COVERAGE> Wekfest Weekend in J-Town SF, Pt.2
For the second installment of the MotorMavens coverage from my trip to the San Francisco Bay Area last weekend, we'll take a look inside the Wekfest itself. For those who really couldn't wait, I'm sure you could have just Googled "Wekfest" and found a bunch of Flickr pages and other galleries with random photos from inside the show.
However, our story is going to be a bit different, because I'm not planning to post up photos of every single car (250+ for sure) at the show. Instead, I'm only going to focus on the cars that caught my eye; the cars that either had the best style, or cars that had something different going for them, which piqued my interest. After all, I've been lucky enough to have attended a LOT of car shows and a LOT of racing events all over the world. This being said, seeing the same old thing over and over can get kind of dreary at times; not to worry though - the cars at the Wekfest definitely had flavor.
The dimly lit parking structure in Japantown San Francisco that served as the venue for the event might not have had the best looking "background" or ambiance for photography, but it was filled with some of the West Coast's best looking cars, so we'll just let those shine through...
Up above, the entrance to the underground parking structure was packed with cars and spectators... I was surprised that the City of San Francisco allowed that many people in a place that had so few exits! Nevertheless, the show had a good vibe to it... at times, it kind of reminded me of what it felt like to be in the parking structure scenes when I was on set shooting NBC Universal's Fast & Furious 3 Tokyo Drift movie... if only you replaced the Japanese (and Japanese-looking Chinese, let's be honest here) cast members with a bunch of young Filipinos, Chinese, and Vietnamese car owners. LOL Read more...
However, our story is going to be a bit different, because I'm not planning to post up photos of every single car (250+ for sure) at the show. Instead, I'm only going to focus on the cars that caught my eye; the cars that either had the best style, or cars that had something different going for them, which piqued my interest. After all, I've been lucky enough to have attended a LOT of car shows and a LOT of racing events all over the world. This being said, seeing the same old thing over and over can get kind of dreary at times; not to worry though - the cars at the Wekfest definitely had flavor.
The dimly lit parking structure in Japantown San Francisco that served as the venue for the event might not have had the best looking "background" or ambiance for photography, but it was filled with some of the West Coast's best looking cars, so we'll just let those shine through...
Up above, the entrance to the underground parking structure was packed with cars and spectators... I was surprised that the City of San Francisco allowed that many people in a place that had so few exits! Nevertheless, the show had a good vibe to it... at times, it kind of reminded me of what it felt like to be in the parking structure scenes when I was on set shooting NBC Universal's Fast & Furious 3 Tokyo Drift movie... if only you replaced the Japanese (and Japanese-looking Chinese, let's be honest here) cast members with a bunch of young Filipinos, Chinese, and Vietnamese car owners. LOL Read more...
COVERAGE> San Francisco Auto Show 2009
I got a call from the Extreme Autofest folks asking me if I want to show one of my cars again at the annual San Francisco International Auto Show at the Moscone Center this year. The only problem was that my FD3S RX7 was still unavailable because we were still working on getting it back from the Brahma Light Drift Track Opening in the Dominican Republic.
Since the FD wasn't back in San Francisco yet, I figured it would be a good chance to debut my RHD S14 and display it at this week-long show so I could show some love to my sponsors. Read more...
Since the FD wasn't back in San Francisco yet, I figured it would be a good chance to debut my RHD S14 and display it at this week-long show so I could show some love to my sponsors. Read more...
COVERAGE> Nisei Showoff Grand Finale Part 2
It has been a very long and busy week for those of us working on the Motor Mavens project! We're an extremely small staff, but we've been keeping ourselves real busy with back to back meetings and photo shoots! We have also spent quite a bit of time this week on planning out the next stages of development for the website. We have a few new contributors coming on board, so the next few months will be very exciting!
So let's get back to our Showoff photos. Although Import Showoff was founded way back in 1994, with the first event held in March of 1995, the first actual Nisei Showoff didn't take place until 2000. As Showoff founder Ken Miyoshi explains it, "the people that organized the Nisei Week festivities in Downtown LA's Little Tokyo wanted to bring enthusiasm from younger people back into the Nisei Week Festival, so I decided to work with them by throwing the first Nisei Showoff."
"Back then, all the JA (Japanese-American) guys with dope cars used to go to OCBC (Orange County Buddhist Church) during their Hanamatsuri (Flower Festival) and cruise with their friends," Ken continues, "This was also happening in Little Tokyo; there always used to be a carnival in the original Nisei Showoff parking lot location (2nd Street and San Pedro) and a parade as well. People from the carnival used to chill out on the curb, and wait for all the fixed up cars to cruise through Little Tokyo. Back in the day, we used to see crews like Black Magic from SGV (all black cars with different types of SSRs; SSR Superfins, Supermesh, Neos, Work Emotion, Gale Racing, Bang Vecs), Shoreline Racing (old school Toyota guys from Gardena/Torrance area), NRG from Cerritos, Split Second from Carson area, Redline Racing from the San Fernando Valley, and a whole lot of others." Read more...
So let's get back to our Showoff photos. Although Import Showoff was founded way back in 1994, with the first event held in March of 1995, the first actual Nisei Showoff didn't take place until 2000. As Showoff founder Ken Miyoshi explains it, "the people that organized the Nisei Week festivities in Downtown LA's Little Tokyo wanted to bring enthusiasm from younger people back into the Nisei Week Festival, so I decided to work with them by throwing the first Nisei Showoff."
"Back then, all the JA (Japanese-American) guys with dope cars used to go to OCBC (Orange County Buddhist Church) during their Hanamatsuri (Flower Festival) and cruise with their friends," Ken continues, "This was also happening in Little Tokyo; there always used to be a carnival in the original Nisei Showoff parking lot location (2nd Street and San Pedro) and a parade as well. People from the carnival used to chill out on the curb, and wait for all the fixed up cars to cruise through Little Tokyo. Back in the day, we used to see crews like Black Magic from SGV (all black cars with different types of SSRs; SSR Superfins, Supermesh, Neos, Work Emotion, Gale Racing, Bang Vecs), Shoreline Racing (old school Toyota guys from Gardena/Torrance area), NRG from Cerritos, Split Second from Carson area, Redline Racing from the San Fernando Valley, and a whole lot of others." Read more...
