Tag Archive for ‘car meets’

Happy Honda Holidays From Me To You…

Happy Honda Holidays From Me To You…

Seasons greetings everyone! It’s the holiday season and everyone out here seems to be organizing toy drive-themed car events every weekend. It’s all for a good cause so we make sure to show up to as many as we can to give back. It’s also nice just to do car things and see friends of course so why not take advantage of time to do both? First, we stop by the GReddy Food Drive to drop-off some raffle prizes, then we head to our friend Barry Ancheta’s Stay Classick Sleighride event to drop-off some toys and see some good Honda builds!! I think you guys will enjoy this particular episode if you’ve been a subscriber for a long time here. It’ll give you guys a good glimpse of what 2023 holds….better video quality, including 4K resolution! I’m still undecided on whether or not to go full 60 FPS because I enjoy the more cinematic feel of 30 FPS but I’ll leave it up to you guys. Let me know what you guys think!! Oh yeah, and Ryan Der continues to make progress on his Civic project as well. He’s ramping up to finally make some major changes to the car so stay tuned if you enjoy his build thus far…

The Chronicles Friendsgiving Event!!…

The Chronicles Friendsgiving Event!!…

It’s been a whole year since the last time we had a car meet at The Chronicles HQ. Originally I had planned to do a couple of them over the summer season but it just got way too busy with all the traveling and events. Things have finally slowed down a little bit at home so I though that Thanksgiving weekend would be a perfect time to have a meet again. There’s nothing better than just having that free time to hang out with friends and enthusiasts over a long weekend. The week before that, Der and I stopped by our friend David’s monthly “Brew’s Cruise” event in Long Beach and let’s just say we ran into a pretty interesting character there. Hindsight being 20/20, we still have no idea what car that was….

Beefy 1000+ HP Supra, An S14 Sedan?, +15 Offset TE’s On Der’s Civic, & The ITR Is Alive!!…

Beefy 1000+ HP Supra, An S14 Sedan?, +15 Offset TE’s On Der’s Civic, & The ITR Is Alive!!…

Not gonna lie, it feels great to have regular Vlogs going again now that things are picking up here at home! Over the weekend, I was invited to bring our GR86 out to Formula D Irwindale to participate in Pit+Paddock’s Performance Car Invitational. The weather was looking pretty damp that day but we had no idea a whole storm was brewing! The event itself presented some pretty interesting builds including our friend Hubert Barnum’s Supra and Rodney Moenadi’s KA24 Turbo sedan. The following day, Der got right back to work on his Civic to fit his 16×8 +15 Volk TE37 wheels. Would they fit? Would the jack come down faster than we wanted it to and make the wheels fit? See for yourself!! Oh and Chuy makes a surprise visit to the shop!!

Wekfest East 2022 Photos… Part 2…

Wekfest East 2022 Photos… Part 2…

I sit here and just think about all the photos that weren’t taken this year at Wekfest East. It’s been days and I’m still annoyed with myself, lol. But it is one of those things that I can’t really go back and change so I’ll just have to make adjustments going forward. People have offered to second-shoot for me and get coverage when I can’t but I just prefer to have my own photos on my site. I’ve had guest photographers in the past, albeit sparingly, but I feel like the site has such a consistent look over the years that I don’t want to change that. I also don’t feel like enthusiasts who have their cars captured would have that same feeling had it been shot by someone else. I don’t say that to sound cocky or anything, I just think people want their cars on this site shot by me and me alone. We are both of the understanding that this site represents my body of work and if they want to be a part of that body of work, it has to be captured authentically by me. I think the big issue now is that I’m so obsessed with getting video and capturing b-roll that it does eat up a lot of my time in the mornings. We also changed the format of how people roll-in this year too so it took some adjusting on my end to figure out where everyone was. I don’t want to keep going on about it so I’ll stop here, but I sincerely apologize for the lack of coverage. I know that people were excited to see what was out there after I was gone for so long and wanted to see a lot of photos. Trust me, I’m working on something that will help me cast a brighter spotlight on the East Coast car community. Just stick with me and understand that I’m doing my best over here…

Wekfest East 2022 Photos… Part 1…

Wekfest East 2022 Photos… Part 1…

I suppose there’s a lot I can say about this trip. There was one very obvious incident that happened AFTER that put a negative light on an otherwise incredibly positive day, so I’d rather focus on that. It had felt like forever since we had returned to the East Coast for Wekfest. When it came time for us to finally go back, admittedly, I felt a bit anxious about it. It’s such a contentious region for car shows. There’s so much pride that exists within the car community there, especially considering the people who are hosting an event there are from the ‘other’ side of the country. In the past, I’ve always felt like I had to prepare for a fight (not a literal one of course) every time I went back there. Like people are looking for reasons to tell you why their car is good and why you’re wrong about choosing someone else at a car show. It’s stressful because getting all the judging done in time before the show ends is always a task. Everybody wants their 5-10 minutes (often times longer) to talk to you. Sometimes they’ll go even longer. In a show that has say, 300 cars, and 60% of them are Hondas, time management becomes an issue. 180 of those cars are Hondas. If all 60% of those Honda-owners in there try to tell me about their builds and they have 5 minutes each, that adds up to about 15 hours of people trying to tell me about their builds—The show is only 5 hours long, mind you. That’s a lot of numbers and it gets confusing, but all you need to know is that I don’t have enough time. I love the enthusiasm but it’s a high-stress environment for me. Thankfully most of those enthusiasts there have learned over the years of us being there that I generally know what the fuck I am doing and what the fuck I am looking at. So they leave me be. But, it took some time for them to understand. If you were at the show that weekend and you saw me running around like a crazy person. That’s because I was running around like a fucking crazy person. Somewhere in-between there I managed to find time to eat a sandwich but that’s about it…

Does The East Bring The Heat For Wekfest?…

Does The East Bring The Heat For Wekfest?…

It just feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day lately with all these Wekfest events happening. First it was San Jose, followed quickly after by Los Angeles, and not even two weeks later, it was off to the east coast for our first event back in New Jersey. With all that has happened over the past two years, we were excited to be back finally with renewed energy and fervor for the East. I myself did not know what to expect with this stop on the tour. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes it leaves a little more to be desired, you just never know. What myself and the Wekfest crew were greeted with this time around was a completely different experience. It seems the time away has drastically improved what this region had to offer. The only problem was…would I have enough time to capture it all??? Also, at the end, I take some time to address the very obvious ‘elephant in the room’….

Wekfest Los Angeles 2022 in Photos… Part 3…

Wekfest Los Angeles 2022 in Photos… Part 3…

By the time you guys read this I’ll probably be walking around in New York City already, taking in the hot ass, incredibly humid, weather before we are set to host the East Coast Wekfest stop in Edison, New Jersey. These last couple days have been interesting. The photos and words from Wekfest Los Angeles have generated some pretty good discussions. I’m glad we can have a constructive conversation about our automotive tuning community. I’ve probably written much more than I have in quite some time and I’m glad my words are being absorbed by people. Any time you have such a competitive environment like Los Angeles and San Jose, it is going to spark some banter. Everyone who competes and has been competing over the years wants to win. They want to feel validated for their hard work. I get it. The rest of the crew at Wekfest gets it too. We’d just prefer that you understand our process. That’s why in the last few Vlogs I’ve given you guys a glimpse into the war room where we talk about the show and its competitors. I think moving forward I’ll continue to do so. Sometimes I do it for comedic relief and show that I’m watching cat videos on Instagram or something but we do spend a bulk of the time at any event we host deliberating. It’s not always easy either. We’ll sometimes discuss who goes where and who wins what up until the very end of the show. Though many of us aren’t exactly in that mindset where we ourselves want to compete in that way with our cars, we fully appreciate the ones that still have the competitive fire…

Wekfest Los Angeles 2022 in Photos… Part 2…

Wekfest Los Angeles 2022 in Photos… Part 2…

I’m glad everyone shared Part 1 and were so understanding of my words in Part 1 of the Wekfest LA photos. It was honestly a bit surprising how much it was shared but I suppose people have had a lot of similar thoughts on the subject. As our automotive community has evolved, it’s important to recognize that some of the old ways need to change or see a similar type of evolution. If you prefer the traditional points-based system of judging at car shows, that’s perfectly okay. I am in no way trying to sway anyone into not attending other events that use this method. What I’m doing is merely trying to get people to understand that what we do may not be necessarily ‘conventional’. It just works better for us. Being openly objective allows for enthusiasts to present their cars to us without having to be confined to, in our opinion, a rigid structure. Our requirements at Wekfest are based on numbers or categories. We are much more free-flowing, looking at overall execution, understanding of flow and style, quality parts selection, with more emphasis on themes…

Wekfest Los Angeles 2022 in Photos… Part 1…

Wekfest Los Angeles 2022 in Photos… Part 1…

Let me ask you a question…

How do you quantify style?

I think it is a very important question to ask when it comes to judging a car show. It’s the main reason why myself and others within the Wekfest group thought long ago that the old point-based system of deciding on the best car builds was obsolete. It’s a rudimentary system that doesn’t work in today’s age of automotive tuning. How do you assign points to style, to flow, execution? You simply cannot. That’s based on objectivity. It should be determined by those with the adequate experience and knowledge. Building an award-winning car should not be calculated on a numerical system. Numbers are formulaic, predictable. You can’t calculate good taste. That requires soul…