck it out and hung out with everyone to experience the parties at La Quinta…

If anything I feel bad for the manager of the hotel. We actually stood at the front desk and talked to her for awhile just to see what she had to say about it. She admitted that she knew what she was getting into with the whole Import Alliance thing since this was her third straight year hosting a majority of the crowd. The money is good. I don’t know how busy that part of Nashville gets but I doubt they have that significant of a crowd every weekend booking up all the rooms there. We asked her if there were other people staying there that weren’t apart of the IA crowd and she said that there indeed was. I ran into an older couple who were waiting for an elevator and some dude like blew one of those plastic trumpet-style horns right into her face and she was pretty upset about it. The manager said that when people book rooms that weekend, they are notified of the “conditions” and what goes on there so they have fair warning of what’s going on. So the people that chose to stay there, I don’t feel bad for, because they knew what was going on and less than a mile down the way, there was a hotel that’s nice and quiet and half the price (where I stayed). They could have easily stayed there but the manager said they opted to stay there anyway. What’s terrible is the amount of clean-up that goes into these type of events there at the hotel. One of the elevators broke after the first night so everyone was stuck riding one elevator where the lights were pulled out so people were crammed into one elevator and stood there in the pitch dark. Fire extinguishers were all fucked with, the parking lot was a mess, and the list just goes on…I can’t even imagine what the rooms looked like. But apparently it’s worth it to the La Quinta management because they continue to put up with it…

Anyways, let’s start the coverage, I’ll tell you more about the parties later on. We’re picking up around the time when Big Mike, DPK David, and I were walking on the other half of the lot right next to the main section. This section as I mentioned in Part 5, hosted some of the more uhh…”whatever” cars. There were some gems in there but you had to look for them. The rest of them were either incomplete or like, relics from the early 2000s style of imports. Halfway through my walk, I indeed found some gems. And these three cars were perhaps some of my favorites of the entire weekend. Nothing too crazy, but style doesn’t always have to come in brunches. You can build a nice, simple car, and it’ll send a bigger message than any crazy over the top project…

Love at first sight…man, you know how you go to a club where there are like tons of wack ass looking girls and you see one that’s decent-looking but in that moment, she’s incredibly hot? Well that’s called “hot by association”. When you come back to the real world she’s no longer that hot anymore but in that moment, she’s a 10/10. There were a ton of builds like that at IA. Not “great” by any means, but in that moment, it was one of the best builds there…these three cars…are by no means “hot by association”. These cars are the ones that you can appreciate at any event, in any state, on any coast. Very strong words, I know, but simplicity is the key…

FD3S, nothing crazy on the aero-side, just Volk TE37SLs without the red spoke decal and under the hood…

..GM LS1-swap…don’t really need much more after that. It’s a beast…

This was actually the first car I spotted out of the three. I went up to it and just stood and stared at it, then the owner, Kyle Smith, came up to me and asked me if I was StickyDilJoe…I said I was  and he told me he was a big fan of the site, which I was kind of surprised by and said that he’s been following it for quite some time. I told him that I appreciated it and he was just a real quiet, humble type of dude. I told him how much I liked his car and how it made my day to see the three of them parked out there. The car is very straight to the point. It has an SR-swap, which he said looked terrible so he didn’t pop his hood, bronze TE37s, and a complete JDM OE 180SX Type X kit. I don’t know if many of you are familiar with this but the 180SX (or our 240SX hatchback) was in production in Japan up until 1998 when it ceased production. The Type X (and also a Type R model) was the last incarnation of the 180SX and had this front bumper, front lip, sideskirts, rear valance, and taillights. You want to talk about “JDM” style, it doesn’t get anymore “JDM” than this right here…and he doesn’t even have to wear a stupid ass t-shirt that says JDM on it…

The front end with the Type X front and what I call the “double Forest Whitaker” …you know, the lazy eyes…haha…so fucked up…

Late model 180SX JDM tails and rear add-on pieces…perfect wheel fitment too…

Kyle’s buddy was the owner of the black 180SX convert, which was featured in Modified Magazine awhile back…this one is probably the more refined one of the two but both  are great looking S13s…

TE37s in what looks like “Formula Silver” finish…

Ever seen a Nissan with a NEXT! Miracle Cross Bar?…

The interior…note the APEX’i Power FC control unit, Bride door panels, floor mats, and gauges…very nice…

This photo came out kinda shitty cuz I had high hopes for it…

After stopping and chatting with those guys for awhile, we moved on to see what else we could find…

J32-swapped CR-X…I wish I could show you a close-up of the motor, it was so worn down and corroded…looked like the car that this motor came out of was submerged in water for a long time or something…still cool nonetheless…

This was cool…I think at that point CCWs were like a sharp pointy knife slowly digging into my rib cage but it look good on this hatch. Bay is decent, tucked but still needs a couple things here and there like a custom fuel set-up and some moving of certain items. Good looking car though…I have another shot of it from the second day of IA that I really liked but I’ll post that later on…

240SX drift car (I’m assuming) on a trailer…

I thought the wheels on this Civic were cool…even the smaller bolts along the lip were spikes as well….

Accord wagon and Civic from V Race Works…

Widebody S2000 from Illmotion…uhh, I’m sure there’s a joke or caption I could toss in here with the girl hold the pole and her hair waving around in the breeze but I’m just going to leave it alone…

Joe Maguschak once again…At this point a lot of people had left so I could finally get a shot of this car from a distance…

Really liked this shot of the firewall on his coupe…

I’ve always had a vested interest in this NSX because it resembles Phaze2 Tony’s NSX in many ways. Both were red at one point and both are rocking Sorcery aero, with this one being different because of the flip lights… I didn’t really expect it to be at the event but when it showed up I went over to take a closer look at it…

Great looking build overall, in many ways it’s much more refined than Tony’s. Tony’s NSX is more raw and just sounds really intimidating. This one is much more subdued, and everything is more streamlined. I really like the rear diffuser on it as well…

19-inch Work S1 2-Piece wheels…the true 3-piece has a different face with exposed bolts…

One of the rare VIP-themed rides at IA. This one is a Y33 Q45 with a Version Select kit and AME Shallen FX wheels…

…next to it was an even rarer sight…a VIP styled Acura RL…

Subaru STI on some aggressively sized Enkei RPF1….

Boosted single cam Civic…

C-West-kitted RX-7 getting worked on…

Honda Fit on some purple Mugen wheels…

Civic on some 949s…

The IS300 that I took a bunch of photos of outside moved into the paddocks towards the end of day one…

Supercharged RSX on Wedsport TC105N at the Hybrid Racing booth…

LS1-swapped G35 at the Chasebays booth. I didn’t take a shot of the rest of the car because it was like stock height and incomplete…

Matt Tucker’s EK9…Someone told me he had like 5000 friends on Facebook so I checked….this dude now has his own fan page…haha…Guys got more friends than Big Mike and HeyMikeyyyy. He’s like the Tila Tequila of Facebook…

K-swapped DC2 at the K-Tuned booth…

One of my favs again…Anthony Smith’s EG6…

PG+K Moe…

Zerolift booth with stock that on the west coast, would be the seized-property of the state of California…haha…

BonB from PG+K’s Civic as he was getting ready to take off to go eat at Tiger’s Pho spot…

Shot with my 10mm lens, that’s why it’s all crazy distorted looking. It’s actually just a normal Work S1 wheel used to hold Mike Zusin’s business cards…

Corvette at the Track.One booth…

Mike Burroughs and friends…If the name doesn’t sound familiar, you’ll probably remember one of his more recent builds, which was the rusted-out Bimmer that’s been posted all over the web. I guess his garage or something caught on fire and he’s been rebuilding that car, but he recently picked up this silver 2800CS coupe…

Every time I tried to get a good shot of it he was driving away so here’s a shot of him driving away…

S2000 on classic Work Equips…

Jordan McCord putting his hood back on as the day was coming to a close…

Thus ends the first day of Import Alliance 2011…can you believe we’re already at part 6 and it’s barely the close of the first day? Haha…there’s more to come but definitely not as many photos as day one. The second day was a smaller event so there weren’t as many cars and a lot of them were the same from the first day. There’s still a couple parts left but not as vast as the previous. So anyway, after the event came to a close, we hopped into our friend Arthur’s CR-V and headed back to the hotel. There we took a break, showered, and regrouped for the rest of the night. DPK David and I were at the other hotel down the way, but  we changed and what not and walked back over to the La Quinta to see what was going down…

…and the party began…

This was what the La Quinta parking lot looked like when we got there. The whole lot front, side, and back were filled with cars and people. Even the Holiday Inn or whatever lot next door was filled with people. Guys and gals were drinking, hanging out by the pool, etc…You can see how close people were to the cars. To the left of this photo you can see Jay’s S2000…

For the most part everything was pretty chill. The Nashville Police cruised up just to see that everything was cool and it was… but it got crazier later on in the night…The further the night progressed, more drinking occurred, and more drunk ass people were walking around in the parking lot. At one point some drunken fool got right up in DPK David’s face all belligerent and said “Hey you got a cigarette or am I gonna have to slap a bitch?!” All crazy and shit. I mean, it doesn’t really matter who you are…if someone is going to be inches away from your face shouting drunken bullshit at you, the first reaction is obviously just to crack the dude in the face and be done with it. We weren’t drinking, but it doesn’t mean it’s cool to get in someone’s face and act like a punk bitch. David, is not one of those dudes that just lets things slide. In fact, when he gets angry, he’s almost down to do whatever it takes to fuck someone up…that’s just the type of guy he is. I was really close to putting the camera down and just locking down a nice rear naked choke until the dude passed out but I saw that David remained calm… We were in a different state, with younger people who were drunk, and didn’t want to ruin the “ambiance” of the La Quinta party so David got right back in the guy’s face and said “Why the fuck would I have a cigarette for you?” and then the dude gotta got the hint and backed off. DPK David said he thought that he was trying to call him a bitch at first but apparently the dude was already mad at some girl so that’s why he went off in grand fashion, too bad it was in the face of the wrong guy and it almost got him a good stomping. This is the same guy later on, that thought it was a funny idea to dance in front of a police car when the police were trying to get through the lot and then ran away like a little bitch when the cop got out of his patrol car….

At one point, the hotel management told the police to shut it down and so the police attempted to do so…Before that however, there was racing on the freeway on ramp next to the parking lot and everyone was drinking and watching….even the police. DPK David walked over to the officer and asked what he thought of all the racing that was going on and the police told us that he loves drag racing so he didn’t have a problem with it… Go ahead and re-read that last sentence, I’ll wait…

Okay, he said that he was cool with people racing on the highway. This was when the Civic coupe was running down a street bike. The officer was even telling us that he knew the street bike was going to lose. David then told him that if this was going on out in Cali, people would be getting shot at by the police and shit would get shut down immediately. Realistically, you can barely even drive a lowered car out here and not get fucked with by the police, let alone drinking in public and racing on the freeway…or even beating off in the parking lot…shit is definitely different out there… The cop was just like “we’re the nicer folks” (compared to the cops out west) and that they are more chill and just let things slide unless hotel management says something to them, since it was there property. I can dig it though, I don’t know how much shit the cops have to deal with on a everyday basis but that part of Nashville seems so quiet without IA being there that they probably don’t have much shit to do normally. I mean, during rush hour traffic there was a total of like 6 cars on the highway, the other cars were people arriving from whatever state they were coming from for Import Alliance. It’s just slow there so I don’t blame the cops for enjoying some illegal street racing and letting kids drink publicly and make asses of themselves…

Eventually when more Nashville PD showed up, people retreated to their rooms. It took awhile for that to happen though because kids were busy trying to put stickers on the police cars as they drove by, dance and act like assholes in front of the police, and do that stupid fucking planking thing everywhere. One dude even got arrested for trying to plank on top of a police car. I’m pretty happy that these kids weren’t on psychedelics or cocaine and shit cuz who knows what they would be doing if they were on some mind-altering shit…haha. We actually listened though and went back up to Rywire Ryan’s room to watch the mayhem ensue from above…

This is a shot from the balcony before the police started rolling up from each side. This shot is kind of deceiving because you don’t see the rest of the people that are spread out throughout the rest of the parking lot…

Ryan looking shocked as people raced back and forth on the highway. There was actually a race happening on the highway at one point, and on the other side of the highway, there was a police car pulling over some random person for speeding…how ironic…The officer that we spoke too even admitted that they love pulling people over for just having a taillight out or something stupid and minor like that. Apparently it’s okay if you want to race people on the freeway and drive like a fucking maniac….as long as all your taillights are functioning…

Here’s a shot from above when one of the police cars started circling the lot and had the lights on, in an effort to get people to go to their hotel rooms. It’s funny to see that when the police shows up, a bigger crowd forms…that’s some shit that you will never see here because police would have riot gear on and would be busy firing rubber bullets at people…haha…

One a majority of the people went back inside, that’s when the mayhem inside the hotel started. The majority of the people went to their rooms to hang out on the balconies. There they heckled people and hurled GLASS beer bottles at people that remained in the parking lot. One of the bottles even went as far as to hit one of the 350Zs in the lot. If you cherish your car, don’t ever bring it to the La Quinta because there is a highly possible chance that some shit will fly at it… Not really sure how people came up with the notion that it was cool to throw glass bottles at people, 3-4 stories up, but at these La Quinta parties, anything goes. Some guy actually tried to be a tough guy and was taunting others into throwing bottles at him so that he could go kick their ass. That proved to be a stupid ass idea of course, and the guy left his cell phone on the ground as he tough guy-walked his way upstairs looking for someone. We were just in the balcony staring at the dudes cell phone sitting on the parking lot floor before one of the PG+K guys ran down there to grab it…

The shit that was going on was just absurd. People than ran around in the hotel damaging hotel property, taking fire extinguishers and spraying them, etc. I looked at the ice machine on the floor where Ryan and Big Mike were staying and that shit was fucked up. Then people started setting off their car alarms randomly because they thought it was cool…

Here are Arthur, Chris, DPK David, Rywire, and Big Mike watching everything go down from the balcony…If pictures had sounds, you would probably hear someone banging on the door at this point. Zach “Rogue” Poland was screaming at me from another balcony to open the door for him so he could come hang out with him but he was so drunk that I just told him that he was an unpleasant drunk and we didn’t like him, and told him to go away…haha…We met up with him later on though when he told us that someone stole his beer cooler. We all actually watched this happen but we just thought the people that rolled his cooler away were his friends. I just thought it was weird how his friends looked like the limp-wristed dudes from 30 Seconds to Mars…

Over on the balcony next to us was Mexican Zac Efron aka Frankstar, aka Bolt Dudes aka Downstairs Frank. We call him “Downstairs Frank” because someone at the show really asked him why he was selling stickers that said “Downstairs” (when it actually says Downstar Inc.) on them, in which I replied “because that’s where your nuts go”….anyways, he was yelling at us from his balcony and wanted us to go over to that room because Ben Torres aka B.L.T. was just fucked up out of his mind…I really didn’t know what he had been drinking the whole night, but the fact that there was someone fucked up and passed out meant that it would make for good photos… Now to truly grasp what Ben had been doing with his free time the whole night, I had to turn to PG+K member Stephen Burke, who recently uploaded these photos of Ben…

Oh Ben, drinking Crown Royal like it was a liter of nice cold Coca Cola…

Here is Ben partying it up in the Elevator with people whom I’ve taken the liberty of protecting the identities of, just because I don’t know if Ben had did anything to them in his inebriated state…

So we know the culprit was a bottle of Crown Royal and probably like 6 30-packs of Bud Light…Now throughout my years of drinking, I’ve always known one rule to be true….“Beer before liquor, makes you sicker…Liquor before beer, you’re in the clear…” I had seen Ben walking around with a couple of beers throughout the night, so when I saw him downing a bottle of Crown, we all had a pretty good idea that he was going to be fucked…

Hi Ben. The first thing that came to mind when I walked into the bathroom was why he was sitting in a tub of water. Not even a full tub, just a little bit of water, like enough to just soak the backside of his body, making it easier for someone to take his kidneys out and sell them on the black market. His friends told me that they wanted to cool him down…I don’t know how laying him in a little bit of water was going to really cool him down, but I stopped asking questions…The other thing you should be asking yourself, is are those Durex condoms photoshopped into the photo, or are they actually there? Haha…

Frank was in the bathroom and was all smiles, so I asked him how many times he planned on having sex with Ben and that above, was his response. I reminded him that sodomy with a passed out male was still date rape and highly illegal…but Frank replied with “Come on homie, they’re street racing and drinking outside like everything is fair game…Bankhead shawty CAW CAW!!”….He’s from Cali so why he always reps Bankhead and makes bird sounds, I’ll never know…. He then wanted to know if I wanted to photograph the events that followed and then I threw up in the tub where Ben laid, and then I ran for my life…I found the officer that we watched the races with downstairs and told him what was about to happen in the bathroom of room 267, and he said “I got next”….

Good thing they got condoms to protect themselves…

All in all, the whole night was pretty fucking ridiculous. In Nashville, from pure observation…you’re allowed to street race, drink in public, violate private hotel property, and hurl glass bottles at unsuspecting people…oh but you can’t plank on top of a police car because that is wrong. The parties remained inside until the police left and then someone thought it was a good idea to pull the fire alarm inside the hotel, which called for an evacuation, that then allowed everyone to once again drink and party in the parking lot of the La Quinta. Was it a cool experience? Ehhh…Would I do it again? Probably not…I think next time I’d rather just prefer to have a quiet night and go explore downtown Nashville or something. As exciting as it is to hear that someone got impaled by a bottle of Corona, it’s not worth losing sleep over and putting yourself in danger just to have “a blast”…

We didn’t really want to deal with all the bullshit that was going on at the hotel anymore so we just headed over to the Waffle House down the street to kill some time before we called it a night…

When we got to the Waffle House, we were greet with trail of puke that was trickling down the sloped parking lot and that was definitely the first thing we wanted to see before we ate…I ordered the biscuits with country gravy because that is certainly the thing that resembled vomit the least…that is called sarcasm…but yes, I did eat that and it was fucking delicious…

The people that worked there were super generous and asked us about Import Alliance and what it was all about. I told him that there was a guy named Ben Torres in the hotel getting sodomized by a guy that sells nuts and he smiled…Then he went on to talk about how great his Corolla FX16 was for what seemed like 4 hours before we finally managed to escape and go back to the rooms to get some rest…

That will draw a close to today’s coverage. Hope you enjoyed it…Everything I said was factual about the parties at La Quinta, except for the raping of B.L.T. I don’t really know what happened because I left. It could have totally happened though. If a man can jack off publicly in a parking lot thinking that it was entertainment for the masses, anything is possible at the La Quinta IA parties…

Back with more tomorrow…haha…thanks for looking….