Cipher Garage

Giving Thanks...

2006-11-23T15:31:00.000-08:00

Well since it's Thanksgiving and I still haven't caught up on the blog (SEMA seriously set me back), I thought I'd just skip to the current date and write about what I'm thankful for. Originally, I planned on going to church to say thanks to God,(I'm trying to make an effort to go to church now) but that kinda backfired on me cause I'm an idiot and I woke up late. And mass was over. What an idiot. My bad.

I'm not really a super religious guy myself, although my mom raised me in a pretty religious household. I'm not even one of those "born-again" peeps, I'm just sayin... I feel as if things in life go a little easier if I go to church, or even make an attempt. I'm honestly making an effort to go. Come on, it takes just 1 hour a week out of my busy schedule. It certainly can't hurt. It's seriously the least I can do. The very least.

So here goes. This has been a really good year for me, career wise. A lot of positive traction. And actually, when it was time for me to sit down and write the Acknowledgements section of my book, I had to sit and think about who made an impact on my life, my career, and everything like that.

It's so crazy, cause I'm not an emotional person really (No emos in the Cipher Garage camp), but I got pretty emotional thinking about how much people have helped me get to where I am today. Sure I'm not super rich yet or famous or anything, but I just sat and thought about how there are so many people or other photographers or writers or whatever who would just love to be in my position. So I really consider myself lucky and blessed or whatever you call it.

First of all, I'm thankful to GOD for keeping me safe and taking care of me on all these flights all over the place, and especially for taking care of me at the track, where any car, any spin, or any loss of control could easily end my life, or leave me disfigured and dismembered, or permanently handicapped or something. **Knock on wood** Let's all pray that doesn't ever happen.

I'm thankful to my family- moms, pops, and especially my little brother David. I love that guy so much. I don't know if you guys took time to read the dedication and acknowledgements section of my book or not, but I dedicated the whole entire book to my little brother Dave, and that's from my heart.

Dave is my number one fan and supporter, he loves me and he loves drifting and he always has my back no matter what. He looks up to me, and he makes me strive to be a better person. You just can't replace that kind of unconditional love. My little brother is the best.

I'm also super thankful to my Uncle Ed, who has been soooo down for me and supported me when everyone else in my extended family pretty much abandoned me and told me to fuck off. Uncle Ed is like a dad to me, I totally love that guy too. He stood by me when the rest of the family wouldn't.

I'm thankful for the support and love of my crew. I have so many friends from different parts of the world, and we don't always get to see each other. But my real friends know who they are. I don't even need to start a list. But seriously you guys, THANK YOU SO MUCH.

Seriously, the "top friends" on Myspace are kind of a joke. I can't even begin to put all my close friends on there, even though I got 24 "top friends" or something. There are so many people I'm close to, or people I admire... but it's cool, all my real friends know who they are, like I said. My Silverlake/Los Feliz crew, my Wesco crew, my Bay Area crew, my Diamond Bar crew, my Miami and SFL crew, my ATL crew, my friends in Japan, my San Diego crew, Vegas crew, my Seattle and Vancouver crew, my East Coast crew, Hawaii crew, and all my other friends in between. I really value all my friendships the most, out of all the things I gained and accomplished during the year.

I'm thankful to Nick Fousekis and the whole family at Falken Tire Corporation for working with me this year, and continuing to believe in me, and making so many things possible for me.

I'm thankful to Nobushige Kumakubo and Team Orange. I'm so glad that I was able to go to Japan this year and spend time with my close friends at Ebisu Circuit. I actually finished my book while I was in Japan, so I can't thank Kumakubo, Tanaka, Naoto, and the others enough. Also of course I can't even begin to say thanks to Akiyo-chan and Igusa for letting me crash at the crib. And I'm thankful to the Ogawara family, my home away from home in Tokyo. Word up.

I'm thankful to the people at Motorbooks for giving me the opportunity to make America's First Book on DRIFTING. Not only is it MY first book... it is the first book for the DRIFTING COMMUNITY. Created for the real drifting community by someone really in the drifting community.

I'm especially thankful to everyone in the drifting community that has shown support to me and Cipher Garage by supporting the book, or the clothing line...

Whether you guys showed your support by buying my book, rocking my sticker, helping me work and set up and tear down the booth, helping me ship out books, helping me get some publicity for the book, creating a commercial for my book, playing my commercial on the jumbotron, printing Press Releases and/or interviews in magazines, were a fellow photographer giving props, and 86 or drifting fan saying whatup at the track, or even if you just said a kind word in support of me or my book, I really really appreciate it all. THANK YOU.

Thank you so much everyone. You just don't know how much it all means to me. First and foremost, I'm a fan of drifting, and the whole lifestyle. Just like everyone else. The only difference is, God gave me the chance to document the scene and put my thoughts down on paper. I'm really no different than anyone else. I'm just trying to chase my dreams and be successful at it.

Thank you so much everyone. Happy Thanksgiving. Be safe!

Live The 86 Life!

Antonio Alvendia
Cipher Garage.

SEMA 2006: Day 4 - Drifting Changed Our Lives. Seriously.

2006-11-23T00:57:00.000-08:00

I ran into my boys from the www.thespeedlounge.com and they hit me up for the hot new "Drifting Changed My Life" lanyards that all the cool kids were rocking at SEMA. Seriously, alot of people in the drifting industry were rocking this lanyard in support of DRIFTING. Thank you all, that was so dope.

Anyways, TheSpeedLounge guys and I decided to take some photos screwing around. See the guys in the front? All 86 guys. Well Chris (left) used to be an 86 guy. Dave (right) still has his black AE86 hatchback, and of course you know I Live The 86 Life. No doubt.

Bookmark their site, cause I told you to. TheSpeedLounge.com Make sure not to forget "THE" in The Speed Lounge. You guys and your difficult domains.

DRIFTING Changed Their Lives. Without a doubt.

These are my boys Joey and Andy from Slide America, along with Cody Wellons from S3 Magazine. Joey and Andy are super cool, but they're also pretty weird. They drove across the country in a rental van with stickers all over it, and shot video of drifters all over the country. The video will be coming out sometime in 2007, so look out for it! In the meantime, buy some stickers or shirts from their website ( SlideAmerica.com ) and help support the cause.

"Highhh...BRID!"
David Huang from Team Hybrid is super super cool. He is always down to support Cipher Garage and my mission to spread the gospel of negative offset wheels across the country. He is also ballin out of control, what... with a done up IS300 cover car and a done up IS350 show stopper and a done up Range Rover in the works??? And he says his money comes from his family's "importing business." WTF?!

Come on David. Makin all that cheddar, what the F is your family importing from China man?! Ohhh, I get it. OTHER CHINESE PEOPLE. Damn no wonder. Well your secret is safe with me.

Jay Lapid is a Formula D driver from San Francisco CA who just got married, and just had a baby! Forget "Drifting" I need to make him a shirt that says "My wife and kid" changed my life. haha!

But seriously, Jay is a super cool guy. He runs a sticker shop called Graphtech in South San Francisco. (Peep him out at gtstickers.com and tell him Antonio sent you.)

Jay made the super dope limited edition GOLD Cipher Garage stickers that we made famous on our last trip to Japan. Don't sleep. Jay can hook you up with custom printed and die cut graphics, and he's reliable. Graphtech prints and cuts the graphics for most of the Team FALKEN cars in the Formula D Series. Even the SF Police has Jay doing their stickers.

Drift Day was the foundation for grassroots drifting in the west coast. Here we have my very good friends, Professional Formula D drivers Taka Aono and Hiro Sumida, along with Koji Mori (Club4AG webmaster) who is working with the guys to manage the team and get sponsors. These guys are all hardcore AE86 guys. I respect them alot.

And I think Taka Aono is THE BEST AE86 DRIVER IN NORTH AMERICA. And he is super nice, super humble, super down to earth. Not only does Taka drive his car in Formula D competition, but he also trailers cars ( his car or other people's cars) to all the events! Dude, he trailered his GF Yoshie Shuyama's Formula D competition car from LA to Formula D Seattle!!! Now that's love! But that's not all! Taka fucking drove his truck across the US of A and trailered Yoshie's car (and Hiromi Kajikuma's AE86 Levin) to Formula D New fucking Jersey!!! Can you believe that shit?! That is soooo far. Maximum respect to Taka. We need more hardcore people like Taka in the drifting scene. Hardcore driver, and hardcore grassroots enthusiast. People like Taka are the reason why I am so inspired by DRIFTING. I mean it.

I am sooo puzzled as to why Hiro and Taka don't have more sponsor support. I mean, they do get support as part of Team Falken, which they are very thankful for, but I'm talking about they need other monetary sponsors to help them through the season. Also good lookin out to Owen and Brian, their mechanics.

DRIFTING Changed Their Lives. For sure!

This is (L-R) Hiro Sumida, Ray Nakadate, and Yoshie Shuyama. Yoshie is Taka's gf and quite possibly the top female drifter living in the USA. She has steep competition from Hiromi Kajikuma though, who is sponsored by Team Kaaz.

Ray Nakadate owns Team Kaaz, and is the President of Kaaz USA. Many of you might not know this, but Ray and I go back. Way back. He has been a good friend of mine since like 1999 or 2000. Wow that's nuts. Ray taught me what he knew about restoring old cars, because he had a shop called Newport Exotic Cars near Newport Beach CA. People from all over the world used to send him old Lotuses, Lancias, Ferraris, Mercedes, Shelby Cobras, and shit like that to restore.

So what do I do? My dumb ass brings him a red 1986 Toyota Corolla GT-S hatchback and asks him to help me restore the body and paint. Well the body was pretty clean to begin with, but Ray helped me out with the paint- we got a painter who specializes in shooting RED! (This guy paints Ferraris and shit. In fact, right when we were pulling my AE86 into the paint booth, they were just finishing up a Lamborghini!) Anyway red is a hard color to paint... if you spray it at different angles, and different distances from the car, you come up with different colors. Anyway we painted my AE86 with red lacquer paint (uhm.. it's illegal in CA) sourced out of the country, factory Toyota AE86 color 3E6. With extra gloss of course. The old hot rod guys always used lacquer paint because it would dry super hard like fingernail lacquer, and would produce a super brilliant gloss. That's why my kouki AE86 always looks glossy, even when its super dusty. That's the secret.

The Drift Alliance guys were showing support too! Drifting definitely changed their lives! If it weren't for drifting, they wouldn't be known as "DA." Maybe AA? Anyway, here's Ryan Hampton, Ryan "Hampshaa" Tuerck, and Chris Forsberg.

Richard Tran works for Formula Drift. He was showing his support by rocking one of my lanyards too, which says "Support DRIFTING" on one side. Richard is Formula D's official model handler. This guy is always pimpin the chicks.

More than one girl has told me in these exact words "Richard is a pretty good looking guy, for a Vietnamese guy." Seriously, more than one asian chick has said that to me. But the thing that strikes me, is why do they have to always add the "for a Vietnamese guy" part?! I would have never even thought of that- I'm a racer, not a racist!

Juan Henao is one of the best up and coming drifters to come from South Florida. Mark my words, you'll see more of him and his red S13 very soon.

Dan Pina is a good friend of Calvin Wan's. He is also known as "the other Mexican drifter." Doesn't it suck to live under someone's shadow Dan? LOL juuust kidding. Dan is a hell of a driver, Calvin says Dan was running touge in Northern Cali in a stock Ford Focus, and he was still passing fools! And the other cars out there were like... AE86, S13, S14, FD3S, R32 Skyline GT-R (Hubert Young).

Just ask Calvin Wan from Team Falken. He will tell you stories of how pissed he was several years ago, when Dan beat Calvin's time in an SFR SCCA autocross, driving Calvin's own FD. Man was Calvin pissed.

Eventually Calvin got Dan back, but still! I'm sure Calvin is gonna be like "damn fool! Why'd you have to write that shit in your blog?! Fuckin Antonio, dude..."

Haha. Go start your own blog then, Calvin. =)

Mike Maez is one hell of an up and coming photographer. Actually, no. He's not an up and coming photog, this cat has MADE IT. And by made it, I mean he has made tons and tons of covers... magazines like Modified Luxury & Exotics, Modified, Nissan Sport, etc... He is a friend of mine, and I really respect his work. Props Mike!

SEMA 2006: Night 3, C16 Party at Tao. If you missed this party, YOUR bad. Serious, you really missed out, kid!

2006-11-17T13:00:00.000-08:00

Okay once me and the boys got back to the hotel from SEMA, we had dinner with my boy Kelvin Tohar from Falken, and some of his non-industry friends. Man those guys were cool, and they weren't even into cars really. It's weird, when we had dinner I noticed that almost all of my friends are into cars, or work in the car industry, or are somehow connected to it.

After getting ready, me and Char took the elevator downstairs where Tobs and the rest of the crew were waiting. We were trying to take a "Myspace pic" in the elevator, but then the doors opened and there were a bunch of people looking at us. haha we got moded.

Wait... is it "moded?" or "molded?" Dude I dunno. But we used to say that as kids. haha

My boy Nick and his wife Selina were downstairs, waiting for our other friends cause they wanted to go to the Dub Party to see Nas in concert.

If you guys don't know about Nick, he is one of the key elements in the success of Falken Tire Company in the past few years. Since Falken hired Nick and a whole crew of young people in the scene, they got involved in many things EARLY like drifting and vip style, while all the other companies were left scratching their heads trying to figure it out. For more on Nick, check out the current issue of DAYTONA MAGAZINE (Japanese) at Kinokuniya Bookstores, just google it. I shot a lifestyle feature on Nick, you can check it out in the magazine.

Man that's crazy tho. Dub really came through, they brought Nas and Ghostface and some other people out to do a show at SEMA. And it was free as long as you had a pass to the party. That's so dope. But I missed it, and went to the C16 Party instead. Nas is one of my favorite lyricists, but if Nas saw what was going on at the C16 Party, I'm sure he would have rather gone to C16 too.

So anyways Tobin rounded up the troops cause we had a party bus waiting outside! It was pretty bad ass, it was like a strip club in there, it even had a bar and stripper poles and stuff. Our bus driver was one of Tobin's friends, Porno Joe. Cool name huh! I asked Joe about it, and he said he's filmed porn flicks in his bus! Damn that's craaazy!

Here's some of our group... unfortunately I couldn't take a photo of everyone at once cause the bus was big. (L-R) Char, Amy, Reiko, Scott, and Tobin. We're all very good friends.

Go ahead and right click to save this, I know alot of you guys will have this as your desktop backgrounds for a minute. Just don't let ya girlfriends find out! haha

Here's another part of our crew... (L-R) Eri, Melanie, Elizabeth, Lily, Claudia, and Joyce. Dude we didn't even need to go to C16, this bus was already off the hook.

The band of brothers. Here's the sad section of the bus. There were so many girls there, these guys could have easily been the meat in the middle of a model sandwich, but they decided they would rather sit amongst a few good men. Well Robert (left) has a girlfriend, but Edo and Arnell? No excuse.

See, this is how you mix it up. Now that's a party!

Speaking of party, the C16 Party was seriously ridiculous off the hook. C16 always throws the best parties because the parent company, Overamerica Media, also owns a lifestyle magazine, a DJ magazine, and a record label. So no shit, they know how to throw a party. They had so many hot almost naked chicks all over the place, giving each other massages and stuff. Seriously, big ups C16.

We had a pretty big group with us, so it was hard getting everyone in, but me and Tobs coordinated it, and waited outside to make sure our whole crew got in. Clubs only let like 3-4 people in at a time usually, so we had to break it up cause we had like 20-30 people coming in with us.

We even had peeps trying to jump into our line that we didn't even know... so we had to cut em off. The best part was when some guy said "Hey man, can I'm come in with you guys? I'm ____ from _____ Shop..." and Tobin was like "What?! No, I'm sorry dude I don't even know you!" I guess people just don't wanna wait in line.

We got to the bar upstairs and surprise surprise, we ran into John and Dave from Speed Machine in San Diego. Speed Machine specializes in building RX7s and rotary engines, but John has a pretty good offset AE86, so obviously I think he's cool. Plus he was rocking the new "86LIFE" shirt to the club, which was pretty dope. See? Cipher Garage clothing makes you look fresh whether you're on or off the track.

It's no surprise that Gangsta Dave has a chick in on hand, and a drink in the other- when does this guy NOT have a drink or a cigarette in his hand?

Aside from totally wasting some chump on national television with his last minute built FC3S RX7 in an episode of Pinks (Speed Channel), Dave's other claim to fame is his infamous shirt which always gets him attention at the airport- "My drinking team has a racing problem."

I ran into my boy Mike Schneider, from Lookout Drift in VA. I know it sounds nerdy, but we used to email each other on this "Toyota Mods" emailing list way back in like 2000 or before that. (See? Told you it sounds nerdy. But anyway the Toymods list was a way for people to share their knowledge on the subject of modifying Toyotas, so we were both on it. And anyway this trip to SEMA was the first time we ever met. He has an AE86 and he's good at drifting too. Props to the Lookout Drift crew!

There were alot of half naked girls scattered throughout the party, giving each other massages. I tried to take a photo, but this C-blocker stuck his hand up and ruined the range of my flash. Idiot.

This is my boy Tony Brakohiapa. He is a driving instructor at Jim Russell Racing School at Infineon Raceway (Sonoma CA), where Formula D happens. He is super cool, and a skilled driver. He is getting his start into the Formula D series, but as for me, I wanna go to the Russell Racing School so Tony can teach me how to drive "grip" faster!

This is my boy Scott Herrick, "Ender-DI" from Club4AG... he has an addiction to both AE and TE series Corollas, just like someone else I know. He has an AE86 and a TE38 (is that the right chassis code?) wagon.

Let me introduce you to the evil genius minds behind the C16 Magazine and Daytona Magazine! (Numbered, L-R)

1) STEVE LEVY - Owner of C16 Magazine, Over America and Moonshine Music record label
2) KENTA OGAWARA - Owner of Tokyo Drive Productions (behind the bottle, and also behind the recent rise in popularity of Japan's largest magazine based on American lifestyle and car culture- Daytona Magazine)
3) ANTONIO SURESHOT - Owner of Cipher Media Group (I produce cover photos, content, and features for both magazines, and the others in the group do design and layout work for magazine ads, catalogs, and other marketing materials)
4) "KAGE" - The new Editor in Chief of DAYTONA MAGAZINE, who chose to work with me and Kenta produce content and shoot photos for Daytona in the USA.

Kage says that the first time he ran Kenta's stories and my photography in an issue of Daytona, it resulted in an immediate 30% increase in Daytona's news stand sales, which continues to rise steadily. The Daytona management was tripping! They couldn't believe it (either could me and Kenta) so Kage decided to do a "reader poll" to find out what it was that the readers liked in the magazine.

The #1 column that the overall readers liked were by this huge comedian in Japan (he's like the Japanese equivalent to Jay Leno, with a syndicated comedy/talk show every day on Japanese TV, and a huge car collection just like Leno)...

And Kage said the #2 column in Daytona was the section which contained content written by Kenta Ogawara, and photography by Antonio Alvendia. What a trip, that's soooo cool. Needless to say, Kage has us laced up into each issue of Daytona now- and he has Kenta writing 30+ pages of the magazine for each issue. (that's alot) The long haired Japanese guy must be a pretty damn good writer, cause since Daytona has so much clout in Japan, they could have chosen anyone, but they chose him.

On the other hand, the increase in newsstand sales and reader interest also resulted in increased interest from advertisers, for example, a large tire company from Japan, which also has a pretty big office in Southern California... even though I can't really name names. Pick up a Daytona, and you'll figure it out.

Good job Daytona. And good choice investing in PEOPLE. Because that's what makes a magazine successful. GOOD PEOPLE.

There are alot of people who can write articles or take photos, but Kenta and I specifically are laced pretty deep into the scene in both the USA and Japan. That's how we come up with cutting edge content and photos. Food for thought.

This is me and my boy Mark Arcenal. Mark is an award winning designer from San Francisco, and he works with several of the top companies in the industry. He even designed the cover of my book, DRIFTING.

Oh man, just wait until you see what we got in store for you next year. Me and Mark are gonna collaborate on a project together. I dunno what it is about creative Filipinos from the Bay Area, but they just tend to make shit hot.

This is me, Mark, and his wife Cindy.

This is Claudia, she's cute right? Hit her up, she works for Falken.

One of my favorite gangsters to chill with, my girl Joyce. She is hella cool.

The Chen family (Dominic and Kent, pictured in the middle) likes to surround itself with Filipinos who are good at creating stuff and designing stuff and marketing stuff. So that's why we took this photo, it's like... symbolic.

Haha but for real, Dom and Kent run Endless USA and AME Wheels in the USA. Super dope stuff for big ballers, but it's worth it. Shallen LX Diamond cut finish with polished lip, 19x10 is the SHIT. Ya heard me Kent!!! LOL

The other flip in the pic is John Pangalinanananananananananan. He made Speedwell Shoes popular right before they pulled the plug on the project. Dammit. I love my pair of Speedwells, the comfiest race shoes I've ever owned. Good lookin out JP Smoothe.

Here's DJ Steve Aoki, Kid Millionaire, with MC CB-One aka Ray David, Filipino Thousandaire. Steve Aoki's nickname comes from the fact that his pops owns the Benihana Japanese restaurants, and his sister is Devon Aoki, the chick from Fast & Furious 2. His pops also sponsors Tarzan Yamada's Benihana Viper, because he is best friends with the owner of the Viper's JGTC team. Man I bet you didn't know that, kids.

I dont know WTF is up with Steve Aoki in this pic, but he looks like a scared bunny caught in someone's headlights. Pretty strange looking dude. With one glove, fingerless. Serious. Well, we can't see where Ray's right hand is, in this picture. Maybe that's why Aoki has that expression on his face. LOL

I took this pic of Reiko, Amy, and Liz as we were dancing out on the floor.

As I took this pic, Joyce is saying "Hiiiiiiiiii" and Arnell's face is saying "daaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmnnnnnn! Joyce is poppin yo!" LOL!!! Seriously, I just laughed out loud right now. Fuckinarnell. You the man.

Tobs took my camera to take a pic of this guy. At first, I thought it was Joel Madden from Good Charlotte, then someone told me it was Travis Barker from Blink 182. I talked to my boy Ray David, and he confirmed that it was Joel from Good Charlotte.

Dude I don't know, I'm sorry. I'm a straight up hip hop head. Joel Madden, Steve Madden, Travis Barker, Bob Barker, Tony Angelo, dude I don't know. To be honest, these white rocker band guys kind of look similar to me cause I don't pay attention to rock bands much. I'm sorry LOL. But I do know the difference between Guru, DJ Premier, Q-tip, De la Soul, Mos Def and everyone else who matters to my musical taste.

But why does homeboy look like he's blowing a kiss to Tobin? I guess not only women find Tobin attractive. Scary.

Dancing with Melanie Tillbrook and Eri Moriyama is always a good idea. Of course they're super hot, but what's even better about them is they're both super down to earth, motivated, hard working, and have awesome personalities. Seriously, I think the world of these two. I mean it.

And Kage right here is saying "kampaiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!" Meaning, put the camera down, and DRINK.

Finally my friends from Minnesota show up, they had to wait in a stupid long line. Sorry bout that guys, but you came so late. These guys work at MBI, which is the publishing house that did my book on DRIFTING. Jim (left) is a super cool, ex rock band guy who toured the world with his band at one point, and he also is a pretty damn good competitive motorcycle rider. I wonder if Jim got those shirts on Haight and Ashbury at a Grateful Dead gathering.

Darrick Anderson, in the white shirt, is pointing at Jim's shirt, thinking "did you see Jim's shirt? He's dressed like a leopard!" while Darwin is standing back, wanting nothing to do with this band of nitwits. haha! All these guys are so cool, I'm glad I met them all. Especially Jim. He is hilarious to party with. We once went to Scores in Chicago, and... (I probably should stop here)

Good shit Scott! Dancing with Elizabeth is always a good idea. Yall match too.

In the middle of the club, there were some chicks chillin in a bathtub filled with rose petals, and they were massaging each other and stuff. I like their outfits. Always a good idea!

Good lookin out C16 Magazine! We weren't supposed to take any photos here, so of course, I shot pics with my little pocket camera I was downlow status until the flash popped off! haha

I'm sayin. Fresh outfits!

This is my boy JP Smoothe, rocking his fly ID shirt. He was faded I think, so he might not remember this pic, but now it's posted on the internet man! So gangster, this guy.

Right as we were leaving, I ran into my girl Thai!!! I lovvvvvvve her! She has the best personality, I'm serious. So sweet. Kage from Daytona was drunk as you can tell, he was jumping into all the photos! haha

Seriously, what's not to like about Thai. Looks are one thing, but this girl is the type of chick you could just chill with and do nothing, and you guys would still have a good time. Good company, for real.

It was pretty hard to assemble our group, cause we were all over the place in the club, but we had to take off sooner or later, even though we all had a ton of fun at the party! Here's some of the girls stumbling out of the club. haha!

The crazy thing was, as we were walking through the casino, our group was attracting so much attention, all the old white guys at the tables and slot machines, were sneaking peeks so their wives wouldn't notice, and even some guys busted out their cameras and took pics! Haha Crazy!

Here's Luscious Liz, Faaaaaded Char, Lily Wrong, and Joyce Boogie all having a good time after the club.

See my boy Scott in the back? He is hilarious. We all chill together all the time, and our boys Jay and Tobin gave him a Schikane/Sears/Falken collabo t-shirt, which looks super fresh BTW. Anyways Scott was just rocking the shirt cause we were all kickin it in Vegas, and since my friends and I all have our own clothing lines, we all rock each other's shirts.

Well Scott didn't even think anything of it, but he wore his Schikane/Sears/FALKEN shirt to a KUMHO company dinner, and the Koreans were all like WTF?! LOL What a dumbass, Scott! He had to change his shirt, and down 5 bottles of soju and 3 containers of kimchi to make it up to the company. Good job there Toshima. Eeeeeeeediot! LOL That move will get you an "Employee of the Month" parking spot real soon.

I'm tellin you, we roll with the hottest mamas! Not mamas as in Milfs, but mamas as in hot chicks. (L-R) Reiko, Elizabeth, Eri, Melanie, Lily, Joyce, Claudia, Char, and Amy. Hot like fire!

Aight so we were all waiting outside the Venetian on this bench, waiting for the party bus to pick us up (Good lookin out TOBIN for setting that up bro, that was the best idea you had all week!) and then peeps just started taking pictures... right here is Arnell, Robert, Liz, Eri, Mel, Joyce, and me.

So Tobs jumps in and started saying something, it was pretty funny... and everyone started taking pics...

And then some random people we didn't even know started jumping in the photo to take pics as they were passing by!!! We didn't notice at first, but then the girls were like, "wait... who the fuck was that?!" hahaha what an ass, this guy! haha

Aight! We got scooped up by Porno Joe and the party bus! Oh yeah, and nice legs, Lily.

Joyce is hella funny! We always chill in different states when we're flyin out to events! This girl's a jet setter, straight up. Always flyin out somewhere. Miami, ATL, Tokyo, Hong Kong, NYC, Vancouver, Hawaii, you name it. Funny thing is, we've chilled together in most of those places. Just dont get her mad, cause she WILL bust a cap in your ass. She has a rifle in her bedroom, chillin out next to the bed. I've seen it. She's crazy.

Gangster Dave and some of his crew from Speed Machine in SD rolled back to the Paris with us... unfortunately we had to regulate on some of the others who were trying to get into the bus, cause we had limited space, and couldn't let all our friends on the bus. We had to prepay the cost of the bus, so sorry guys, hope yall understand.

But yeah Edo wanted to take a pic, but then Gangsta Dave stuck his arm in there to grab something. And I have no idea where Melanie is headed, but it looks fun to me! haha

I would have even more pics from our night, but my camera's battery died. =(

Hey does anyone wanna teach me how to post video links on here? Cause I have a video of the party but don't know how to post it.

SEMA 2006: Pics of Day 3. VIP, Formula D, Tyson B, and DRIFTING.

2006-11-10T12:55:00.000-08:00

Yeah yeah everyone has been hitting me up (Daryl, Fred, Char, Andy, and everyone else haha) saying "yo man hurry up and catch up to your next blog update, we're waiting to see pics of SEMA Day 3!" So I apologize, but yo I've been busy makin moves and handling biz.

I have soooooo many business cards from people I met at SEMA, and I wanted to try to contact them before they forgot who I was, or I forgot who they were. Remember, you may meet alot of new contacts at tradeshows, but if you don't follow up with them, your new contacts are worthless! Ya know!

It's like getting a hot chick's phone number, and then not calling. (haha but actually I always forget to call chicks cause I'm busy, my bad.) Sooner or later she will forget who you are if you don't call after a few days. Just don't call right when you get home, the same day after meeting her! If you don't get it, go to Blockbuster and rent SWINGERS you rookie!

First thing we did was go to the VIP press conference, where Falken explained to the automotive media what they were doing with all these gangster VIP themed black vehicles at SEMA. They had people from Falken, Junction Produce, AME Wheels, Air Runner, Tein, and some other peeps over there making announcements.

Even Taketomi, the President of Junction Produce (Osaka Japan) was there addressing the crowd in Japanese, with help from his new translator/overseas sales guy Fujioka. (The guys on the left side)

But what I thought was kind of funny... Taketomi was talking for like 3-4 minutes in Japanese, explaining his philosophy on VIP tuning... and when it was time for Fujioka to translate for him, Fujioka would only say like one short sentence in English. We were like WTF???

It was pretty much like "lost in translation!" Me and Joyce Lex were laughing about it. The next time Junction Produce does a press conference, it would probably make more sense for Taketomi to just prepare some notes for Fujioka in advance, so homeboy could just read the whole thing in English!

Then while Fujioka presents to the crowd in English, Taketomi could nod his head in approval, or smile and wave to the crowd. Or if he wanted to, he could even just say little things like "Ne!" or "Hai!" or "So desu ne! or even "Word up!" if he REALLY wanted to be vocal about shit.

Cause since there were only like 3 or 4 people in the crowd who understood what Taketomi was saying in Japanese anyway, having him talk was just a formality.

But nobody asked me for my opinion, so never mind. Not like they asked me for consulting or anything.

And what I thought was pretty dope about the press conference, was everyone was all suited up to match the VIP look, and my boy Dominic Chen from AME Wheels comes in rocking some brand new black & white Converse Chuck Taylors. LOL! Now that's gangster for real! While everyone else brought out their Kenneth Coles and Ferragamos, this cat was straight rockin Chucks. hahaha fuckin Dom! They were clean though, so I'm not mad at ya... it was just funny cause his shoes stood out so much while they were up on stage.

Tarzan Yamada with my boys from Miami, Jose (bald guy) and Juan. Tarzan was busy filming a Japanese TV show, but he stopped to take this pic with them. Tarzan loves the camera.

Next stop, Formula D Press Conference. I gotta say, I'm proud of the guys at Formula D. They're really taking the series to the next step and doing some big things. Big ups Jim and Ryan. It is difficult blazing new trails, and being the FIRST. Oh man I know all about that.

Anyway, here's Jim Liaw, co-founder of Formula Drift. DRIFTING changed his life.

Hallalujah praise the Lord! My boy Avon Bellamy is finally linked up on Cingular. Now the revolution can begin! And yeah, DRIFTING changed his life too.

In case you guys don't know what it is Avon Bellamy does, he is a partner in a company called Real Wheelz (I know, the Z in the name kills me), which makes die cast toys and trading cards. Here are the prototype sample toys of Calvin Wan's personal FD3S RX7. And his trading card!

This is Peter. He is the guy who made it all happen. Almost 2 years ago, he flew to Los Angeles to meet with me, and we talked about the commercial viability of a book based on DRIFTING. I presented him with the proposal and outline, and he pushed it through on his end.

Fast forward to November 2006, what started off just as a dream on my part is now a reality... and my book on DRIFTING is in every single major bookstore in the USA and Canada, and not to mention- a huge success. See? Told you so. To date, we've sold our whole year's supply of books in less than 3 months. And my book on the subject of DRIFTING has been getting tons of international press in print magazines, websites, and even television.

So yeah, DRIFTING really did change my life. And Peter made it all happen. Thank you Peter.

Then right as me, Jose, Scott, and Juan began walking towards the drifting demo outside...

Tyson Beckford walks up with his entourage and he told me he thought my book was dope, and he wanted me to autograph it for him. Wow, I was pretty surprised by that! Crazy. Big ups to Juan and Scott for the pics.

So while I was busy signing Tyson's book, he was telling me about this new project he's working on, and he was asking me if I wanted to do anything with it, or "guest appear" on the show or something... again, pretty crazy.

Uhmmm, even though it looks like our fingers are touching in this photo, they're NOT. There's a good 3-4 inches of space in between them, even though you can't see it in the photo. Ok just wanted to clear that up.

As we were walking out to the drifting demo, I saw this car. I'm not really sure what kind of Mopar this is, but it looks dope!

Later that evening at the drifting demo, my boy Robbie Nishida saw me and started taking off his suit... and I was like "dude how come you start undressing right away when you see me?! People will think you're gay or something!" but haha, he was just trying to show me that he was rockin his favorite Cipher Garage shirt, the infamous SSR Mark-III design.

This is Alex Pfeiffer's girlfriend Crystal. (the one with the longer hair) The other person in the pic is Rob Fleming from Enjuku Racing in Florida somewhere.

Awww it's Hiromi san!!! Hiromi Kajikuma lives the 86 life. She is the top female driver in Formula D competition, and she drives an AE86!!! Hell yeah. She is so sweet! And a hell of a driver! Actually, before she came to the USA to drive for Team Kaaz, I met Hiromi-san at one of the last "BM-Hai" events (Battle Magazine's Battle of Drift) at Tsukuba Raceway in Ibaragi Japan. It was so cool that she remembered me when she came to the USA! Hiromi-san is a good friend of Robbie and the Hey Man crew. I guess, most people who drive hachirokus get along. Well no shit, the hachiroku is a dope ass car, so we all have common interests. It SHOULD bring people together.

SEMA2006: Pics of Day 2. Halloween Party!

2006-11-07T00:26:00.000-08:00

This was definitely one of my favorite vehicles at SEMA. It isn't a production car, it's a one-off "Retro Cruiser" project done for Toyota by the masterminds at Millenworks. They modified the body of an FJ-45 Land Cruiser, and put a new Toyota V8 in it, and newer body (maybe FJ80?) Land Cruiser suspension. I think it is bad ass, I'd love to own this thing! But it's only a concept/project. Damn!

For more info on this Toyota Retro Cruiser, check out the Millenworks Web Site. Millenworks is a company founded by Rhys Millen's dad, legendary Toyota/Pike's Peak Champion Rod Millen. Rod has taken his motorsports and fabrication background to the next level, and now he's making vehicles for the US government and stuff! Crazy!

Old school restored Toyota Hilux! Cool! If you own one of these trucks and need parts, call up my boy HerbrockOne at Cabe Toyota Parts in Long Beach, 562-595-7411.

Even older Toyota truck! Look at the crazy fender mounted turn signals. Dope!

Super old school Toyota Stout. These were the first Toyota trucks from the 1960s. Awesome that they brought out these beautifully restored trucks to SEMA! I'm all about restored vintage Toyotas!

I ran into my good friend Mercedes at SEMA! I haven't had the chance to see her in a long time, since we've been so busy. We used to travel together to all the Drift Showoff events, I used to love flying with her and hanging out in different cities together. But now we're so busy with our different projects and events! Miss you Cedes!

I ran into a couple of my friends, Andy Williamson and John Naderi, as we were passing the Konig booth. Andy was chillin out talking to the Konig guys. In case you don't know him, he was the original Editor In Chief for C16 Magazine, and used to be with TMR before that. John Naderi is obviously the Editor In Chief of the mighty Super Street empire so he's always busy, but now he's even more busy with a brand new baby at home! Congrats Nads!

They were both rocking my new "Drifting changed my life" lanyards at SEMA all week, even though you can't see Andy's lanyard- it's under his "cool guy Miami Vice" sport coat.

Dope! They brought this new rally version Land Cruiser KXR from Spain just for SEMA! It was upstairs near the media room.

Man! LAnd Cruiser KXR! That's hella cool.

Hmm, I don't know what's hotter, Courtney Day in this outfit, or the wheel fitment on Mickey's S13 convertible. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Courtney is always lookin good, but it's a tough choice, cause those wheels are pretty damn hot.

Oh snap! We were walking by the American Racing booth, and my boy Jose noticed this huge wall/banner with a picture of Daijiro Yoshihara's Pac Rim S13 on it. And he was like "Yo! Did you see the Cipher Garage logo on the banner?" What? I was surprised to see it, I didn't notice it at first! Dope! Thanks Jerry and Dai! Here's the banner behind us.

After the show we went to the American Racing reception at the Renaissance Hotel next door, which was put together by my boys Victor, Michael, and John from ID Agency. They had an open bar and hors deuvres there, but my boy "Pimpin Pete" right here didn't care about that, he had his hands full with the ladies as always!

After the reception, I headed back to Paris to have dinner. Here's Joyce doing her "Trademark Pose Number 2376-B" while I'm talkin on the phone with someone.

I know it looks like a scene from a bad porn, but here's the real story. The prime rib had some super spicy horseradish, and Elizabeth bet my boy Robert $5 bucks that he couldn't down a spoon of it. It was pretty spicy, but he did it. And I doubt Elizabeth paid up, but I'll have to ask him.

Even though we were having fun screwing around, Nick was just concentrating on his drink. As you can tell, he's always very focused on his goals.

Here's Eri, Melanie, and a not-so-cute big Chinese bunny.

I'm serious, Robert was down with the Chinese bunny uniform!

But then Eri got her ears back, and thank goodness cause they look much better on her. Then she jacked this coffee cup from the restaurant and went up to her room with it.

So we all got ready to go out, and on the way out, we ran into my man J-Brad and his girlfriend Anisia. Anisha? Anicia? Dude I dunno how to spell it homie. Thats a dope shirt though, J-Brad is always laced in the fly gear.

You can simply right click to save this pic. Here's Melanie, Joyce, Elizabeth, Eri, and Courtney at the Paris casino right before we headed out! Hot like fire!

And since we were all staying at the Paris, I had to wear my own "Paris" shirt to fit the theme. You dig?

This is me with my boy Tob-Roc. He is hella down.

We all went to Tao at the Venetian, and there was a big line outside... and I saw this dude right here. I have no idea who he is, but I thought it was so funny because we were like "oh shit, he's dressed as LANCE FELICIANO for Halloween!" LOL He must have been studying Lance, cause he got it right, even down to the Sparco suit, glasses, faux mohawk, goatee, and lines cut into the side of his hair. Damn, a fake Lance Feliciano! Hilarious!

Ok just in case yall don't know, here's the REAL Lance Feliciano, chillin next to his S14 competition car. Lance is my boy, and I'm proud of him cause he won First Place at the Formula D Pro-Am at Irwindale, just a few days before SEMA. And now he has peeps dressing up like him for Halloween! Damn Lance you comin up son! LOL

Back to the story, the bar inside Tao was pretty packed.

But then this chick started dancing on the bar, and I'm not hating on that!

Here's me and Eri chillin...

And Mickey was laughing his ass off cause Ross Petty came in with a ski mask and started saying some funny shit... but yo Ross really wears that thing! Dude we were walking through the airport security checkpoint, flying home from Formula D Seattle, and Ross took off his shoes, and was about to walk through the security thing with his ski mask on! Hilarious!

Colleen and Courtney were chillin... Colleen dressed up as a Japanese chick, but she used to live in Okinawa, so I bet she used to like, just walk around town with that outfit anyways. haha and Court was a naughty nurse. Cool!

Melanie had these big wings strapped to her back, and she kept bitch slapping people with them, on accident! Here's me getting bitch slapped with Mel's wings! It's ok though, cause she's hot. Anthony agrees, see he's smiling up front.

DAMMIT MELANIE! Is what Liz here is thinking! She got bitch slapped with Melanie's wings too! LOL

Eri was posing for a nice booty shot, but my friend Juan Henao from South Florida is a great drifter but a lousy lousy photographer, and he didn't capture Eri's booty in the pic. Dude she even had a cotton bunny tail, how could u miss that?!

Anyways, here's me, Melanie, and "Paris."

I really gotta thank my boy Ken Miyoshi from Drift Showoff, because he bought this shirt for me as a gift when he was in Hawaii for Streetcar Showoff this year. Everyone looks at my shirt, especially when I wore it in Vegas, they were all asking me where they could get it. So here's the 411:

You can buy this "Paris Hilton Coup De Grace" shirt at:

IN4MATION.
1050 Ala Moana Blvd B1 Bay 5+6
Honolulu HI 96814
808-597-1447
(Ward Warehouse in Honolulu HI or order it over the phone or on their website) Tell em you saw it on the Cipher Garage blogspot!

OR if you live in Los Angeles, you can get it at:

Fast Eddie's Garage.
1116 W. Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90015
213-746-9300

My boy Jonny Wong was responsible for educating most of the uninformed people on the east coast and midwest about JDM parts, through his articles in Super Street Magazine. He started writing about JDM stuff around 99 and 2000, and now look. Even Nopi has JDM cars there. Sheesh. It blew up.

Two of my close friends right here, Tobin and Kelvin. Tobin was responsible for making Enkei Wheels popular in the drifting community, and Kelvin is responsible for making Baccali a popular restaurant in Alhambra CA. They even have a private parking spot just for Kelvin, and they even have a security guard on call to watch his car when he's inside eating! Now that's some shit! High roller over here...

Eri and Joyce chillin with my boys! Hot!

I spotted Thai at the club and I was hella happy, she is one of my favorites for sure! She has the BEST personality. Love that girl.

Dude this was the waitress who handed over the bill. She was lookin pretty aight! But the bill looked pretty crazy. Oh well that's how it happens at SEMA!

SEMA2006: Best Vegas Trip Ever. Pics of Day 1

2006-11-07T00:03:00.000-08:00

Seriously this has got to be the best trip to Las Vegas I've ever had. Everything was dope. The company of people I was with, the business connections and networking and deals we did at the show, and then of course the parties were off the hook!

Here's my favorite photo I took on the first night. It's a photo from the outdoor patio at MIX, which is in "THE Hotel" which adjoins Mandalay Bay. It's dope, Mix has a dope atmosphere and an awesome view of Vegas and the Strip, due to the glass windows surrounding the top level patio.

Not a bad photo for a small point n shoot huh.

I rolled up to Las Vegas with Jay and Joyce, and the fresh pimped out Lex. And when we got there at night, we met up with my friend James Bondurant. He was drinking a beer inside The Gap at Caesar's Palace Forum Shops. There's a pic of Jay too, saying "oh damnnn!"

Then we went over to Paris to link up with my boy Tobin. Here's a photo of Tob and Joyce in the elevator, as we were going up to the room.

Also met up with Elizabeth and Mickey...

This is Mickey with his gf Courtney. You might have seen her hosting episodes of Redline TV on Speed Channel, or in a book titled "DRIFTING" by Antonio Alvendia. She is in the umbrella girl section. She has an S14 and she's building it up. Mickey has a black S13 convertible with deep offset wheels.

We rolled out to this spot called Mix to link up with my friend Lyle, which was in THE Hotel, adjoining Mandalay Bay. Here's a photo I took inside Mix, but it was at the end of the night after everyone went home.

Super Street and C16 are some of my favorite magazines to work for. (L-R) Here we have my boy Carter Jung from SS, Ricky Chu, and Ray David, the super flav creative director of C16. Ray is hella cool man.

Tobin was laughing for a minute, cause our drunk friend Justin kept expressing his frustration with some of the guys who were here at the event, cause he hella hooked them up with potential leads on a silver platter all night, and they didn't handle biz. I feel you bro. LOL

Here's a shot of some of the folks we were chillin with up above THE Hotel, on the night before SEMA started. In the black jacket is my boy Julius from Orlando, in the Kangol is Ray David from C16, and in the white shirt is my boy Lyle from Dynasty Empire in Chicago. The rest are Lyle's entourage.

Yo here's Ray Ray gettin the digits. Ladies always love a man in a Kangol. Word!

THE Hotel is pretty dope. Here's the view inside the lobby, looking out to the parking structure as we left all our friends and began walking out.

These are my boys! James Bondurant after 5 too many beers, me, Tobin, and Scott. We're always chillin!

Making "Drifting Changed My Life" Lanyards- behind the scenes

2006-11-04T23:44:00.000-08:00

Sunday before leaving for SEMA, I had to go to the shop because Julian and George were making the "Drifting Changed My Life" lanyards for me to pass out to certain people at the show.

Here's George washing out the screen for the lanyards.

I went to church after coordinating the lanyard print run with George and Julian, but on my way back from church, I saw this van on the freeway. It was hard to drive and shoot this pic at the same time.

Because I was laughing my ass off when I read the back window! Now that is some class!

Limited Edition for SEMA: DRIFTING Changed My Life / Support DRIFTING Lanyards

2006-10-29T20:12:00.000-08:00

Okay can I get a show of hands?

WHO'S COMING TO SEMA???

For everyone coming to the country's largest show for automotive aftermarket, SEMA... I just wanted to let you know that I will be releasing a SUPER LIMITED RUN of "DRIFTING Changed My Life | Support Drifting!" Lanyards.

These limited edition "DRIFTING Changed My Life | Support Drifting!" lanyards will be available AT THE SEMA SHOW ONLY.

For SEMA ONLY, I will be letting people TRADE UP to these hot new "DRIFTING Changed My Life | Support Drifting!" lanyards for FREE.

HOW?
Simple. Just come up to ME directly, and ask. Or if you spot someone wearing the lanyard, ask them where they got theirs, we will have quite a few of my friends giving out lanyards at SEMA.

We will TRADE you a dope new "DRIFTING Changed My Life | Support Drifting!" lanyard for whatever free giveaway lanyard you are wearing.

But there's one condition:
You gotta proudly rock your new "DRIFTING Changed My Life | Support Drifting!" ALL WEEK at the SEMA SHOW.

Rock it everywhere.
At the show, at the buffet, at the casino, at the afterparties, at the strip club. Just rock it. SHOW YOUR SUPPORT OF DRIFTING!

I know drifting changed MY life...
Did it change yours too? If so, then show your support of DRIFTING and encourage other people and other car, tire, and parts manufacturers from SEMA to show more support of DRIFTING too!

Get a lanyard people. It will be the hottest thing at SEMA this year.

Formula D Pro Am pics

2006-10-29T18:53:00.000-08:00

This event (last Saturday, exactly one week ago) was super busy. I had to do last minute SEMA preparations, so my boy Felix helped a ton and ran the booth while I picked up business cards and stuff.

THANKS AGAIN FELIX!

Here's Justin Pawlak and his girl (I think her name was Sandra), watch out for him, he is sick. He has a super sick green FC3S TurboII with perfect offset white TE37 wheels. And he can drive an FC better than you can. He is sick, watch out for him the future. He can drive his ass off.

This is Al and her bf David Padron. You pronounce it "Duh-Veeed." He has an AE86 hatchback and he is gettin pretty damn good at drifting. Al is a photographer, she shoots grassroots drifting ALOT. She is building up her rep as a photographer, and is coming up! So shoots at almost all the grassroots drifting events right now, so she definitely gets my respect for that!

Here's the DriftLive crew packed in the back of Daveed's AE86. I didn't know AE86s could be 5 seaters, but they proved me wrong!

Dan Pena (he says pronounce it Peenya, as in pina colada) has a CHP themed drift mustang. The back of his Mustang hit the wall at Irwindale but Dan's still smiling. He is one hell of a driver, Calvin Wan keeps saying that. Dan beat Calvin's time at an autocross when he was driving Calvin's own FD3S, and Calvin will never forget that, he was so pissed. So they went road racing, and Calvin beat Dan in Dan's own Volkswagen. Now Calvin feels better. haha

Taka Aono was at the event with his Cressida wagon, he has perfect fitment RS Watanabe wheels on the car, and even more in the trunk! Yesss! Even though the Formula D Pro-AM/Kumho Street Warriorz event was sponsored by Kumho, Taka represented Falken with big stickers on his car, and he even put a Falken sticker on his shirt.

This zenki AE86 hatchback belongs to my friend Roy Vizcarra from Sacramento CA. He was originally from the Bay Area, and worked at Auto Plus in South San Francisco. Roy was one of the OG AE86ers I met when I was first getting into AE86s. His hood is white cause it's a real TRD fiberglass hood, not a cheap carbon fiber knockoff piece of junk.

Here's Roy again! He is a super nice guy! Aside from racing his AE86, he is also a competitive shooter, this guy can take you out if he has a gun in his hand. So don't mess with his car! Lucky for you, he is super nice and isn't the type to put a cap in your ass. But he could definitely do it if he wanted to.

Oh but I think it's pretty funny... because of his glasses, don't you think Roy kinda looks like the filipino version of the Unabomber? Dude if you had him in a hoodie, with those glasses on, he looks pretty close! LOL sorry Roy!

Look at the scoreboard for qualifying points! Top Qualifier was "Mr John" from Speed Machine in San Diego, 2nd was Lance Feliciano, and 3rd was Patrick Mordaunt. Awesome to have three AE86ers in the top 3! Even though Lance is driving an S14 right now, I still consider him an 86er because he started out in an AE86, and still has the 86 in his heart. Good shit.

Another thing, look at Verena Mei's score! #4 qualifier!!! Awesome! She is seriously kicking ass! Verena is definitely a driver you better keep your eyes on! She has passion and determination! And her skills are definitely improving quickly.

My boy Jerry from Pacific Rim rolled through in his super pimp old school Ford station wagon. I'm not sure if it's a Fairlane or a Falcon, but I love it!

Pimp Jer rockin the bench seat, so his chicks have more room to lay down on his lap.

Even though Mr John beat him in qualifying, Lance Feliciano took top honors at the event in overall points, and in final competition! Here he is posing for photos onstage after they announced him the WINNER!

The guys up there are from Kumho, they just presented him with a new set of tires, and a big ass speaker box (I think it was from Cerwin Vega) and I laughed cause when Lance was up there, he said "THANKSS! But what am I gonna do with this?" Haha yeah your competition car doesnt need those big ass speakers man. Put it in your mom's SUV.

Justin and some of the other homies sprayed Lance with drinks when he wasn't expecting it! haha!

Here's Lance and his mom celebrating his victory! Sure is nice when your mom supports your involvement in drifting. It isn't like that for most people.

This AE86 looked dope!!! I heard it is owned by a pro drag racer. It looks dope with the wheel fitment and stance! I think they are RS Watanabe 15x8J wheels but I don't think they're Type Rs. Maybe RSW F8F?

After the event, me, Felix, Mr John, Martin, and Pat Mordaunt rolled over to Krua Thai in West Covina. My friend Dan hooked up some goooood thai food, thanks Dan! See us blocking all the parking spots with John's AE86? Hell yeah.

Work Equip 01 3 piece, 15x9J -25 offset.

The "touge slicer." Cause there are silhouettes of razorblades on the valve cover.

Silvertop 20v with ITBS. Lovely. And an ARC radiator for a Honda Civic.

Friday before SEMA is so hectic. But we're still goin out.

2006-10-29T17:42:00.000-08:00

Dude we have been working sooo damn hard all week to get everything ready for SEMA, it's nuts. I don't even want to talk about it right now. Peep out these pics instead.

Before I went to meet up with the crew, Kevin from HSPN.com came over to pick up some boxes of my DRIFTING books from me. He will be selling them on his new website, www.drift.com

Me and Kevin went to grab a quick bite to eat at Chipotle, before we both went back to work again.

I was supposed to go to my friend Sharon's place cause she was having a party in Lakewood for her bday, and I was looking forward to going! Sharon is a good friend of mine, and she's hot too. And she has hot friends.

But the thing is, she told me that her party is a costume party, and we had to dress up... but me and my crew were all busy preparing for SEMA, we didn't have time to buy or make a costume. Man we had soooo many other things to do. Sorry I didn't make it Sharon. =(

I finished up with all my work much later in the evening, like 11:30pm. I decided to go out real quick so I met up with my usual crew and we went out to Hollywood, as usual. Love that place. This night, we went to Garden of Eden.

Here's the crew (L-R) Herbrock One, Kip from Green Bottle Hawaii, Tob Roc, Jay One, Antonio Sureshot, and Ganja Todd.

Here's Jay and Matt at the bar. Matt designs the promotional print media and movie posters for big Hollywood movie releases.

This is Amy on the left, she is from Hawaii. I just met her like 30 minutes before we got to the party. She told me she is building her modeling portfolio. Can't wait to see it! And you guys all know Char already, because we hang out like almost every single day! Damn, me and my friends see each other alot.

Damn that's OG. OG as in Ojiiiiiiiiichan. (Old man in Japanese) Ojiichan Jay is my boy! He's at the bar paying for drinks. I don't normally talk candle light photos of my boys. Haha ok you caught me. lol... JUST KIDDING.

Ganja Todd and Stan from Drift Over Grip. These guys seem to always look like this when they hang out together. Hmm...

Here's Kip and Amy at the outside patio of the venue, they're both from Hawaii. I LOVE Hawaii! Oh but Kip owns a video production company called Green Bottle Productions. I have one of their DVDs, it has a blue AE86 in it! Cool!

Wonder why his company is called Green Bottle Productions? Take a look at what's in his hand.

My boys right here are trying to look all hard and stuff in this photo, but I just think it's funny because Stan and Herb are ALWAYS over at Jay's house. I mean ALWAYS. Call Jay at any time whatsoever, and ask him what he's doing. He will always say "I'm just chillin at the pad with Stan and Herb." I wonder if these guys leave toothbrushes at Jay's place now! HAHA

Oh by the way, this party we attended was a costume party. But my boys and I don't roll like that. We're a bunch of grown ass men, we're not trying to wear costumes to the clubs!

But we ran into my friends Tweezy and Carla again. Carla is dressed up like a boxer. She even got the boxing gloves, so I know you wanna hit that!

Here's Jerry and Jay. Planning some big things for December mannnnn...

Drunk on a weeknight: S13 Stan Tran The Man's Birthday.

2006-10-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

Okay well October 25th was our boy Stan's bday, so we all went out to celebrate. We were all slammed with work, due to hectic SEMA preparations, designing new business cards, getting flyers and lanyards and everything else printed up...

But Stan Tran The Man is our boy, so we put all the bizzyness aside and met up to celebrate his birthday. This is (L-R) Tobin, Stan, me, and Scott. I gave my camera to a drunk chick and asked her to take a picture. Crazy, this must have been what she was seeing in real life. haha (but the effect is caused by a quick pop of the flash, and a slow shutter speed.)

We were at some "tavern" called Red Lion in the Silverlake area of LA. And a tavern it was. Everyone in there looked weird as hell. I felt like I was in that one scene on Lord of The Rings where Frodo and the other gay hobbit were meeting up with Strider, or Aragorn. Oh man, I sound like a nerd now. LOL

But seriously, the people in the bar looked pretty weird to me. The way they were dressed, it really looked like some old 1970s or 80s English medieval-themed pub or something, it's like you couldn't tell we were in LA. Those peeps looked weird. From the clothes to their hairstyles and stuff... I seriously thought they all looked like they could be hobbits or something weird.

Scott and Reiko here are newlyweds! They are an awesome couple! I figured since they just got married, they must be doing it like rabbits, so I thought I should get in between to break up "the festivities" for just a little bit. But ya know what, they ended up leaving early because Scott said "Reiko has to work." Yeah right, you just wanna do it, you perv. It's all good, Reiko's cute, so you better do it as much as you can Scott! haha

Here's Reiko and her friend Peggy, who I met at Scott and Reiko's wedding! In case you guys didn't know, Reiko can drift and she has an S13, and she can drive better than most guys can. She is cool as hell cause she felt so bad that her new husband had an FF car, so she wasn't havin it... and she bought him an S13 as a gift. In Stockton or Modesto or some far place in Cali that nobody visits.

See?! What did I tell you! Scott gave Reiko "the look," and immediately Reiko faked a yawn, and then said her goodbyes to Bev and Char. See Scott smiling in the background? He's like "yo I'mma handle it in just a few!"

Here's Charlene Ann and Beverly Jane. But we call em Char and Bev cause their names are too damn long. They're both hella sweet though,

Rob and Tobs are chillin in a booth, and Rob is telling Tobs a joke, but it's one of those "I guess you had to be there" jokes, cause Tobs doesn't look like he's feelin it. Tob's nice though, so he did a courtesy smile.

Here's our crew. We kick it all the time. But Bev doesn't come out and kick it with us enough, cause she's at home waiting for Karl to call from Japan. They call back and forth using Vonage to save money. Man Vonage is the shit.

Stan had a shitload of drinks, and he picked up Char's sidekick and started texting all her female friends... see him smiling right there? Right now he's AIMing... "Deee Jaaayyyyy... I lovvvvveee youuuuuu..."

The guys decided the only way to make Stan stop drunk texting people is by getting him another drink, so Shannon bought another round. Here's Stan, Shannon, Tob, and Jay going "Kampaiiiiiiiiiii!!!"

Look at this guy! So money and he doesn't even know it! He's getting kisses on the side, and he's like "leave me alone woman, I'm drinking." Tobin you are so money and you don't even know it. Wordup! I'm gonna jack you for that dope ass HI hat one of these days.

Talkin bizzness. You'll see, just wait til December peeps! Oh and by the way, Jay is rocking Tokyo Drive, and so was I that night. Representing for our drunk Japanese friend Kenta, who is intoxicated and starting fights halfway across the world.

Bout to bounce out, Shannon took a pic of me and Bev! Happy Birthday Stan!

Too bad you threw up at Jay's house. hahahaha

Chipotle, Korean Gangsters, Mexican Ninjas, Banana Bay, it's all good stuff.

2006-10-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

Wow I'm finally catching up to this blog thing! A few days ago I met up with Felix and he brought over all the excess inventory and supplies from the NHRA event. We went to Chipotle to get some grub. Okay, so I'm not the hugest fan of chain restaurants, I prefer local food establishments.

Chipotle started I think in Colorado, and it's now owned by McDonald's, so it's spreading nationwide now... I've seen it in Colorado, Washington DC, LA, and a bunch of other places... but man! For a chain restaurant, I think Chipotle is pretty damn good! I'm not a super huge fan of mexican restaurants, but man, their food is pretty fresh, and they give good portions, and it tastes good. And I guess it's relatively healthy too. Big ups Chipotle.

I have a bunch of biz cards, so I always throw my card in their little jar saying "Enter your Business Card for a free lunch" but I never win a damn thing. They are probably selling our biz cards to telemarketers. Dammit.

Later that night I rolled out to Radio Shack to return the big bullhorn my uncle bought for me, to rock at Formula D Finals... haha I don't need it anymore! Until the next event, LOL. Right now I got money tied up in clothing, books, and all sorts of other merchandise, so I gotta watch the budget, so that's how we roll.

Ok so the next day (day before yesterday) I was just working, had a bunch of deadlines to knock out before SEMA... and then my friend Dan called me up and asked if I wanted to go grub. He just got a new G35, so I wanted to check it out too.

So we went over to BCD Tofu House over on Fullerton and Colima in Rowland Heights. It was the first time I've ever been there, but I just wanted to try something new. Man that place is hella good! It's called Tofu House, but they server Korean food, it's not just tofu!

I'm gonna bring Kumakubo and Tanaka here next time they're in LA, they love Korean food! Usually we go to the Korean spot, Yei San Jib, which is on Fullerton/Colima in the same plaza as HK Market, across the street from Tommy's. I love that place cause they server good food and it's 24 hours, but I think BCD Tofu House tastes better.

Dude when we were eating at BCD Tofu House, there were some Hankook gangster lookin kids chillin there, they must have been like 19 years old, one of the Korean kids was talking all hardcore and shit, cause he was mad at the other Korean... he was saying shit like "you stabbed me in the back" and the other Korean guys were saying like "yeah dog you shoulda known better" and the other dude was trying to squash it and be apologetic, but not lose face cause his girlfriend was right there, and he didn't wanna look like a chump. Oh BTW his gf was pretty cute, but I didn't wanna sneak a pic again and "pull a zankou" cause you never know, these Hankooks just might be strapped. They probably were.

Man what's up with all the Asian kids having guns nowadays!? What the fuck! What ever happened to "numchuks" and shit!? What the hell you need a gun for?

Man when I was a kid all we had were "numchuks." Hahaha "nunchakus" is how you spell it but the white kids in my neighborhood all called em "numchuks." Dude I was kinda G for a little kid too, I had a collection of knives too, I had some really nice old Filipino knives and swords, and I remember I wanted a katana and ninja stars and shit.

Damn, I just realized I liked JDM shit even before I got into cars. Japanese knives, robots, etc. Imagine if kids walked around at school saying "daaamn son did you see the sick new JDM ninja stars I got?! It's hella rare!"

Or maybe it would be pointless to call it a JDM NINJA STAR, cause DUH when's the last time you saw a MEXICAN NINJA!? EXACTLY! The shit doesn't exist! If there WERE Mexican ninjas, they would be better off, cause then they could cross the border all silently and stealthily, and they wouldn't get shot at by the border patrols! No shit! Mexicans should learn the ancient art of being ninjas. That would be bad ass.

Dude if the illegal mexican immigrants knew how to walk silently and stealthily like ninjas, then they could safely cross the border with their families, and they wouldn't need those ridiculous "border crossing signs" near San Diego! I mean, WTF is that?!

We normally see stuff like "deer crossing" and stuff like that, but near San Diego on the 5 freeway, they have "mexican crossing" signs with a picture of a Mexican family running across the freeway! That shit is crazy!

Maybe someone could invent something you could attach to your car, sort of like those "Deer Horns" that you attach to your front bumper, which emit a sound that only deer can hear, so they get the F out of your way when you're driving through the mountains...

But instead of "Deer Horns" they would be like "Border Crosser Horns" and they could emit sounds like that one song "Tequila" or "La Cucaracha" or "Lowrider" or some shit. Man I think that would be fucking hot.

Whoever invents these would probably get some sort of SEMA "Best New Product" Award or something. Serious.

Oh shit, I kinda went off topic there. Anyways, this is the food at BCD Tofu House. It is pretty damn good if I do say so myself. It was only like $13.99 I think, and you get all this crap. Damn, that was some good food man. Just be careful that you don't get shot by the Korean gangsters chillin there.

Next thing, we walked across the parking lot to Banana Bay to get a drink. Banana Bay is a pretty dope restaurant, they serve thai food, but the best thing is they have a really nice ambiance. On Friday nights, they have a pretty dope band that plays, and there's a chick singing songs from like Sade, Stevie Wonder, and stuff like that. I dig it.

Dan's friend works over there, so we we got some Thai iced coffee. Dope!

When we went in to Banana Bay, we saw some of our friends, the TAB usuals... chillin outside. Geoff, Brent, Scott, and the rest of the crew... and these cats were still outside when we left. Loiterers! Haha it's all good, I like those peeps.

Aight then. I hope my comments above didn't offend anybody. But if they did, then that's too bad. You should start your own blog then. Sucka!

NHRA Finals, Extreme Autofest, and NHRA Season Finale Banquet

2006-10-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, Felix came through yet again, and we rocked a booth spot at the NHRA Season Finale/Extreme Autofest in Pomona. We loaded up all the gear and books into the AE86s, and drove out to Pomona Fairplex.

We set up a little spot with our friends from Belle 1 Race Communications. We had the RSR S15 on display, and my red AE86 as well. Actually, I wasn't planning to show the car, but when we got there, I didn't feel like parking it all far cause I had alot of stuff in the car with me. So we said F it, and we're just gonna park it right here. Here's a photo of the booth.

This is my boy Daryl from Belle 1. He was walking around the event taking pictures with his Mac. With a LAPTOP! Come on bro. Someone buy this man a camera already. Serious! haha

So we were chillin at the booth and this model named Ann comes by. She was checkin out my book, cause she's into literature. But my book is mostly filled with my photography, I dunno if she was expecting that or not.

So I started talking to Ann, asking her what's her name, what she's into, where she's from, etc... She said she's from Camarillo originally, so I thought, what a perfect opportunity to introduce her to my crew! My boys from Belle 1 are from the 805!

So I was like, yo actually my boys right here are originally from the same area (Oxnard) and they represent 805 every chance they get. I introduced her to my boy Fred, and she's like... wait a minute... "FREDDDD!!! OMG! wtf! hi2uLOL!"

She jumped up and hugged Fred, but Fred had this totally "wait... HUH??" look on his face, cause he had no idea who this girl was at first, but being the smart man that he is, he just played it off and took the hug. (That's my BOY right there! Yesss!) I just sat back laughing cause I knew this cat was puzzled, and trying to put the pieces together.

Apparently Ann remembered Fred cause he used to go out with one of her close friends named Diane (Dee). Small world.

What's even crazier, was when Fred was looking though my blog, he was like "YO you know those girls at the house party we didn't go into? Well I saw your pics, and one of the girls was my ex gf Dee! Crazy shit!"

The crazier thing is the girl from the house party, Dee... is the same Dee that Ann here is friends with. Crazy huh. 6 Degrees of separation for sure.

So I took this photo of Fred and Ann next to the cover of my book. Ann's face says "Awwww I'm so happy, I found an old friend!" and Fred's face says "Hey yo bro, at first, I didn't know who the hell this chick was, but I'm gangster like that, so I played it off and I took the hug anyway!" haha

Oh and in case you didn't know, my book attracts some pretty hot girls. I don't know what it is, but it's true.

No, I'm serious. They even pick it up and read it too, they don't just pose with it.

This is my boy Andy Luk, from Formula D Inc. Andy (aka ODP or Old Dirty Panda) is the guy who tells everyone where they can and can't set up their booths, and things dealing with operations. And apparently he has his own little operation going on with his new chick, Kaylah! We all met Kaylah chasing cones at Formula D Seattle, but from what Andy says, she now lives in Southern Cali with my boy right here! NICE! Wow you work fast Andy! Good job!

I'd usually expect that sort of thing from Formula D's Richard Tran, he can always be found spittin game to the ladies... but ODP, you are the man!

We had my boy Arnell aka DJ A1 on the wheels of steel, making sure the crowd always got hype to the freshest beats, when they came close to our booth.

My boy Karlo aka Joe Tokyo took this photo of some of the goods at the booth...

This is Karlo, Stace, and Felix right here, chillin out in the cool shade of the Belle 1 booth, with a cool book in their hands.

My friend Mike Kojima came through to the booth and bought a copy of my book, and asked me to sign it for him. Man Mike Kojima is the FOUNDATION!

Let me break it down real quick for those who don't know... Mike Kojima writes tech articles for several Primedia publications, and used to work at Nismo, and TRD, and stuff like that. Mike is a very skilled road racer, and he was one of (if not the very first) one to build up an AE86 in the USA. He worked at TRD USA in its "Golden Years" (late 80s/early 90s), and he built up his red 1985 AE86 hatchback with TRD suspension, engine mods, and basic stuff like JDM sideskirts, Sprinter taillights, rollbar, stuff like that. Mike says he started building it up the first day he got it.

He also helped build this particular silver 1985 AE86 hatchback, owned by a guy named Paul Goduti. Paul Goduti's silver AE86 was featured in the Toyota Performance Handbook, which is a book from Motorbooks International. Paul and Mike's AE86s were some of the first AE86s ever built up in the USA. The other crazy thing is I now own the silver AE86 which used to belong to Paul Goduti. I bought it several years ago at a premium, and I kept it on the downlow for years... it will come back out soon. Don't even trip.

Karlo shot this pic of Stace in the new 86LIFE zip hoodie for girls. Good job for covering the 86LIFE logo with your hair Stace. haha

This is a photo of some real deal AE86ers right here. (L-R) Felix Tang, Dave DeVera, and Antonio Alvendia. Felix has been helping the CipherGarage mission tirelessly for the past few weeks (since Formula D finals), helping me on the merchandise end.

Dave, here in the middle, has a new website called www.thespeedlounge.com (you can just click on the photo above, it's easier). He has an 86 hatchback, and he's from the east coast. He also was the winner of this year's Scion Challenge! This guy is a good drag racer! He beat out pro draggers, and he got best ET, top speed of day, and all that... he won like 3 different awards at the Scion banquet, and some fly Scion watches! Good job Dave!

Oh yeah, before the day was over, Ann came by the booth again, and I took a photo of her. I am not hatin on her frame! This girl looks good! But she blinked. Nandayo Ann! haha

End of the day at Extreme Autofest/NHRA Finals. We were loading everything back into our AE86s. Man I should sell my Lexus and buy a van or something. But vans don't look cool. Hmmm. Tough choice.

Lightin em up! I think this pic ain't bad for a POS Casio digicam, but imagine how much cooler it would look with the Canon SLR.

Felix was driving around in the RS*R S15, but ssshhhh don't tell the guys at RS*R. They will never find out, it's not like I posted it on the internet or something. So I took a photo of him. This is a photo taken by Fred David, of me takin a photo of Felix.

Disclaimer: There were a ton of heavy boxes of BOOKS and other supplies in the back of my car, which caused the resulting fender gap. My car is lower in real life!

So here's the photo I shot of Felix, with my Canon digital SLR. He looks pretty happy doesn't he. Dude it also looks like his head is just floating inside the car, because of the light cutoff. haha!

Here's Felix in the S15 again, this time, it looks more natural. He was saying "yo I think I'm feeling this S15 a grip." Well don't get too used to it homeboy because still 86>15. Wordup.

At the end of the night, we were tired as hell. But we decided to roll to the NHRA Banquet and Awards Ceremony with our boys Daryl and Fred from Belle 1. Daryl took this photo.

Although I admittedly am not a huge drag racing buff, I heard some of the stories people were telling about some of the teams and drivers like Ron Bergenholtz, Loan Nguyen (is that her name? it might be a import model's name, I'm not sure. So if it is, my bad I'm sorry), Jeremy Lookofsky, and the SA22C RX7 guy from Puerto Rico... and I gotta say, it was really inspiring.

These guys sweat it out, working hard through thick and thin, with or without sponsors... for instance, Bergenholtz won this season, and this guy didn't even have backing from a major car company! And he still took em out! That's just incredible.

It kinda brought me back and made me think, it's the same type of struggle that drifters are going through right now. But regardless if they are drifters or draggers, or even photographers... the people who succeed are able to overcome their obstacles and rise above the struggle because of their focus, determination and HEART. Their passion for their sport is what drives them. That's deep right there.

So chase your dreams NOW. Do that shit. Seize the moment, seize the day. You can't ever regain lost time. Don't ever waste an opportunity to do something that drives you.

Wordup.

Random rambling with no point whatsoever. Just a Saturday.

2006-10-24T20:35:00.000-07:00

This Saturday while the rest of our boys were busy setting up for NHRA Finals at Pomona, me and Jose decided to show some support to our friend Thuy at Livesockets, and head down to his open house in Downey.

We ran into my old friend Rodney Wills, from TMR M'zine fame, who now is in charge of marketing for HPI Racing! Rodney was here showing us this dope new Camaro (I'm not sure if it's a 67 or 69, but it looks to be a 67), which has all the cool details, like the taped up headlights, front chin spoiler, rear vertical spoiler, and race paint typical of the late 60s/early 70s SCCA Trans Am Challenge cars. This was one of the coolest periods of SCCA road racing history, the Pony Car Wars.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, again I gotta say... get yourself some culture.

Google this: SCCA Trans Am and SCCA 2.5 Challenge

Members of the Touge Knights RC Drift crew were having some fun with their HPI RC drift cars, and they even made an RC version of Robbie Nishida's green Silvia! Also an almost perfect replica of Ken Gushi's Mustang, which I shot for the cover of C16 Magazine! Good work guys!

Next we rolled over to RRR to drop off some of my DRIFTING books. Nice to see AE86s always around. Mas from RRR has 10 copies of the book behind the counters, in case anyone wants to stop in and pick it up.

Uhmmm even though me and Jose both have red AE86 hatchbacks, we rolled up to RRR in this brand new Scion TC. This was a brand new press car, I think it had something like 1500 miles on it, or less. Nice stereo system in these cars, I like it.

Damn I was tellin Jose to buy this "Death Pod" under-diff catback exhaust by Auto Area Fuji but he didn't buy anything. Why the F not!!!

There was a 350Z outside with the new time attack edition TE37s, and they looked pretty good! I think they would look dope on a black car! Anyway I just took a pic of these wheels, not the whole car. Get a set of these wheels from Mackin Industries today!

Next stop was Autobacs in Stanton, and I went upstairs to peep out the automotive books. I saw this one book named "MILLEN." How bad ass is that? That's ridiculous! Tight! If that was your last name, and the title of the book was just your last name?! Man that's dope. It's like having a book called "Alvendia" or "Yoshida" or "Tang" or "Ogawara" or something. So dope.

Anyways the book was about Steve Millen, and it had this super dope photo of Steve Millen running a ST162 1986 Celica GT-S at the Daytona 24-hour Race in 1987. I don't have much information on this car, or know where it is. It looks like the same type of chassis work that the TRD/Don Preston GT3 race cars have. I'll have to call up my boy Rhys and see if he can pull up any info on this car for me, and if that doesn't work I'll call some of my friends at TRD.

Then we rolled to The Loft in Cerritos for dinner. Me and Jose met up with our boy Arnell. We were greeted by this filipina girl named Jasmine, she was real sweet, and she was like... "uhmm... are you Antonio?" Jose was like WTF!!! I was just laughing, what a trip? Anyways apparently Jasmine is the girlfriend of my friend Adam Feliciano, who is an 86er who sold out and bought an S13. Haha no seriously he did. HAHAHAHA no seriously, Adam is a great driver, homeboy was known for drifting in his pegleg open diff. Not that it's a great idea, but Adam is on a budget but he still loves driving. He is one of the better street drifters around. Check him out on the upcoming video (next year) called Slide America, by my boys Joey Redmond, Andy Sapp, and Jason __________. Yeah.

Before we left, Adam showed up, driving his gf's Scion TC. He was gonna pick her up from work. Yes I realize the guy looks like he's 10 years old in this photo, but he really does have a driver's license and he is pretty good!

But what was REALLY GOOD is the Hawaiian Iced Tea they have at The Loft! It is the BOMBBBBBBBB! I used to hit up the Loft all the time with my ex gf cause we were addicted to their iced tea! But I was talking to one of the waiters, and he told me it's just a MIX and you can buy it at Marukai! So I gave him my camera and told him to go in the back and take a pic of the packaging!

DOPE! Thanks alot homie, now I'm gonna have to search for this at Marukai! You should too!

Super Street's 10 Year Anniversary Party!

2006-10-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

I should have taken a photo when we got outside, cause there were TONS of people in line outside, which included several big groups of girls, with each group being like 8-10 ladies deep. I don't know how it is in your city... but in Hollywood clubs, usually they bring the ladies right to the front of the line and get them in right away, and make all the guys wait in line forever.

So imagine my surprise when we rolled up (and we had a bunch of guys in our crew), and Carter Jung from Super Street greets me at the door. He asked me how many tickets I needed, and I dunno but I think it was something like 10... and he got us in right away!

Man, no waiting at all? Cool! Thanks Carter! Man those chicks looked so cold out there in their skimpy clothing, waiting in line while Carter brought us in to the club. Carter knows how to take care of his people fo sho. Thanks man!!!

Before we went inside the club, Carter said we had to take a photo at the media wall. Man they had a separate VIP line and everything, it was cool. Here's the Super Street crew- Carter (left), Me, and Jonny, aka JDM Wong.

I followed Jay, Rob, and Stan to the bar, and was surprised to see Lisa and Sunisa chillin by the bar. These girls have tons of energy! We paused to take a photo before we hit the dance floor. Man this little Casio camera sucks, cause these girls were looking pretty damn hot when I saw em at the club. The harshness of the flash just ruins the photo of the girls though- lessens the effect.

Oh snap! Pop ya collar, Joyce'll make ya holla! What a crazy surprise! I ran into my girl Joyce at the function, and it was all smiles! She is one of my favorite peeps to chill with, whether we're in Cali, Hawaii, Vancouver, New York, Frisco, Vegas, whatever! She drove up all the way from San Diego just to come to the party. Man that girl is down! Joyce said my outfit was hot, what a compliment! Especially from a person as stylish as herself! Oh wait, maybe it was the subject matter of the shirt? That's HER!

If you want to rock Joyce everywhere you go, pick up a shirt from her new line, Sinful Things. It's the closest some peeps will ever get to having a chick like Joyce always around! haha

Nothing better than running into old friends at a club! Especially if they look as hot as Carla (in blue) and her girl Tweezy. I met Carla on set in Culver City when I was doing a photo shoot with Ice Cube, Warren G, Snoop, and B Real for a Japanese magazine (Daytona).

When you hand your camera to other people to take pics, it almost never turns out good. The guy who took the previous photo didn't show off the ladies' assets. But never fear, I'm always on point. Even with this POS Casio camera.

Junko, Ed, and Carter! These peeps are all veterans in the industry yall! Junko (love your new haircut) had her S13 Silvia done before most current drifters knew what a Silvia was, and Ed was straight mackin in his old SW20 MR2 from Macross Seven, and Carter had his white Integra Type R on the cover of Super Street. Ballers, all of you.

Edo, Howard, Roel, and Me. Why the hell is Roel's shirt wet? It must be his nipples again, dammit.

Edo works on the Falken Motorsports Team now, but he is THE MAN for his accomplishments at Cusco! If you only knew, you'd think he was the man too. Howard is the man behind Super Street, Roel always finds some way to write about balut, no matter what kind of car he's supposed to be writing about, and me? Me, I'm just frontin with that glass in my hand.

Carter, _________ (I forgot her name), Roel, and _________ (forgot her name too). Roel seems to be feelin _________, but personally I think I'm diggin _______.

One of my friends told me that my blog has pics of mostly Asians, and hardly any white guys are in it. (He was a white guy by the way) I was like, man! Why ya gotta make it a racial thing all the time? Here's two token white guys for your viewing pleasure.

Haha naw, these are my boys, and they're cool. Anthony Paparone (Falken, middle) and Kevin Wells (LS Automotive, right side). The rest of the nips in this photo? We don't matter.

And what's going on with Kevin and Joyce's pose? These two look like they're posing for the homecoming dance or some shit, while my man Edo is getting himself close to the action. These guys...!

Felix has a grin from ear to ear. And no doubt!

The crew exiting the premises! Front: Jose, Fred, Herbrock One. Middle: Jay One, Daryl, and Al. Back: Felix and his chinese cats.

After loitering in the parking lot for WAY too long, we headed to Silverlake or Los Feliz or some sort of area like that, to this private house party to meet up with our other friends, like Tobin, Char, Mike, Claud, Oliver, etc. Except we rolled several cars deep, so we couldn't roll inside! All good, totally understandable.

Jose was down. He was like, man, this is a pretty nice pad! Too bad you could only see it from outside homie. haha

Tob and Stan were chillin with their friends right here (Dee and Tina), and the girls said they were expecting me and Jay to roll through too, but they didn't expect like a million other peeps to come out, because of a miscommunication! For being super close friends, Tob and Jay are pretty bad at communication. They might need to seek some counseling. haha

I was sad that the rest of our crew couldn't roll thru, so we said oh well and bounced. Thanks anyways to the lovely drunk ladies right here, wish we coulda kicked it! But crew comes first!

After we left, the guys decided to go to Carl's Jr, on Los Feliz Rd in Glendale (I think, or Los Feliz area). This mexican guy right here was working the window. Not only did he get our order totally wrong, he jacked up the price on our bill, didnt give us a receipt either. What we found weird was that our bill came out to $12.00 EVEN, and it never comes out even. This guy was stealing money from the cash register, by asking for even dollar amounts, and not giving receipts. When I have time, I'll report him so the fucker gets fired.

We drag race supercharged Scion TCs, Jose breaks a Scion, and I get busted for taking a photo! LOL

2006-10-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

Even though we went out late on Thursday night for the Promotion Party in Hollywood, we had to get up mad early to get to the Scion Performance Challenge at Pomona Raceway the next day. It's all good, you only live once.

These are the pics from last Friday, a few days ago. I didn't post right away cause I was busy.

These are my boys from Belle 1 Racing Communications, Fred (left) and Daryl, hard at work. For those who don't know yet, most of the organizations who produce events (like Formula D, NHRA, D1 Grand Prix, Import Showoff, etc) choose Belle 1 to run their race communications. Belle 1 handles the big jumbotrons at the events, the entire sound system and DJ aspect of it, and they also sell and lease the professional radio communications systems that all the racers use.

The funny thing about the brothers from Belle 1, is that they look very very similar. I think I met Fred first because he was DJing a Formula D event, playing all the dope hip hop and 70s soul breaks and beats... but then at the next event, I saw his brother Daryl and started talking to him, but Daryl had this confused look on his face! My bad! I thought they were the same guy!

So at the next event, I saw both of them, and I was like "oh shit! there's two!" and I talked to my boy Arnell, and he said "yeah man some people get confused about that... but Daryl is the one who runs the organization, and Fred is his brother who spins all the hip hop you like."

So okay, I knew at that point that there was Fred and Daryl... but I forgot which one was which. But of course I didn't want THEM to know that, it would look bad!

So I thought I'd be all slick, and I went up to Daryl and was like "hey bro, I don't think you gave me your business card... did you?" (Cause then I would read his name off his card, and I could know which one was which!)

So then he hands me his card, and I thanked him... and I look down at the card, thinking FINALLY I'm gonna know which one is which! But when I look at the card, it says Belle 1 Racing Communications, phone number, and the name on it reads...

Daryl David, Fred David

Son of a... DAMMIT this so called "slick bizcard move" didn't help one bit! LOL

Here's pretty much the same photo, but this time shot with a Canon Digital SLR. The Canon's color saturation is much better than the other (Casio) photo above this one. As you can see above, the photo above is far too blown out in the background, you can't even see it... I even put the Casio camera on the backlight setting.

Maybe these photos are too small to tell, but when I have em big on my computer at home, there's just a huge difference. It just goes to show, you just can't beat a Canon camera. Especially in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.

Here's Jose hard at work, shooting pics of Chris Rado in a bone stock looking Supercharged Scion TC race car. (Or at least pretending to work)

Here's Chris Rado strapping in to one of the supercharged Scion TCs from the Long Beach Toyota Celebrity Race. This guy is crazy. I got some stories.

This is the Supercharged Scion TC I drove at the event. I liked it because it had the Castrol/Toyota Team Europe colors. Cooooool.

Okay here's Jose inside his supercharged Scion TC (rocking a driftwell shirt), just moments before he broke it. What a jackass. LOL

Okay well here we have Craig Taguchi (editor of Drifting Magazine), Justin Kaehler (IGN.com), and Jacob Leveton (everythingdrift.com) laughing at Jose in the put area, because he broke his Scion TC.

Jose launched it hard on the track, and by the time he got to the end of the track, his car was a lame duck. It was just sitting there because Jose broke the transmission on the car. Good job man, I'm sure Scion will want you back at the next Scion Performance Challenge next year! LOL

Oh man if only you were there to hear Chris telling this story. He was talking all sorts of smack! He was clowning a particular drag racer... oh man. That was funny as hell. And true.

On setup day, we stopped by the Toyota Motorsports booth, and we saw the Toyota F1 car, driven by Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher. Bad ass! I like the crazy aerodynamics on the car, look at all the wings and scoops, Toyota engineering at it's finest.

After we bounced out from the Scion event, we went to Hollywood to the offices of C16 Magazine. I forgot to take a photo there, cause I was busy looking at the layout of the newest magazine issue, the "Vegas VIP Issue." Man it looks hot.

We decided to get some grub with our boy Ray David, the creative director of C16. Here's Ray paying for his food at Zankou Chicken on Sunset Blvd. Man Zankou is one of my favorite restaurants in the Los Angeles area, but don't go to the one on Sunset. It sucks in comparison to the Pasadena one.

Why? Zankou in Pasadena (Colorado Ave) is way cleaner, more parking, the chicken is crispier, and it tastes better. Plus, they don't act all stingy when you ask for more garlic sauce. Zankou's garlic rotisserie chicken is the best! Definitely my fav!

Jose's all smiling cause I was hyping him up on Zankou, and he was lookin forward to it, haha.

Jose and Ray were just talkin and chillin... and we noticed that the chick behind us was kinda cute.

Well yeah she did look kinda cute, so since I was taking a blog pic of Jose and Ray anyway, I was like "nah dont turn around and stare at her, it's all obvious man. She's gonna think ur jockin." so I said, "I'll just take a picture real quick so you can check her out on the downlow, you guys."

So the girl and her brother took off, so I pulled up the photo on the big screen of my digital camera to show Jose and Ray, but WHAT I DIDN'T KNOW was that they walked outside, to get into that yellow VW Beetle (apparently her car)...

And WHAT I DIDN'T KNOW was the girl's brother was looking RIGHT AT ME when I pulled up the photo of the chick to show them... and he had a look on his face like WTF! Right when they saw that, Ray and Jose busted up and started laughing uncontrollably!

BUSSSTED! Hahahhahaa now that was some funny shit. Straight comedy! Ray and Jose and I were laughing for days. But whatever, it's all good! No shame in our game!

Afterward we rolled out to 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica to check out the Puma store over there, right before we met up with our other friends to go to the Super Street Party...

One person can make a difference. Oh but check out our party pics from tonight!

2006-10-20T03:45:00.000-07:00

My boy Jose flew into town today from Miami. We had an event to do with Scion, which dealt with us driving Scion TCs. Our night started off at the NHRA Motorsports Museum in Pomona. It's a pretty cool place to check out, even if you aren't really into drag racing. Seriously, I was surprised at how much I liked the place.

We were at the NHRA Museum to have dinner with some of the top sport compact drag racers in the industry, like Christian Rado, Kenny Tran, and Matt Scranton, as well as the heads of Scion, TRD, and NHRA. But what I thought was cool, was this old photo of a drag car, which was sideways at the dragstrip. It looks like an old DRIFTING photo! So cool! I want to buy this photo for my wall, but like... it's in a museum.

I took a photo of the photo, and recomposed it to look like more "my style." This photo is so gangster! Look at the rear tire flexing! If you've seen my drifting photos before, then you'll probably agree that the new composition looks totally my style. Right!

If you haven't seen my drifting photos before, You should BUY a copy of my book already! Just so you know what I'm talking about! haha just kidding.

No, I'm serious.

You really need to have a copy of my book on your coffee table.

Wow, what an honor. I got the chance to talk to, and hang out with the legendary Alex Xydias, of So-Cal Speed Shop fame. Incredible. Since most people my age have no idea who Alex Xydias is, this guy revolutionized hot rodding and helped it to become a staple of American culture in general.

Alex was super nice, and he seemed very surprised that a person my age knew who he was, and what he was all about. We talked about how we both wrote books about things we were passionate about (his book is about hot rodding, mine is about drifting) and we even had the same publisher. I was telling him how I saw alot of parallels between the old days of hot rodding, and the current state of drifting. He totally understood what I was talking about, and agreed.

Back in the days, hot rodding your car was something that was frowned upon by society in general. People thought hot rodders were just a bunch of kids screwing around, it was difficult to get it accepted into society. It started out as an underground movement... and today, because of Alex Xydias and people like him, hot rodding is now an integral part of American culture as a whole.

I always talk about how one day, I'd like to make a difference in the world, no matter how small. My ultimate goal in life is to have some lasting impact on people.

Man talk about lasting impact! Alex Xydias helped SHAPE American car culture. Now that is crazy. I have nothing but the greatest respect for him.

Seriously people, get yourself some culture.

Read more about this. Get a copy of Alex's book, "So-Cal Speed Shop" www.socalspeedshop.com and he'll even sign it for you. The photos and stories are amazing.

This photo was hanging on the wall in the museum. I think it's pretty damn awesome. So moody, strong and impactful.

Seriously, the NHRA Museum is pretty damn cool. This is a huge blown up photograph of some guys chillin in their garage... they used to race top fuel dragsters that they would build in their own garage. It was so grassroots back then! Amazing, this is one of those times when a picture is worth a thousand words.

Below the pic is a bench with a ton of vintage stickers from different race tracks and other stuff like that. Again, super cool.

Jose, me, and my boy Chris Rado the rockstar. I was friends with Chris since like 1999, before he ever got famous in the sport compact scene. Now he is a famous drag racer backed by TOYOTA and SCION. He is cool as hell, and is one of those guys who creates his own opportunities rather than wait and have it handed to him. Much respect Chris.

But you're still a punk ass for not coming out to Hollywood with us tonight.

Tonight was the night that they put the first import car in the NHRA Museum as a permanent fixture. And it was a TOYOTA. ZZT231 Celica to be exact, Matt Scranton's car. This thing is hella fast. Over 200mph.

Walking around back there, we found a cool old display of American Racing Wheels, so my boy Jose had to represent. It's funny, the surfboard or whatever that is up there says "In Thrust We Trust."

I thought it was funny because it sounded like sexual innuendo, but they were really talking about their classic wheel, the American Racing Torque Thrust. Still, my mind is always in the gutter.

Man this museum is pretty damn cool. Even if I'm not into those cars, I can appreciate it.

Okay on to the party pics! After we left the NHRA Museum, we went to Day After in Hollywood to meet up with our friends! On my left is photographer Scott Garpot (I'm sure you've seen his photos floating around Myspace), me, Char, and Reiko. These two girls have the best personalities. And Reiko can drift her S13 like nobody's business!

This is my boy Stanley Tran. He is a pretty good driver for a Vietnamese guy, he is one of the top drivers in the Just Drift Series! He has a red RPS13 with good offset 17 and 18 inch Enkei RPF1 wheels, and a zenki front lip spoiler. Also, Stan referred me to NBC Universal when they were looking for a special effects photographer who could shoot drifting, for the filming of Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift.

After looking at everyone's portfolios, the people at Universal chose me as their photographer. Such an honor. Thanks alot Stan! And I'm still flippin him off. I'm such an ungrateful asshole.

Me and my boy Kent Chen from Endless USA were straight clownin! Kent is hella cool. He also has a clothing site, you might not know about. www.grymrkt.com

Andy Yen was pretty faded, but he assures us his newly rebuilt AE86 is gonna be sick! I believe you man! Can't wait to see it!

Well I was chillin with Lisa here, and I was talking to someone so they took the pic when I wasn't ready! Hate it when that happens! But who cares, Lisa looks hot as hell doesnt she!

I like Lisa alot, but I try not to go out with her too much cause I don't wanna get shot by gangsters or anything. Haha SORRY Lisa!

Hell yeah.

Again, Adam, Tob, Char and I were chillin, and this fool pokes me in the eye with the straw of his drink right as we're taking the picture! Dammit Tob!

My boy John Pangalinan with the Clockwork Crew. Clockwork is a new record label which produces only the dopest quality hip hop tracks. You GOT to listen to their new joint, The Only Way, by their group Johnson and Jonson. Listen to it on www.myspace.com/antonioalvendia cause it's my profile song. It perfectly describes the struggle and how I'm feelin right now.

Here's a bunch of old guys talking.

Haha naw jk Herbrock One and his stories always make Jay laugh... dude Herb has a story about every place you could possibly go in LA!

Whatt!!! This is Julie, I haven't seen her in a long ass time! She is into cars too, and her favorite wheels are from Rays Engineering. She was also a JGTC Umbrella girl for Rays/Volk. Now that's pimp.

Close crew! CMG Everyhere. Everyone in this photo is a good friend of mine, and everyone in this photo owns an AE86 hatchback, and Canon digital SLRs and/or video equipment. Except for Cindy, but we let her in the photo because of her really huge... personality!

Cindy is awesome, she is the one who ships out all the books to people who order off my www.driftingbook.com website! Love ya Cindy!

Rob looks like he's having a little bit too much fun! Where's her right hand man?

Steve aka "86*Starr" and Herbrock One. Some of the most OG AE86 guys around. Steve's kouki is cleannn!

We got alot of good inspiration at the NHRA Museum earlier in the evening, and ended the night chillin with friends in Hollywood. Aside from paying $20 for parking, I love Hollywood.

Now I gotta wake up in a couple hours to go drag racing at Pomona.

Guess what I found tonight!!!

2006-10-19T01:51:00.000-07:00

Today I had to send out some invoices and make a photo DVD for a client's commercial use. Afterwards, I got a call from my friend Glenn, who is from the Bay Area. He was in Long Beach for a tradeshow, and wanted to hook up for dinner near Venice Beach.

Glenn's sister and some other friends would be meeting us too. Glenn's longtime friend Elaine just opened up a women's boutique (shop) in Venice, so he wanted to check it out. When we got there, I was like... ohhh! I remember Elaine! I met her and her ex-roommates (I remember cause all these chicks were pretty hot) at their old apartment in LA La Brea area several years ago, when I was chillin with Glenn.

Turned out the shop was a high end boutique for women, called "Ecookie" in the popular Abbott Kinney area of Venice. Here's the view from the back of the shop, I was chillin in the courtyard while the others were shopping.

This is Elaine (left) and Glenn (duh!). Elaine owns this shop. Ecookie looks very stylish and high end. I obviously don't spend much time in women's boutique stores, but I can see why chicks would want to chill at Ecookie. The whole place has a nice atmosphere and a cool vibe. Elaine even had Sade singing in the background. Tight.

I like that thing hanging on the wall. Elaine said her friend sculpted it out of foam, then painted it. Pretty dope! I wonder if he can make a car like this...?

No, I'm totally serious.

Now I can see why guys might want to chill at Ecookie. Elaine designed the dressing rooms with a backlight and a semi-transparent door, so you can "kind of" see the women changing in there, at least their silhouettes. I won't front, I tried to catch a glimpse of something through the doors, but I couldn't see good enough.

Here's Glenn (left) and Herbrock One chillin out on Elaine's fly sofa, in the back of the shop.

(L-R) Althea, Glenn, and me. Althea said "Oh shit it's the old Earthlink crew!" and we all started laughing. We all used to work together, for Earthlink. Dude this was years ago.

When I still worked in the technology arena (We grew up as Silicon Valley kids), I was the Regional Sales Manager for Earthlink. This was several years ago. I hired Althea, and ended up meeting Glenn, who was her younger brother. We had some of the same friends, and had pretty similar interests. Later on, Glenn ended up working at Earthlink too, so yeah we ended up kickin it alot. We went to alot of car events together and stuff.

Elaine made reservations for us at this bar that served wine and tapas. I had reservations about those reservations because tapas are small Spanish style appetizers, and you can't get full off that (me, Herb, Glenn, and Althea's bf are pretty big guys)! Unless you order a ton! Sho nuff, we ended up with a pretty good sized check, haha! It's all good.

That's Althea on the left, and her bf Giancarlo right in front. Good thing I asked him about his line of work! He runs a "test only" smog shop. DUUUDE! Smog guys are good guys to know! =)

I told him I needed to replace the catalytic converters and 02 sensor in my Lexus SC400. The 02 sensor went bad, causing the car to run too hot, burning up the inside of the catalytic coverters. Now my cats are clogged, causing the car to run like shit, so sometimes not run at all. I need to replace all THREE cats in the car. Stupid Lexus, why did you make it so expensive for us to change cats? Now we have to buy THREE. And it's a Lexus part, so it's even more expensive than a normal one, just cause it has a stupid L on it. Stupid Lexus. Just make that ish cheap dammit!

It was pretty freakin dark in there, so I was surprised I was able to get this photo of Glenn and Elaine.

Okay, so listen to THIS!

Me and Elaine were talking, and I was saying, "hmm... Venice... so this is near Dogtown right?" And she casually turned to me and said "Oh yeah, this IS Dogtown. And actually, my boutique used to be a skate shop." Real nonchalantly and casual like that.

WAIT. Back it up sister, WHAT did you say?! So she started telling me she doesn't know much about skating, but her store used to be a skate shop, and there's even something carved in the cement right in front of her store.

So after dinner, she bounced out in her white Porsche convertible, and I decided to walk with Herb back to the front of her store, even though Glenn didn't feel like going. So look what I found!

WTF!!! Ohhhh SHITTTTT son! Is this for real??? This right here is a photo of what was carved into the concrete, on the sidewalk in front of Elaine's shop. It looks to me like the original Dogtown cross, with a bunch of initials from the Dogtown skaters!!! WTF that is so dope!

Crazy! Does Elaine's new boutique "Ecookie" now sit in the original spot of the legendary Zephyr Skate Shop from Dogtown and Z-boys fame??? OMG I was not expecting this!

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, you gotta get yourself some culture. Go watch the movie "Lords of Dogtown" and then also watch the documentary "Dogtown and Z Boys" which are both some of my favorite movies... not because I'm super hardcore into skating necessarily, but because I see many parallels to the birth of the skate industry, and the birth of DRIFTING.

So this is the front of Elaine's classy upscale boutique for women, called Ecookie. It's in the Abbot Kinney area of Venice CA, so check it out if you're in the area, and tell Elaine to bump some hip hop music in the store. Because she has nothing against rap music. And buy something for your girlfriend, support the cause! Your girl might even reward you for it! =)

Happy Birthday, Alex Pfeiffer!

2006-10-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Today I'm stuck in the office, putting a DVD of photos together for one of my big car manufacturer clients. They need it by tomorrow. Hurryup!

Also gotta design and print new business cards for SEMA, and a bunch of Cipher Garage stickers, cause I'm all out. Those stickers go pretty damn fast.

But today is my friend Alex's birthday. So I thought I'd write about him super quick.

For those of you who haven't read about Alex Pfeiffer in my book, (you SHOULD! Hurry up and get it, what's stopping you?), he is the first person I ever met who could drift for real. Not the short little 2nd gear upshift initiations me and my friends were doing back in the days... Alex was the first guy we ever met who could connect turns while drifting the mountain roads in his AE86. We used to meet up with him on a Bay Area backroad we nicknamed "Blair Witch" cause it was so dark (no lights at all) and there were tons of twisty roads with tons of trees around.

Since then, he developed his driving to the point where he drove his AE86 in D1 Grand Prix USA, Formula Drift, won 1st Place and $10K at the Need For Speed Underground Release Party Drift Contest, and now, he's a judge for Formula D.

We all used to hang out back in the days, with the common interest being we loved to drive our AE86s. Hard to believe that drifting has taken all of us this far.

This is Alex's old car, a red 1985 GT-S coupe. This is an actual photo from one of my huge photo albums. If you were around back in the day, I used to bring my photo albums to events so peeps could look at all my photos of the AE86s and TE27s and KP61s I found all over the place. Haha that was kind of before websites got popular I guess. I spent a ton of money on those albums, I was shooting FILM! Screw that.
I also made a thread about his bday on Club4AG.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Alex.

By the way, right now I'm listening to this song named "The Only Way" by a group called Johnson & Jonson, from this dope new underground hip hop record label called Clockwork.

This song is so dope. It has so much soul in it- not only from the soulful J-Dilla hook, but from the heartful lyrics that Blu (the emcee) is spitting out. This song exactly describes how I'm feeling right now. And last week. And last month.

LISTEN TO THIS SONG by clicking on my personal Myspace Page. I just made it my profile song right now. LISTEN TO THIS SONG! This shit has heart.

Driving an AE86 in Old Town Pasadena is pretty cool. At night with your sunroof open.

2006-10-17T01:29:00.000-07:00

Today I had to do some errands, ship out some drifting shirts, and email/FTP some pics from Formula D to magazines and other clients.

Iiiii ne! I parked my car on the street, which I don't like to do. But I guess Old Town Pas is pretty safe. I just felt like taking a pic of my wheels again. I like wheels.

Tonight I had dinner with Jerry and RJ and Dai, at Kabuki in Old Town Pasadena. We ate dinner outside, on the patio dining area next to the sidewalk, since it was a really nice night outside. Very nice weather, and cool atmosphere in Pasadena. Good thing we were in a group of 4 guys so we could enjoy it together, haha.

This pic is of Jerry and RJ, because Dai was sitting next to me.

Here's me and Dai acting gay. We all went out for Japanese food, which is weird cause Dai is going back to Japan tomorrow at noon. You would think he would want American food or something, but no, Dai is hardcore jap, and he wanted Japanese food I guess?

It was cool to chill with him on his last night here, I don't chill with Dai in LA that often, unless we're chillin at the shop, or we're at some event in another state, or in Japan or something. Congrats again Dai for your big win at Formula D! Dope!

Oh snap! We were at Starbucks inside Barnes and Noble in Pasadena, and guess what we found!!!

Well no kidding you recommend this book! It inspires people to love drifting!

Wow, that sucks, the original CBGB punk rock bar in New York City closed down last night. Sucks also that I've never been there, but I did make a fake CBGB shirt, that says CG86 instead. Hmm, I like CG86 better than CBGB. Sucks for peeps that like punk rock though. I listen to hip hop, so it didn't affect my life at all. Oh well, sorry you guys.

Okay that's enough. Peace out!

Formula D Awards Banquet Afterparty

2006-10-17T00:29:00.000-07:00

I was soo exhausted the day after Formula D, I woke up at like 11:45am, and then I had to return a bunch of stuff with Felix, like the truck and tent we borrowed. Then I went back home, and was planning to go to church, but I knocked out and woke up again at 9pm. I was supposed to go to the FD Party, but all my friends were already there! Good thing I got to hitch a ride with Scott and Reiko, they are so cool for letting me roll with them!

Oh yeah, but here's the back of my car, while I was filling up gas at the 76 station. Yeah that's my real license plate, I don't care, look it up if you want. No reason to hide it, I'm proud to Live the 86 Life.

My zenki AE86 has factory paint and body, OEM Toyota Japanese zenki bumpers, lip, sideskirts, grill, Sprinter taillights, etc. It has Kg/mm springs, TRD Japan shocks, Revolver traction brackets and Negative RCAs, a 5Zigen Border III exhaust, and vintage Work Equip 01 one piece wheels. It's hard to find these wheels in this size, it's not like the three piece Work wheels that anyone could just order brand new.

I found the rear wheels rotting away on an AE86 Levin in Ibaragi Japan, at Satoru Works. Satoru san was a D1 driver, with a supercharged 7AG 20v motor. His other car was a 7AG 20 valve with ITBs, that guy is nuts. Unfortunately, he passed away this year due to a heart attack, which makes me not want to sell these wheels. They are (-18 offset) yup negative 18.

I ran into Ben Schwartz (aka Big Smoke), Jerry Tsai, Cindy and her two friends, celebrating the Pacific Rim Drift Team's first First Place podium finish at a Formula D event.

When I met Ben, he was just starting out in the scene, with his white S13 Silvia. He lived in Florida, and drove that thing from Fort Walton all the way to Irwindale, with tools, spare wheels and tires and his luggage in his drift car! Like... he drove that thing on the 10 freeway cross country, then drifted it at Irwindale, and then drove back. Now that is hardcore, so stop complaining that Willow Springs is far from Los Angeles.

I will forever remember Ben as the driver who screwed up THE FIRST COPY of America's First Book of DRIFTING. Because the very first copy of my book, I saved for my little brother David. I took it to a few events, and had all the drivers sign it, that was no easy task. Then when good old Ben signs it, homeboy writes "To Robert" instead of "To David" and then to top it all off, he didn't even fucking sign his name in the book! I was like WHAT?! This happened at Formula D Seattle, and when I noticed it, I was in the hotel room chillin with my boy Arnell. And I was like WTF Ben!!! So I called him out to yell at him while he was having dinner! Bastard!!! hahaha!

Seriously Ben is a real good guy, and a real good friend of mine. He is hellllla cool! But damn fool, you messed up the book, freaking Ben!

As a joke, me and Jerry were talking about making a signature shirt for Ben, saying something like... "Ben Schwartz. Big Smoke. Either way, it's BS." HAHAHA now that would be hot!!! hahahaha sorry Ben! You're my boy! You fucker! LOL

Andy Yen right here was the very first American drifter to have a drifting feature in a Japanese magazine. It was in Drift Tengoku. He is the King of the Hill in Southern Cali, with his AE86 coupe. Andy is the shit in the mountains, for real. But now we all are careful to not promote street drifting, so Andy says KEEP IT ON THE TRACK!

John P the pimp and my boy Jerry. Ever heard of Speedwell Shoes? Ever heard of Pacific Rim Drift Team? Yeah, that's these guys right here.

This is Bill and Jen. For those that don't recognize, Bill is the guy who dresses up in the red Momo racing suit and gets on the microphone at the Cooper Tires trailer at events, and yells stuff to the crowd. When I saw him at the Formula D Awards Banquet, I was tripping cause Bill was still rocking a uniform shirt thing! I guess this guy never stops working. Jen is real sweet. Hmm, I wonder what she'd look like as a brunette...?

Pat from Monstor and his wife. Pat is one super cool guy, he is a genuine good person, and that's a quality you don't find in people much nowadays. Super cool guy. Hit him up if you want him to weld you a rollcage or something.

Casper Canul and Pat are puttin it down for all the latinos who are into drifting. If you've read my book, you would know that Casper's family owns a Mobil gas station in Alhambra CA. In fact, my yellow 1984 AE86 SR5-to-GTS conversion got stolen outside that gas station. =( I miss that car.

Casper told me at the party, that he doesn't think he appeared in my book that much, but I think he did. Maybe he's just disappointed that he didn't get a big picture in the book, but hey, I only had 128 pages to work with and well over 500 photos, so I couldn't please everyone. I had to take care of the companies who have worked with me over the years first. Hope you understand Casper, it's not that I didn't want to run a huge photo of each driver. That would have been ideal.

On a side note, I totally think Casper and Pat should play up the Mexican card, and have their pit crew rock blue plaid flannels and Dickies, and long socks with Nike Cortez shoes, and ride around the pit areas with lowrider bicycles n shit. Instead of umbrella girls, they could have hynas with super dark eye makeup and tattoos n stuff.

Who knows, if they do it right, they could get sponsors like Corona, Tecate, Chipotle, Tapatio, King Taco, Tabasco, Frijoles Antojitos, Alberto's, Tequiza, Del Taco, Taco Bell, Chevy's, El Torito, Spic n Span, Lowrider, Fuego, or something like that. You guys should totally try it.

Alex Pfeiffer and his gf Crystal. She is hella cool, but like I was saying before, see she's pretty short!

Reiko, Thao, and Crystal! They look good together! Reiko and Thao drift also, they have S13s.

I was trying to kiss Samuel Hubinette's Swedish gf Stina, but Samuel came out from nowhere and this was the look on Stina's face! hahaha jk Samuel, don't kick my ass now.

Me and Tree trying to look cool. But we're not.

Henry Chung from Motorsport Dynamics and Kevin Wells from LS Automotive. Henry's shop was one of the first import aftermarket shops that opened up in Northern California, Motorsport Dynamics is from Sacramento. I remember going to my first drag race in Sacramento in 1994, and his shop was already open back then.

Since then he has built Calvin Wan's white FD3S, Hubert Young's blue S14 kouki, Ross Petty's (Ross just drives it, Henry owns the car) gold RB powered S13, and a bunch more bad ass cars.

Kevin from LS Automotive in West Covina built Chris Forsberg's 350Z convertible, and services a bunch of Drift Alliance cars, as well as Hubert Young's Discount Tire Direct S13. Both Henry and Kevin went on tour with us for the past few years, to every drifting event we went to. Check em out in my book.

Oppai deteruyo! Taka looks like he has breasts in this photo. (L-R) Scott, Reiko, Taka, Tiffany, Me, Yoshie, Kate, and Rod chillin out on the patio of V20 in Long Beach.

We were all trippin to see Yoshie in a skirt! Normally she is wearing jeans or a race suit! Taka is always just chillin though.

I was trying to get Taka to put his arm around Yoshie, give her a hug or a kiss or something, but this was the max they would do! Dude they are hella far apart still! It's funny! I wonder what they do on their quality time, they probably go out to touge or rebuild the suspension on their AE86s or something, LOL!!!

I think Taka and Yoshie are sooo cool, they are the epitome of grassroots drifting. Taka is such a skilled driver, I don't think any of the other top drivers in Formula D could handle an underpowered NA AE86 like Taka does, and still be competitive. All the other guys have like 500 and 600+ horsepower cars, and Taka is "big ballin" with a high horsepower full built engine, which is like 200 horsepower or less. It just goes to show, drifting is all about the DRIVER. Taka gets my utmost respect, he is definitely one of my favorite drivers in Formula D.

This is Ross Petty's gf Colleen. Dude she's hot, she is a part time bikini model and just moved here to LA from Okinawa, so she speaks Japanese, but she has a British accent cause she's from England! Fucking hottt!!! She worked as a Falken umbrella girl for a short period of time too. Good job Ross! Well he is a super cool guy, so no wonder Colleen likes him! That's my boy right there, good job dude.

Me and my boys, the Belle 1 crew! These guys run the jumbotron at Formula D, and all the sound/speakers. Basically these cats shape your Formula D experience! Props on a great job all year guys, thank you for helping me promote my book so much, you guys are the best.

Me with Selina and Colleen! I was gonna take more pics with the other friends, but Scott was like "YO man we gotta bounce, lets go!" so I had to stop and go to the car! hahaha all good!

The fresh new 86LIFE shirt from Cipher Garage!

2006-10-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

The fresh new 86LIFE shirt from Cipher Garage has the 86LIFE logo going strong across the chest, and inside the letters, if you look closely, you'll see the Cipher Garage "tomodachi sticker" design, going over and over and over again in different directions. Cool huh? What do you guys think?

Here's the back, with the Cipher Garage Crest on it...

Formula D Finale photos, through the eyes of Antonio Sureshot and his Canon SLR.

2006-10-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

Right now I can't publish all my action shots on here, because the different media outlets I work with need those top secret before they go to print. But here's some teasers of the lifestyle stuff I shot during my super hectic day at Formula D.

Thai Marie Cali and Ashley Sarto looking hot as hell, as the Official Cipher Garage x Pacific Rim umbrella girls. Thai was recently featured in Euro Tuner, and Ash was recently featured in Import Tuner.

But what's even more important than that, is both of these lovely ladies have featured spots inside my new book, DRIFTING... America's First Book on Drifting. Buy a copy on www.driftingbook.com

Deejay A1 here is the head DJ of the Falken Sound crew. He revolutionized the drifting scene by injecting real hip hop into the mix. Because of Arnell (A1, in the middle) you now see bboy battles and real DJs spinning hip hop, breaks, funk, and soul at events. These guys provide a dope atmosphere, which is such a huge change from the radio bullshit that all the other DJs play at stuff like HIN and all that. Fuck that noise, it's all about the music coming from A1's speakers.

In the background, DJ Concise and DJ Analog from the Beathackerz Collective stare into each other's eyes... this is a close crew yall!

This is fly Heidi, this girl got some style no doubt. Her outfits are impeccably fresh, she's probably even all geared up when she goes to sleep. Dark gray, light gray, red, and gold. Very fresh. Too bad you can't see the dope red leather boots in this photo.

She has a stock Camry and a fixed up Civic right now, but she is searching for an AE86 to fix up for street. She's gonna be rollin out to 86 meets and track events with us in no time flat!

Charlene is always killin it with the flav outfits as well. (That green kangol and vest are dope!) As she should, she is an alumni from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles CA. And since fashion is always paramount to this girl, she always rocks Cipher Garage.

This is Jessica, she is from Dirty Jersey, the Garden State. I met her at Formula D Round 6 this year at Wall Speedway, she was there with her bf Damien. Those two are awesome, they're always supporting the cause! They bought a book from me at Wall, and at Irwindale Jessica was the first to buy the new 86LIFE hoodie, which is army green, with the 86LIFE screened across the chest with BLEACH. This makes it breathable, comfy and stretchy, which is how ladies like their clothing.

Oh yeah and on the back of the hoodie is the Cipher Garage VIP Crest. That shit looks hot! All the stylish people at events rock Cipher Garage, no doubt.

This is my boy Lou, he is gettin down on the linoleum provided by the leader of the Falken Sound System, Arnell aka DJ A1.

Here's my girl Verena with her Nissan sponsored Z33 350Z. Verena definitely attracts attention because of her looks as a model, but her main focus is really DRIFTING. Alot of negative people say things like "Oh jeez, an import model getting into drifting..." and they try to put down her driving because they are jealous of all the corporate support she's been receiving. Let me speak on that for a minute.

Verena is down with drifting. She is not a gimmick, like how alot of others view female drifters. She really is down, she is hooked on drifting. She did get into the Formula D Series at an early level, but now she has scaled back to the Just Drift Series, which also has a very high population of high level drifters. ( www.justdrift.com ) She is doing very well in the Just Drift Series, you guys should see her rocking the bank with her Z. She is doing it. And doing it well. Forget about her looking cute, she gets the sponsors because she is professional in her appearance and her actions. This is not my opinion, this is a fact.

For all those who would disagree or think otherwise, you can drop me an email directly and I'll school you on what's up.

This is my boy Topics with his girlfriend and one of the DA girls. Topics is Chris Forsberg's older brother, and he got the name Topics cause he totally sucks at math. He had to take a class for the mathematically challenged, which was called Math Topics or some dumb shit like that. His friends made fun of him, and that's how he got the name.

His brother Chris Forsberg, driver of the Falken/Sears 350Z is no math genius either, but he somehow made it to the cover of America's first book on Drifting. Now Chris has his spot in the Library Of Congress in Washington DC, how do you like that. Topics is one of the guys from the DA camp which I definitely am glad I met. You get to meet alot of cool people when you travel because of drifting. Topics is one cool mofo, one of my favorite people from the DA crew for sure.

Crystal is short as hell. She is also Alex Pfeiffer's girlfriend, but she gets mad when you introduce her as that all the time... so now I'm gonna introduce her as Crystal, who is short as hell. =) She always looks dope rocking Cipher Garage also, especially with those fresh sunglasses and her bag from Tokidoki Japan! Everyone rocks the Drifting Changed My Life shirts... because it did change our lives, and it's here to stay.

Oh yeah, stop smoking Crystal.

Aww snap! This is the G4 Television Crew in front of the Irwindale grandstands, right before the Top 8 competition was about to start. On the left, we have "Chocolate Boy Wonder" Adam Matthews, who is the most knowledgeable drifting host on the Formula D TV show (because he is an awesome drifter himself, with his gray kouki S14), and the head producer T (is that how you spell it? someone school me I don't know), and we have male model turned host, Brandon Johnson. Brandon is cool as hell man, he is hella down to rock Cipher Garage gear all the time. Actually Adam and T rock it too! You can always find Adam dressed to kill, and gettin down at all the industry parties we roll to, homeboy definitely knows wussup. You can always find T on the track, running the Formula D TV show... and gettin down to the sounds of quality hip hop music from DJ A1 (Falken Sound) and Fred David (Clockwork/Belle-1 Communications)!

These guys did a quick interview segment on me and my new book on Drifting! Watch it on Formula D TV! Thank you sooooo much guys! It really means alot to me. Thank you for all your support, really.

This is Kaylah, she's cute isn't she? When I met her, we were at Formula D Seattle, and she wasn't modeling at all, she was chasing cones down in the middle of the track! (Good job on making the ladies work! LOL That's the handiwork of my man Andy Luk from Formula D!) But I think Kaylah looks alot better off the track in a skirt, than chasing cones down! Especially when I take the photo! Don't you think, Kaylah??? Look for more of her in the near future.

More pics coming soon, but right now I need to go to Pacific Rim.

Formula D Finale, Irwindale

2006-10-16T05:25:00.000-07:00

These pics were taken with the Casio Exilim little point n shoot. Huge difference from the pics above, huh...

My zenki 86 was going to be displayed in the ACT Clutch booth at Formula D, but my car was dirty. It was hella early in the morning, and I was too tired to wash it the night before, so I went to a carwash and paid to have the guys wash and wax my car.

They were so surprised that I came in for a car wash because it was RAINING. I know it's weird, but I think it's okay to have a WET car. But I certainly didn't want people seeing my car all dirty. That's not acceptable. Anyway they did a shitty job, and they messed up my chrome Cipher Garage stickers on the side windows in the process. How hard is it to wipe a window without messing up a sticker? It's not. Idiots. No wonder you wash cars for a living.

Anyway, I woke up at 6am that day and removed my black Nardi Classic 360, in favor of a old school Momo Prototipo 350mm steering wheel with my favorite, the Toyota Katakana horn button, which is pretty rare nowadays. Also installed my aluminum shift knob I got in Japan. It has the same logo on it. Cool huh...

Here's a quick snapshot of the Cipher Garage booth at Formula D. As you can see, the hottest chicks around always rock Cipher Garage gear because it is fashionable as hell. Just like the cars in the Cipher Garage Collection, the clothing line has good style. These ladies wouldn't be rocking it if they didn't think it was stylish.

Charlene is on the left, Heidi is in the middle (lookin fly in that gray tank top and striped grey shorts), and Thao is on the right. They were runnin thangs in the booth, and sold a bunch of copies of my new book, as well as clothing! Thank you ladies!!!! Love you guys. You're the best.

Karlo jumped into the photo with the ladies, he helped out a ton at the booth as well, doing inventory and helping deliver the clothing! My boy Felix would have been in this pic, but that guy was out picking up the new 86LIFE hoodies and buying lunch for everyone. Felix was such an incredible help the whole weekend, he was on it! THANK YOU SO MUCH FELIX. I mean it.

BTW, those license plate frames are cool huh! Brand new from CipherGarage.

OG AE86ers with good offset right here. (L-R) Johnson's wife, Johnson (blue kouki coupe with mad wide XR4s), me, and Jeff Huang (white kouki coupe with deep SSR Starsharks and MarkIIIs).

See my shirt? That's the fresh new 86LIFE shirt from Cipher Garage. If you're down with AE86s, represent that shit by getting one of these shirts ASAP!

This is Damien and his girl Jessica. I met these two in New Joysey. They bought a copy of my book at the Pacific Rim booth at Wall Speedway, and had me sign it. They said that they loved the book, and now they're crazy about drifting! They even flew to Los Angeles for the FD Finale, just so they could be a part of it! Now that is incredible! These two are super nice!

Here are the guys from Euphoric Designs in Carson CA. Jesse from Euphoric does alot of vinyl work for some of the top cars in the drifting scene, like Taka Aono's AE86, Papa Gushi's Impreza and S13, Forsberg's 350Z, and alot more. My boy Daryl from Belle-1 told me to call up Jesse to get my banner made for my booth, since it was so last minute, and Jesse got it done in time! AND it was pretty cheap!

Thanks alot Jesse, the Cipher Garage banner came out dope! And thanks to Taka and Yoshie for picking up my banner at Euphoric and bringing it to the track for me!

This is my boy Ivan from BC Ethic Clothing, and to my right is my girl Verena Mei. Ivan designs the rock n roll licensed stuff for BC Ethic that you see in stores across the world, and Verena is a pretty bad ass female drifter. She started out as an umbrella girl at the first Drift Showoff, but she got hooked on drifting itself and got involved in the sport as a driver! Now she's tearing up the track in her red 350Z. Good work Verena!

I never really realized this, but most people don't get a chance to be in the middle of the field during a drift event at Irwindale. This is what you see from the photographer's area in the middle of the track during the Top 8 tandems.

Mark Gearhart from Floridaracing.org was out there taking spy pics of me shooting blog photos with my small POS Casio Exilim camera. He thought it would be funny to take blackmail photos of me in the photo area shooting pics with my little point n shoot, cause I'm always talking shit about people with media passes in the photographer areas, who try to shoot with small POS consumer cameras. Get out of the way, your photos won't come out anyway if you use those little cameras and cameraphones! Come ON people!

Here's me with Steve Levy, the publisher of C16 Magazine. This is the cover I shot.

CONGRATULATIONS DAI!!! My friend Daijiro won 1st Place at Formula D Round 7. I might be mistaken, but I think that's Dai's first ever 1st Place finish at an FD event! He battled Rhys Millen, who is always a difficult guy to beat! Dai seems to go up against Rhys alot, and he finally won! Congratulations Dai, and congratulations to JERRY the team owner!

With them is my friend Steve Starr, he is an 86 guy and a hell of a videographer. I don't know why he's wearing a Ducati shirt to a drifting event though. You can ask him. Good planning Steve!

This is Gordon and his fiance. Remember his face, and whenever you see him at his official Formula D Merchandise booth, ask for Cipher Garage clothing! Because it's cool.

My boy Felix was such a huge help throughout the whole week, when we were preparing the booth. He's here with my super close friend Tsukasa Gushi, aka Papa Gushi. I had to give Gushi san this flywheel I owed to him. He's here with a copy of my book, he said he loved it and he bowed to me and shit. Wow that is nuts. Means alot coming from him. He is an old friend of mine. And an AE86 guy!

The Day Before the Formula D Finale at Irwindale

2006-10-16T04:13:00.000-07:00

I had to head out with Felix to pick up books from my PO box on the day before Formula D. When I jumped out of the SUV, I spotted this relatively clean orange 1972 or 1973 240Z outside. I'm not sure the year, but it looked to be original paint, I didn't have time to inspect it closely. We also noticed that it had super clean Enkei Apache mesh wheels. Those things looked brand new when you look up close. Too bad they're like +500 offset. =(

Man we had ridiculous amounts of books in the back of the SUV. For real.

My boy Hubert Young, the Team Falken driver of the Discount Tire Direct S13 coupe, crashed on the Friday practice runs at Irwindale. Here he is in the pits, examining the rear suspension. It's bad luck- Hubert is an awesome driver, but his car has been struggling with mechanical problems all year. I hope the team can get it together next year, so he can get more seat time iu the car! Seat time makes awesome drivers.

This is my boy Calvin Wan's Infiniti G35 competition car, in the Falken pits getting serviced. I heard the engine blew again, but I forgot exactly what happened. They just had to rebuild the engine at the last event in New Jersey because the bank at Wall Speedway (NJ) is a steep 30 degrees, compared to Irwindale's 18 degrees... and when Calvin was doing a demo for a local TV station, his oil cooler fittings broke off when his car came off the banking on the transition into the infield. All the oil spilled out, but Calvin was mid-drift and didn't notice.

The G35's builder, Gary Castillo (former tech editor for Import Tuner) had to get another VQ engine from a Maxima in the junkyard, and remove the crankshaft and connecting rods, rebuild the motor, and then install the setup into Calvin's car. Oh, and he had to do it in 24 hours. They took the car to a friendly Sears Auto Center in BFE New Jersey, and Gary did all the surgery there. I stopped by there with Mickey from Falken and Drew from Sears corporate HQ to take some pics of the build. The pics show Gary and another car builder re-assembling the engine, but Gary tells me as soon as my camera left, the other car builder put down all the tools and went to sleep in the rental car.

That sucks man. I mean, the way I see it, you don't have to work on a car that isn't yours. But don't front and pretend like you are, when the cameras are around. That's just frontin. If you wanna be in a magazine that bad, buy an ad or send a pic in to reader's rides.

Here's Gary, telling the story while working on the G35 for real.

On the other side of the pit, Hiro Sumida and Koji from Drift Association were working on Hiro's JZX90 Chaser. It's a right hand drive car from Japan. The body may look like a crumpled up piece of paper, but Hiro drove his battlescarred Chaser to a podium finish at Formula D New Jersey. Congratulations again Hiro, I'm proud of you man. You made Team Falken proud too.

We had to leave Irwindale to pick up more supplies. On our way out, we ran into my friend Jim Liaw (formerly known as Jimmy Law to people from Diamond Bar, haha), who is one of the founders of Formula D. Jim decided to help me out by allowing me to sell copies of my DRIFTING book at the Formula D Finale. Huge thanks to Ryan Sage, Andy Luk, and Bryan Olfert also for helping me get the Cipher Garage booth organized and situated! It was my first booth at a Formula D event, so I was excited for sure.

After running around town doing even more errands with Felix, we met up with our friends from Falken at BJ's in Monrovia. Or Arcadia, same difference. We were sitting directly across from our cute friends Courtney and Lea.

Courtney is a model, she was telling me she just got back from doing a shoot earlier that day. I forget who she shot with, but it was a cool project. Damn what was it again? She used to be a host for RedlineTV, and a Falken umbrella girl for a couple years, so we traveled to many events together and became good friends. She can also be seen modeling the latest in Cipher Garage clothing on the htpp://ciphergarage.ilovedrifting.com website.

As for Lea, she works in the dental field, but she sure looks cute in this pic, dont you think? Her boyfriend is my good friend Calvin Wan (Falken G35 pro driver). But back to Lea, she is one of my favorite people ever.

This is my boy Tree. Well his real name is Brian. But he likes people to call him Tree because he's hella tall. He is half Japanese, and speaks nihongo. He works for Falken and is a pretty responsible dude. Let's go back to Japan Tree! Our last adventure at Ebisu was hella cool.

Okay well after all that, I just went back to the crib and knocked the F out. Super tired.

Check out the new issue of C16 Magazine! ...and last minute preparations!

2006-10-13T01:38:00.000-07:00

Last night's Drifting book release party was also the release party for the new issue of C16 Autostyle. Coincidentally, I shot the cover of this new issue, which profiled my friend Kenshiro Gushi's Ford Racing Mustang on the cover.

This shoot was kind of challenging because I shot it after the Formula D practice day at Evergreen Speedway in Seattle. The track's surroundings didn't look very good, and as hard as I tried to find a cool background for the cover shot, I couldn't do it. The track was cold (meaning: no drifting allowed) but I just asked Ken to flip on his headlights and do a fat burnout. Even that was tough cause the back of the Mustang has fans which disperse the smoke, so he was going for quite a while to build up enough smoke for the shot!

Big ups to my boy Ray David, who did the artwork and layout for the cover.

Inside the magazine, it was really nice of the guys from the magazine, Steve and Ray, to write up a little profile on me, it was pretty funny! Thanks guys!

C16 even featured my book in the Consumption Section, which deals with cool new products, whether they are car or lifestyle based. Awesome! Thank you again!

This is my boy Felix. He is cool as hell. He is an 86er, and he is down. He came over to my spot and went to Sam's Club with me so I could buy a EZ-Up tent using his card, and then we went to Walmart and bought some chairs for the booth this weekend. Thank you Felix!!!

Afterward, we went to Pacific Rim to drop off the chairs, and we found out that the new umbrellas for our umbrella girls this weekend were finished! Cipher Garage is doing a collaboration with Pacific Rim, and we're going to have Thai Marie Cali and Ashley Sarto rocking our booths, so watch out now! The girls will look alot better rocking the umbrellas than Felix does.

My friend Julian was still busy screenprinting the new Cipher Garage shirts for the event, we will have alot out there!

My boy Robbie called me up and told us to meet up with him at his hotel, he had just flown in from Japan and was jetlagged. We left PacRim and went to the hotel, and we ran into Hiro Sumida, walking into Claimjumper with his very pretty wife Rie. (I think I spelled it right?) Here's Hiro and Rie at claimjumper. I thought it was hella cool that Hiro was rocking a Cipher Garage shirt when we ran into him too.

Calvin showed up at Claimjumper with his gf Lea, and we decided to all head out to eat Thai food. Cal asked me to drive since I knew the area better, so we jumped in his Dodge Magnum rental, that thing is pretty fast!

Robbie is sitting shotgun with me, and in this photo, he looks like he's wearing a sailor's hat! Homeboy looks like the Japanese Popeye n shit. Haha it was so funny, all we need to do is give him a pipe and some spinach.

Once we got to Krua Thai on Vincent Ave in West Covina, everyone except Lea ordered the same thing as me, #81 Black Pepper and Garlic Chicken over rice, with 2 fried eggs on top of the rice. Everyone also got thai iced tea except Felix here.

This is my boy Robbie Nishida. He drives in Formula D competition, with the green Peak Performance zenki S14. He is sponsored by Falken Tire, so we always roll together at every event. I met Robbie in Japan (Tokyo Auto Salon) and since we're both AE86 guys, we became good friends instantly. Robbie is one of those completely trustworthy guys, that you just begin liking right away. He didn't know this because I played it off, but I knew exactly who he was when I met him.

Robbie was in several Japanese AE86 videos and magazines before, and in one of the videos, Keiichi drove Robbie's AE86 Levin. Robbie's team was always in issues of Battle Magazine (Japan's most popular underground drifting magazine). They are called Hey Man! More on this later.

Here's me and Lea, Robbie took this photo. Man he sucks. Everything is blurry as hell. Stick to driving dude. You would be one broke ass dude if you were a photographer, haha!

Anyways Lea is Calvin's girlfriend, and she is awesome as hell. I love this girl to death. She is a super super close friend of mine, we get along very well! She is a very sweet and genuine person! Again, I love people with great personalities! She's hella down too. She supports C Wan and his drifting career alot. People who work as hard as we do to focus on our careers, and are on the road as much as we are, really need supportive chicks by our sides. Calvin is very lucky to have someone as dope as Lea! But watch urself, don't make her mad! You'll get schooled kid!

Number 81. That's the shit. But the shitty flash from the point n shoot camera makes it look wack. The flash is too harsh! I wish it was more diffused, and the light came in from the side. Whatever.

Robbie is acting gay and snuggling up to our friend Dan. Dan is a waiter at Krua Thai, and we ended up getting to know him cause we're at this restaurant alot. Alot alot. He shoots photos too, and wants to come out to Irwindale with us! He shot pics at the book release party last night, thanks a ton Dan!

Okay.

Damn Robbie looks pretty crazy! This is his "try not to look so much like a fobby Japanese guy" look.

Dope photo of these two! Lea looks cute in this pic! Calvin and Lea are two of my closest friends. I guess I have some pretty close friends, but both of these two have got to be some of my closest ones. I trust them both completely. We have alot of fun whether we're traveling all over the world and chillin together in different cities, or just kickin it in our hometowns of San Francisco or Los Angeles. Whatever, we're down. We were takin madd photos up in the restaurant!

WTF Robbie!

After dinner at the thai joint, Robbie wanted to get a milkshake, so we rolled out to In n Out on Barranca, so he could get a real ice cream milkshake. Robbie's milkshake brings all the boys to the yard... in this case, it was JR Gittin. JR was outside the hotel smoking when we got there. Just look at these guys looking into each other's eyes, all longingly and shit.

I just dropped everyone off, and went home cause we have a big day tomorrow! Aight see yall at the track!

DRIFTING Book Release Party was off the hook!

2006-10-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, holy sh!t it's late in the day and I just woke up. (11:15am) We got back from my book release party super late last night. Here's some pics.

This is my boy Calvin. He was at Irwindale Speedway yesterday, making some adjustments to his competition car (Falken G35) because it had a pretty new motor, and new suspension setup. After, he came to my place to pick me up, so we could roll to the party together.

We were gonna meet up with our boys in the Los Feliz area, but we decided to stop for Chinese food in Pasadena cause it was on the way, and the others weren't ready yet.

We just randomly found a Super Street in a stack of magazines at the Chinese food place. SS really IS everywhere. Good shit guys. We opened up the issue, and low and behold! There's a big ass 2 page spread of Calvin's personal car, his white FD3S RX7, when he was competing at the D1 Grand Prix Round in Las Vegas. It was hot as hell that day!

I've been good friends with this guy since... I don't even know. Somewhere between 1994 and 1996. Now he is one of the top drivers in the Formula D series (Team Falken G35) and was one of the first US drivers to get a D1 license. But back then, he was just Calvin with the blue 1986 2tone blue AE86 coupe.

He designed the Cipher Garage "AE86 Silhouette" logo that everyone knows so well, back when we started the AE86 Driving Club in San Francisco CA. Now there's a website in Australia claiming the name AE86 Driving Club, but everyone knows the original one was our group from SF. It's all good though, props to the guys in Aus because anyone who likes AE86s is a friend of ours.

This is the 2page spread on Calvin's FD3S I was talking about. I'm not sure who shot this photo, maybe it was Henry Dekuyper, or maybe it was Jonathan Wong... but either way, they get mad props from me. Awesome photo if I do say so myself.

The light hits the FD just right on the left side, cause the sun was setting, and you can see Calvin inside the car, and the headlights are on, even though they're just popped up a tiny bit. The wheels are spinning, the sponsor logos are sharp, and the background has nice blur.

If you understand drifting and photography, you can tell from the way the smoke is coming off his rear tire, that this photo was taken mid-corner, when he was in the initiation phase of his drift.

After eating, we went to Jay's pad to meet up with some of our boys. (L-R) Garrett from HKS, Jay from Schikane(shaved head old Japanese man on top), Herbrock One from Cipher Garage (full hair old Filipino man in the chair), Stan Tran from Drift Over Grip (we were all waiting for this fucker to get off work, so we could leave), Jay's gangsta lookin brother Todd, and C Wan.

Right when we were about to leave, I got a call from our girl Charlene. She wanted us to wait for her so we could all roll together. Dammnnnnn Char! Hurry uppp!

Finally Char got there, and a bunch of the guys jumped in her car, while Jay's brothers Todd and Rob jumped in the back of Calvin's rentacar Dodge Magnum. When I turned around to look back there, these fools were chillin in the back of the car with open beers in the cupholder! LOL idiots! Man finish your drank before we leave, we don't want C Wan getting busted with open containers in the car while he's driving yo!

This is the line about to form outside of the venue, Nacional. This girl right here is Char. You might recognize her from an episode of Redline TV on Speed Channel, where they did a segment on me as a photographer. She was the model in the shoot, but we do go out and chill alot in real life.

It was funny to see people like John Naderi, the editor of Super Street Magazine, and Eri Moriyama, one of the top import models in the industry, waiting outside in line! Dude just let them in already guys. I stayed outside in the line with my friends to make sure everyone got in, before I went inside. That's what good friends should do.

I was chillin outside with these lovely lovely ladies. Really they are some of my favorite girls of all time. Awesome personalities, I'm not even talkin bout their looks. Hot models are a dime a dozen, but the girls who really stand out to me are the ones with awesome personalities.

Oh but it doesn't hurt that Eri (left) and Char (right) are hot as hell. I really think the world of these two!

This is a rare photo of the Cipher Garage OGs together. This is HerbrockOne (left) and me, AntonioE86. Herb is rockin a shirt from our girl Joyce Lex's clothing line, called Sinful Things. We love Joyce! Look out for her brand and buy her stuff, it will make you look cooler.

I've known Herb forever too. He's not even like my friend anymore, Herb is more of a family member like an older brother. (haha sorry Herb!) I'm just clownin, I like to make fun of Herb and Jay's age all the time. I should stop. But I don't think I will.

Herb owns two AE86s currently, in case you were wondering.

These are my boys, the Yoshida Brothers. Todd, Jay, and Rob. They make high end wallets and stuff, you might see their brand at exclusive shops like Stussy and Undefeated or Union on La Brea. The brand is called "PORTER" by Yoshida and Company.

Haha you WISH fool! No really, their brand is Schikane Clothing, and they make fresh shirts like the famous "Drifting Is Not A Crime" one seen here. Click on the pic to peep the website.

These guys are my good friends, especially Jay. He is super super cool, and a real good person, even though he tries to act all hard in photos.

I like Todd cause he has a bunch of AE86s, he is a real 86er at heart. Jay has a black 86 hatchback, but he needs to clean it up more before he can roll with us. Hurry UP freakin Jay, I'll help you! Rob doesn't have an 86, but he's still hella cool because he used to go out in Hollywood 5 nights a week. Now that's G.

Haha! Like our boy Tobin always says, "fuckin Jay never gets a good spot!" Jay has a pretty gay smile in this photo, but if you were there this would be funnier, cause the pic wasn't sposed to turn out like this. I'll just leave it at that.

I forgot the guy's name at the left, but starting from the stripes, it's our girl Thai (She's the shit! She drove out all the way from South OC just to see me at my party! Love ya Thai!), Jay, Stan in the back, Char, Eri, and Calvin.

This is me and my boy Lamont. He owns a successful IT networking company. I met him on a super hot day in Lake Havasu Arizona, when we were on the Bullrun. It was a cross country "race" from New York to LA, with
parties at every major city in between. Lamont is cool as hell. I didn't see him much after taking this photo though! Where'd you go man??

This is me and my good friend John Naderi, the Editor In Chief of the almighty Super Street Magazine. He looks so stoked to see me, I think he was planning on grabbing my ass or something. Haha! But seriously Nads is a great guy! Hella cool!

Damn showstopper! Everyone in line turned around to look when my girl Heidi jumped out of the car with her friend Tammy.

Heidi's brother is a super talented designer, definitely one of the most talented guys in the industry, but he wasn't there! Where the hell were you Jason?

This is my boy Prosperus One from the might Delta Nine Emcees crew. The first time I saw him, he was onstage at this club me and my boy Kero One used to go to every Sunday night, called Plan B in downtown San Jose. Prosperus was battling this local dude named Pro. We never even saw him before, we were like "who the hell is this asian cat battling Pro?!" but we thought he was sick, and he definitely kicked Pro's ass. We didn't see him at the club after that, but we thought it was cool as hell cause in the past, me and Kero had a freestyle battle with Pro and his boys too.

Now Kero and Prosperus are doing big things with their music careers, especially Kero. Check him out on Myspace. www.myspace.com/kero1

The party was off the hook! Super cool atmosphere at Nacional! Thank you to Steve Levy and Matt Colon and Ray David and everyone at OverAmerica for making this happen! Thanks also to all my friends who came out to chill! You guys are the best! For those who didn't come out, you suck. And you missed out on a fun night with good people!

This is my girl Cindy! Don't I look so happy to see her? Haha, she's a super good friend of mine, she makes sure all the Cipher Garage inventory and DRIFTING books are shipped out on time! She drove out far just to come to this event, thank you Cindy. I love you girl!

Man I look shitty in this photo. This is my boy Andy Yen. He is one of the most OG AE86ers out there, Andy was the shit in the Canyons with his red, no wait... cream, no wait... dark green, no wait... UPS brown AE86 zenki coupe. He was the first drifter from the USA who ever got profiled in a "drifting feature" in a Japanese magazine. It was in Drift Tengoku Magazine, and it was shot/written by my Japanese brother from another mother, Kenta Ogawara. Wish you were here at the party fucking Ken. Ken was in Tokyo.

Andy competed in the first 2 years of Formula D, but now he is a judge in the Formula D Series.

Andy paid me the biggest compliment ever. He came up to me at the club and told me "Congratulations man, your book really came out good man. We didn't expect anything like that, you really filled in alot of blanks for alot of people out there in the drifting world." WOW. Man. Seriously that meant alot to me. That right there was the highlight of my night I think.

To have OG drifters like Alex Pfeiffer and Andy Yen get behind my book and endorse it and be so supportive of me and my book, that really really means alot to me. They might not know this, but I really hold those two especially in the highest regard.

Alex and Andy are the foundation man. They were the inspiration for alot of people to start driving hard at touge. They are great friends, and the leader of some of the most hardcore mountain driving AE86 crews- Battleswing and Swingbattle is the shit in the mountains, and you just can't beat them. Alex was the King of the Hill at Tantalus (Hawaii) and at "Blair Witch" (Northern Cali. Andy was the King at GMR (Socal).

Andy and Alex are super picky guys, and super particular. Super critical as well. And for them to come up to me on separate occasions and tell me they liked the book... man. That shit means alot to me. Really.

Thank you Andy. And thanks Alex. (BTW Where the hell were you, Alex and Crystal!!!)

Wow I was so surprised to see THESE guys out at the party, especially cause they live hella far! This is Dave and Mark Slidesquad. No that's not their real names, but everyone calls em that. Me and Kenta laugh, cause it sounds like they're married when you say it that way.

Dave is in green, reppin his SF tourist hoodie. He is in my book, as a pioneer of the drifting scene in the USA. He has an EF Civic painted camouflage to look like Keisuke Hatakeyama's EF FWD drift Civic in Japan. Then he bought my old red hachiroku (the one with the license plate "DORIFTO" which he eventually ended up selling back to me), and then a 1972 240Z with triple side draft carbs and RS Watanabe wheels. Dave always goes to Japan, and I think he was the first of our group to go to Ebisu Circuit. Dave is an innovator man. He's kinda weird, but that's what makes him cool. There's so much to say about Dave, he is quite a character. He is also a vintage F1 maniac and loves vintage European cars as much as he loves vintage Japanese cars!

Mark Slidesquad is rockin the Ferrari shirt in red. He is one of the coolest guys I know! Such a nice guy. It's funny, we always trip cause Mark is such a chill person, but Dave has the most sarcastic, dry sense of humor! And he gets all crazy when he's hyper! So we're like, damn Mark! Don't you wanna kill Dave sometimes? Haha they're roommates, and good friends. Good thing Mark is such a chill guy! Mark is cool cause he has AWESOME OFFSET wheels on all his cars at all times, and also he always has a different hot asian chick with him at all times, every time we see him. Yup that's one cool English fucker. He used to own a hachiroku too, but now he owns a red RB powered S13 Silvia (first one to do the swap) and a white S14, and another car, I think a Porsche 911 or something? Damn Mark is a baller now.

My boys from Super Street! Carter Jung (thanks for the nice writeup on my book Carter), Jonny "JDM" Wong, and Roel "I always find a way to write about balut in a car feature story" Concepcion. These guys were all asking me about my hat, like what is that? And of course, it's a Kangol.

Kangol is my favorite brand of hat! And Roel says "dude isn't it funny how only black people and filipinos can rock Kangols hard?" Of course! We then figured out that it's because filipinos are like the "black guys" of the asian culture. Think about it for a minute, and you'll know what we're talkin bout. Hm, I wonder if Roel still has his AE86 that he was building up in Super Street.

Me and my girl Sharon. I have known her for sooo long! Me and my boy Herb met Sharon at the first Hot Import Nights at Irvine Spectrum, it was like the 2nd ever HIN. She was modeling on some Civic, and we were jocking. I got her number and actually I had photos of her on the old school Cipher website!

I think Sharon is pretty hot, and she's a pretty wild girl! I like that! Haha but for real, she is so sweet. Her bday is coming up, close to Halloween, and she wants me to go to her party, which I'm down to go to... but she says I have to wear a costume. Herb is down, and he even has his costume ready! But damn man, I don't like wearing costumes, I think it's pretty gay. But I dunno, Sharon keeps telling me I need to go, so I think I might have to go just to show love to my girl... but damn, I don't wanna wear some costume. Well, we'll see how that turns out.

HerbrockOne and Sharon! Man what a crazy reunion!

Damn! I love these two people too! Mark is my BOY! Always lookin fly reppin Cipher Garage gear to the club (Offset is Everything shirt) and his hot ass mama Erin is always lookin good of course! Mark has a sick clean orange 1973 TE27 S5 that he bought from our boy Santos, and also a turbocharged AE86 Levin that he rocks at Just Drift events (he is a pretty damn good driver! Proud of you homie!) and also a TE71 box-type Corolla that he rocks on the daily. Fresh, this guy has a cool collection!

On the other hand, his girl Erin rocks a fly black on black 5speed SC300 (Mark can't wait to drift this thing) and she is not only hot, but her cooking is off the hook. I'm going over to their place for Thanksgiving, don't even think I won't!

This is my boy Anthony next to me. He may look like some weird perv stalker, but he is really a cool guy. We used to work together, back when I was ballin with a high end Director of Sales and Marketing job and a private office with a huge window overlooking Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. But back then, I still drove my AE86 to work every day- in fact, I was driving the CLEAN one, the kouki hatchback that was a SEMA booth car.

Anthony was the IT Manager over there, and when I got hired, he set up my computer, and the login/password he set was "teamcipher" and "redgts" and I was like WTF?! How did this guy know...?

Back then, I used to rock a suit to work every day, and I worked in the corporate environment, so I used to try to "speak and act like a white guy" to fit in with the corporate structure. So I kept my fixed up 86 on the downlow. But this stalker right here knew my website, even before I worked there, apparently he was into old school Toyotas too! Maybe it's a filipino thing.

His website is www.kp61.net it's the most authoritative website out there for KP61 Starlets. He is my boy. He made the www.ciphermediagroup.com website for me. Thank you for everything over the years Anthony, you stalker!

Some of the most talented mofos in the industry right here! My boy John Pangalinan (left) really turned Speedwell Shoes around, lining up top drifters with their own "pro model" driving shoes, with fresh new custom colorways for each driver. On my right is my boy Ray David, from "the Rock." Ray is the creative director for C16, so we collaborated to do the cover of the current issue! I shot the cover of Ken Gushi's Mustang in Seattle, and Ray flipped the script using his Hollywood magic and skills beyond belief! He is the man, and he also rocks Kangols like crazy. These two guys are the shit!

Fred David right here is a sick DJ. For those of you who have had the pleasure of hearing him spin, he rocks the spot for sure! He always represents the 805 whenever he can! He just came out with a new CD, on his new label called Clockwork. If you like original J-Dilla beats, you gotta check out Clockwork Label's new CD from Johnson and Jonson, it's fresh as hell.

Fly Heidi and me! Everyone come up to her at the Cipher Garage booth at Formula D and say wussup! Better yet, hand her $20 and she'll give you a new copy of my book, DRIFTING! And some fly new Cipher Garage gear!

The boys! Maynard, me, Lou, and my boy Arnell. Arnell is a close friend of mine, he is also known as D1 A1 of Falken Sound. He tours around the country with us, and spins quality hip hop at the Falken booth everywhere we go. I gotta give Arnell props for introducing hip hop culture to the drifting scene.

Because of Arnell and the music he spins, there have been multiple freestyle rhyme sessions at the Falken pit area, bboy floor-rockin sessions and all that. Big ups to Arnell for showing love for hip hop culture. Not all drifters are rock and roll.

Castro and Zach! Castro is cool as hell, he works as a Hollywood lighting guy for TV and movies. I could learn a thing or two from him! Also, he is gonna be shooting at Formula D with me! Cool!

Zach back there is Castro's boy, and he's looking for an AE86! I think he's cool already!

Heidi and Arnell, homeboy has that "hashish n trees keep my eyes Chinese" look in this photo, to quote directly from a Nas song. haha

Here's Tammy and Heidi again, rocking some cool ass outfits at the function. I think Tammy's style is cool, I dig the socks. And Heidi just attracts attention because of her "lady in red" uniform over there, but her face is really gorgeous too, so that doesn't hurt either.

My boy Tobin Honda just got back from a trip to Hawaii a couple hours before coming to my party, but him and Craig came through!!! Hell yeah guys, thanks so much for rollin through! You're the shit!

Those of you might recognize Tobin's name because he pretty much single handedly put Enkei Wheels on the map in the drifting community. No disrespect to anyone at Enkei, but I personally think that Enkei USA was pretty disconnected with the drifting industry, because they didn't really cater to the market like they could have. However, for 2 years, Tobin fought to promote Enkei as a wheel company and made it popular with the grassroots drifters, and pro level drifters alike. Respect Tobs! He recently resigned from his position at Enkei. I don't know what they're gonna do without him. They gotta find someone good pretty quickly.

Had to take a pic with the ladies, fo sho! Thanks for the bunny ears, Junior B! haha

Kenji, me, and Barry Wong from Hawaii! Barry drives the Kaaz S13 in Formula D, and he has a matching car in Hawaii! But I'm so happy for him, he told me he just bought another hachiroku (he's originally an AE86 guy) and he is building it up again for drifting! Sick! I also heard Barry ballin now, with his own house in Hawaii Kai! Damn baller, congratulations bradda! Wish his gf Kandis, and all our other Hawaii friends like Paul, Royce, Justin and them guys were here too!

At the bar with my boy Daryl, the owner of Belle 1 Racing Communications. Daryl and his brothers run the Belle-1 jumbotron at all the Formula D and D1 events. They also provide all the radios to the drivers and teams at the events! Without Belle 1, there would be no communication at drifting events.

Thank you guys so much for promoting my book on the jumbotron, and for inviting me to your bomb ass BBQs! Dope!

Schikane crew represent! These are my boys! I hang out with these cats all the time. Tobin and Jay came up with the idea for the Fashion Icons Show, which was the first fashion show aimed at the automotive apparel market. Kenta from Tokyo Drive and I worked with them on the behind the scenes aspects of creating the show, and I was the host of the evening. We packed a club on Hollywood Blvd and Highland beyond capacity, and there were tons of industry folks, friends, and fly ladies all up in there! Stay tuned for the NEXT Icons show.... coming this December!

Hollywood Heidi and Chrizle are so fun to chill with!

Everyone in this photo is an AE86er. Calvin Wan, Lance Kirianoff (aka Potatoes O'Brien, pink AE86 in Formula D), me, Colin Frost (red 85 AE86 in Maxim Magazine, now a writer for Drift & RWD Sport Magazine), and Martin Harjani (white Hasselgren AE86 with Formula Atlantic motor).

Herb and his nephew Pauly cheesin it up!

Here's Heidi laughing about something Lance said to her... oh wait. That's the wrong Lance! Where's my boy Lance Feliciano? Usually those two are attached at the hip or something.

We all went outside, and apparently even though we told him to come outside with us, Calvin Wan didn't know we were outside. So he was wandering around the club by himself! hahaha LoSERRR! haha but we found Arnell outside at the famous Hollywood hot dog carts, where the mexican guys always serve you up a grilled hot dog wrapped in bacon, sauteed onions and peppers for only $3 bucks. This is always the spot at like 2am after you've been partying.

I was so happy to see these two together outside the club. Really. Tobin and Char look great together, I don't think anyone could look better than these two.

And Jay had to throw in a flyer from www.autofonimages.com into the pic! Go to that website, so you can download my photos to your cell phones!

Here's the same photo, but this time with flash. And Stan in the background!

Man I kinda wish I brought my Canon SLR out, so I could have taken better photos at the event! I just brought my new toy, this pocket sized Casio Exilim. But if I brought my digital SLR, I could have taken way cooler photos, but I just didn't want the burned of having to carry it around all night, when I was supposed to chill with my friends.

If I brought it out, I would have popped a quick flash onto Tob and Char from the left side, so I could expose their faces in a flattering way, without getting a shadow from Char's low hat.... but at the same time, I'd rock a longer shutter speed so I could expose the ambient light in the background, and you could see the Hollywood street scenery going on in the background. Also flashing from the side would not put any light on Stan, so the photo wouldn't be ruined! But too bad, I left it in the car.

All night, I couldn't stop thinking about how many limitations this little Exilim pocket camera had, and how I needed something SMALL where I could still control the position of the flash, and still have low light sensitivity. But nobody makes a camera like that. Dammit. I never stop thinking about photography or how to properly expose a scene. Ever. Serious.

Hollywood Heidi and Chrizle are all G'd up in Chrizle's Hummer. Heidi is cool, she is looking to buy an AE86. Seriously. She has a fixed up Civic, but she knows AE86s are better. Saw wussup to her at the Cipher Garage booth on Saturday!

We all rolled back to Del Taco, and then back to Jay's pad to eat. Herbrock One right here was the founder of Driftwell clothing, that you see EVERYONE rocking on the race track and at events, and even at the mall. Seriously, it's everywhere.

Even this shop in Hawaii called Razor Concepts in the mall sells fake Driftwell stuff. I even saw it with my own eyes, their fake shirts. They liked his shirts so much, they copied it and bit it and have been making money selling it in Hawaii. Razor Concepts is pretty shady man. Too bad they don't know Herb owns all the trademarks on Driftwell, and they are gonna get sued. Dumbasses. Think up your own designs.

Like how I conveniently framed the D*well stickers in the background when I took the shot? Too bad the lighting from this little camera is shitty. Anyway, like always, Herb was telling us some funny stories, and we were laughing our asses off. We were talking about how I didn't want to wear a costume to Sharon's party on the 27th, and he was tellin me he's down, and he even has a costume already. I was like WTF?

This is Thao, she is a drifter too, she drives an S13, but I heard she sold it, I dunno why. Thao was clowning on Herb as he was telling a story about how he wore a costume to Lance Kirianoff's 80s Costume party. It was hella funny, seriously.

Jay was laughing his ass off, and clowning Herb too, while Thao was egging him on! Hey man stop making fun of Herb! hahaha no seriously, it was really funny. Freakin Herb.

Okay that's it, I need to go to Irwindale, and then buy supplies for the weekend! Peace!!!

Hollywood Swingin! DRIFTING "Book Release Party" in Hollywood TONIGHT!

2006-10-12T05:26:00.000-07:00

If you haven't yet heard, you must be pretty disconnected from the scene, because everyone has been talking about my new book, DRIFTING. This book features my photography, and my journey over the past 3 years, documenting the emerging drifting scene in the United States, from its inception as an underground movement, to it's acceptance as America's hottest new action sport.

For more info, or to get a copy for yourself, go to my website: www.DRIFTINGBOOK.com

But so anyways, today was the official "DRIFTING Book Release Party" in Hollywood. It was at a pretty dope venue called Nacional, which is right on the corner of Hollywood Blvd and Wilcox.

I just got home, my boy Calvin was nice enough to pick me up earlier this evening, and then drop me off with his Dodge Magnum rentacar. It's stupid early in the morning and the sun is bout to come out. I'm tired as hell, I'mma go to sleep. I'll post pics tomorrow cause I have so many. Thank you to the fam at C16 and to all my friends who came out to celebrate with me. To those who didn't come out, you suck.

But for now, here's the flyer, designed by C16's design guru Ray David.

Getting ready for Formula D Finale this weekend

2006-10-11T00:33:00.000-07:00

Today I had to work on getting my shirt designs prepared for screenprinting. I went to my printer Julian, and asked him to help me do this rush order, in order to make sure my stuff would be done before Formula D Irwindale, which is only days away. In the foreground, you can see part of the new shirt design I'll be debuting at Irwindale.

We will have army green lightweight hoodies for women (these are gonna look HOT!!!) and tshirts for the guys... hopefully my order of mens hoodies gets here in time too, so we can rock those as well.

This is my friend Cindy, getting ready to box up some orders of shirts and tanktops for customer orders. What you see in the background is part of the current inventory of Cipher Garage clothing, this is the women's side.

I went to my friend Jerry's shop, Pacific Rim, to discuss some plans we had for the Irwindale event. I ran into our good friend, Daijiro Yoshihara. He is one of the top drivers in the Formula D series. Check out his fan site at www.ilovedaijiro.com . Yes I know it's a slightly odd sounding web address, but really it's not a boy on boy site or anything. Oh well, I didn't pick the URL.

Dai is a good friend, and I've known him since he was a crazy fob, and he couldn't even speak English! This guy just bowed and smiled all the time! haha! But Dai speaks good English now, it's impressive how fast he learned. Speaking of fast, Dai is also known for having some of the fastest entry speeds at Formula D events. Go go Daijiro! You pimp.

Dai just arrived from Japan today, and Jerry was supposed to pick him up from LAX, but he was tied up at the shop working on some details for Formula D finals, so he forgot to pick him up. "Oh shit! You're at the airport? My bad!" but Jerry is a real chill, easy going guy... we wasn't trippin at all. He never trips. Jerry is hella cool.

There's a real big wall section at Pacific Rim, with blown up images of our friend Ashley Sarto's tits. haha! No it's really supposed to showcase some of the Pacific Rim clothing designs, but I just thought I'd grab Ashley's tits anyway, even if they were flat in this photo (I'm not dissing her, I'm saying it's a wall). Anyway, we're gonna have Ash model for us this weekend, along with one of our favorite girls of all time, Thai Marie Cali. I love Thai!!! Not like "I'm in love with her," but more of "I love that girl's personality." She's the best. And she's hot.

This is my boy Jerry, he is the owner of Pacific Rim. He founded the company 10 whole freakin years ago! Now it is the biggest brand of motorsports apparel. You can't fade Pac Rim. You wish you were here to hear him tell this story- it was a good one! Lots of cheesmis! (Ask a Filipino if you don't know!)

This is the inside of Cindy's Element. She's a good friend of mine, so I've ridden in her car a few times before, but today was the first time I sat in the back! Man! There's so much room back there!

Me and Cindy began talking about how there's so much room back there, it would be so easy for people to do it in the back of an Element... but she "claims" she's never done it back there! Yea right! That's crazy! I told Cindy if she was my gf, I'd be hitting that shit like every hour on the hour in the back of her Element! She was hella laughing! (but you know it got her thinking! haha jk Cindy) Even the floor is plastic so it's easy to clean! Come on! Now that's convenient. Good lookin out Honda! Those Bangbus guys need to get an Element. For real.

DISCLAIMER: This section was just for laughs. Cindy is just a friend for real, and I have no intention of hittin it with her inside the Element today because she's seeing someone right now. See Cindy, I know how to treat a lady with r e s p e c t! LOL

After I got home from doing all the clothing stuff, I got a call from my boy Calvin Wan. He is also a stunt driver (Fast & Furious 3 Tokyo Drift, Toyota commercials) and top Formula D driver, he is known for driving the Falken G35. Apparently he was in LA cause Team Falken had a private test day at Irwindale today. They had just finished eating dinner at Outback Steakhouse, so he came over to my pad to chill.

We decided to meet up with some friends at a local spot. Bunch of Corollas showed up, and Adam Feliciano showed up driving his mom's Toyota minivan. He sure looked cool in that thing. That's my boy Felix's black AE86 in the foreground. He sold his clean S13 Silvia to get this AE86, so now he's back in the club! It's ok, 86>13 anyway Felix.

That's Calvin (rockin Sparco) talking to Felix, the AE86 owner. The other guys in the pic are Karlo (up and coming photographer, who just got back from being a baller in the Philippines with only $300) and Adam (crazy canyon drifter, even without an LSD).

This is one of my Miata friends, Andrew, attempting to see if his Miata can really fit under an 18 wheeler. You've been watching too much Fast n Furious Andrew. Haha! Well at least you have SSR Mk-IIR wheels. Cool!

Me, Calvin, and Dave inside Eye Scream. I think that's how you spell it? It's an ice cream shop on Nogales and Amar in West Covina.

Cipher Garage Clothing. Produced in LA by a real AE86er, picked up and delivered in a real AE86. With good wheels.

2006-10-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

This is the CG zenki 86 again, parked hella far from the curb in downtown LA. Yeah I know I did a lousy parking job, but I had to pick up some stuff from this store which was gonna close in 5 minutes, so I just said F it.

I had to go to downtown LA today to pick up some shirts and stuff. We're running a bit last minute right now, and we gotta produce a ton of clothing for the big event this weekend, the Formula D Series Finale at Irwindale Speedway on Saturday.

I had to go to the American Apparel factory HQ to pick up the blank girls boybeaters and zip hoodies, as well as a shirt Heidi ordered.

Heidi is so cool, she is looking for an AE86 and she is helping me right now on some Cipher Garage clothing projects. That girl got some style! I dig it. She's gonna help out at the Cipher Garage booth at Formula D this weekend, so make sure you guys all say wussup to her! She will be the cute Filipina chick wearing the sheer gray "Drifting changed my life" tanktop, and the rest of the outfit will be stylish as hell! haha

I was driving around in downtown LA and I just thought I'd snap a pic with my new digital camera, since I was at a stoplight. I love LA. Not because it's the cleanest place, or the most safe, or scenic, and not because it has clean air, and is free of crime or anything like that.

I like LA because it's a big city, and almost EVERYTHING is there- from dope restaurants to tons of car shops with the best JDM parts, and of course all the resources you need if you want to start your own clothing line, or want to become a photographer. Hmmm, sounds like this stuff pertains to me, doesn't it? Well that's why I live in LA.

If I wanted to choose a city with nicer scenery, I'd definitely have to choose Tokyo, San Francisco, Honolulu, or Vancouver. It's a no brainer. But for the line of work I'm in, and the other interests I have... LA is the place.

Okay, I guess you shouldn't really be trying to take pics while you're driving, especially in downtown LA. But the coast was clear, and I wanted to take a pic of my Nardi Tokyo horn button. I'm such a showoff.

I went to the American Apparel factory HQ to pick up the girls tanktops and hoodies. This is one of the boxes of boybeaters, which I put in the back seat of my AE86.

American Apparel stuff is pretty expensive, and to be honest, I make alot less money when I make the girls stuff with American Apparel blanks. But to me, it's worth it because their tanktops and hoodies are good quality- soft, stretchy, form fitting, and comfortable. So even if I make less profit, it's okay because the females who actually spend their money to buy Cipher Garage gear will like how it feels on them, and they will look damn good in it. So they will buy more, and tell their friends to buy more. Girls are more picky than guys when it comes to clothing, so it all works out.

The Los Angeles skyline towers over some pretty filthy streets. But it's aight, I love LA.

Chino Hills AE86 Meet

2006-10-08T22:50:00.000-07:00

Damn I showed up late to this meet, not because of Filipino Time (usually that's the problem, but not today), but because last night I was eating ramen with my good friends Jay and Joyce... and then Joyce asked me to turn down the ringer on my cellphone cause it's stupid loud (Cause I can never hear anything, my hearing sucks) and she didn't want the nice Japanese people to get scared of the loud ass "Welcome to Jamrock" phone ringer. So I did turn it down, but then I FORGOT to turn it back on! So this morning when Joyce and Jay called me, I didn't hear it. And like 2.5 hours later, I checked my phone like "why havent they called yet" and I discovered they DID call but I couldnt hear it cause I didn't turn the ringer back up! Dammit! So my friends were leaving and I wasn't at their place, where everyone else met up.

Oh well! So anyways the meet was really cool, it was nice to see some old friends I havent seen in a while. Good job to the guys who put it together, it was cool to see all the 86s out there!

(BTW I couldnt take a lot of pics, because I didn't buy an SD memory card for my new point n shoot Casio digital camera yet, so I was limited to only 6 pics, which was the max I could fit with the onboard memory) Here's the pics.

My zenki 86 had some OG Work Equip wheels back on it, haven't had these on the car for a lonnnnng time! Oh and THANK YOU to the guys who bought books from me at the meet!

My friend Jasen hit me up, asking me if I happened to have any books on me... which I actually DID have some in the trunk, so he wanted to buy one. And then quite a few others came up to buy books too! Damn I didnt expect that, but that was COOL! Thanks for the support guys! Thanks to you guys, I had some cash to buy popcorn chicken and boba this evening!

Okay well this dude right here, my boy Eric gets the award for my favorite wheels at the meet.

Cause they're Modex K/T Dori Dori wheels? NO. That's what newbie internet Corolla homos might think, but his wheels are sick because of the fitment! And this color is very rare! Light gold! It's the same color as the ones on Youichi Imamura's brown ICBM AE86. Very dope. Good job Eric. I love it!

Wussup with those sunken-in panel on the Originlab front fenders tho?! I think you got a bunk pair or something! But STOCK METAL FENDERS are the best! Hit me up if you need some. I'll help a brotha out.

The other award for the best wheels go to... THIS car. Okay, so it's NOT a Corolla. Who cares. My boy Paul from Good Feeling brings the real Road&Ster spirit to Orange County. I'm not like usually the biggest fan of Miatas, cause I'm not super into convertibles or anything. In fact alot of my 86 friends don't like convertibles, cause you always see girls driving them. (In fact, the only Miatas I really like ALOT are Paul's car, and my friend Ricky's car from SF)

But yo you can't say ANYTHING bout Paul's car! This is not for batty bwoys! Nothing gay about this Roadster! This Miata looks super mean, super buff! It's all about his stance! Negative camber, deep offset, tire stretch, and factory steel fenders. Awesome. Looks like alot of the guys from the Hachi&Roku community can learn alot from my boy Paul and his Road&Ster. Nice new front lip by the way, and I like the car muchhhhhhh more with the hardtop on! This Miata is sick!

Right when I got to the meet, a Filipino guy with a cool looking JDM style Advan shirt came up and introduced himself to me. He owns this Celica, and he was like, "yo I've never met you before, so I just wanted to introduce myself..." Such a cool guy!

Man but what you guys might not believe, is the guy who owns this Celica is none other than the infamous Junior Asper from the legendary street drag crew, Redline Racing. For those who don't know much about old school Southern Cali street drag history, lemme break it down for you right quick. Junior got a ton of fame and street cred as the first person to bring an import car into the 13s, back in the days when import drag was the shit. Redline certainly was the crew everyone wanted to beat back then! Big ups to Redline, and all the other old school drag crews like Wicked and Cyber and everyone else... Now Junior has moved his attention from Hondas to Toyotas, with a newly done up AE86 2tone hatchback, which you can see in the current issue of Import Tuner.

But this is Junior's street car, a super clean original paint RA40 Toyota Celica, either an 1980 or 1981. See the wheels? Good offset Epsilons keep his Celica buffed. Wow, and old school original paint Toyota Celica AND Epsilon wheels? Man there's no mistaking that, Junior, you ARE Filipino. Pinoy pa rin! hahahaaa!

I think the OG pinstripes on Junior's RA40 Celica are pretty cool. You don't see much of these cars out on the streets anymore, especially not COOL ones. Usually they Celicas like this that you see are all beat up or low budget.

Good lookin out to people like Junior, and my friend Richard Rabe (aka Celicadrifter), and whoever keeps the Dan Gurney RA40 Celica Celebrity race car on point!

You can't tell from the photo (I was using a small Casio point n shoot, not my Canon SLR) but Junior's tail lights are hellllla clean! What you CAN see however, is the awesome fitment of the Epsilon wheels on the Celica's FACTORY steel fenders!

You don't see THAT often! Good style! Nice!

Here's another thing you don't see often. A big black dude with cornrows and dark glasses chillin out having boba in Rowland Heights, at Tapioca Express.

See all those chinese magazines and comicbooks behind him??? Yeah that's just something you don't see alot. This is my boy Dee, and he is an OG 86er! Homeboy got a blue kouki AE86 that he runs up in the canyons all the time! Dee is real cool, so next time you see him at an 86 meet, say wussup to him! People might be kind of intimidated by him because he's kinda quiet, but seriously he is cool as hell, you guys gotta say wussup. Let's face it though, I guess some little asian people just don't feel comfortable around big black dudes with cornrows and dark glasses! But Dee is our boy, and we've known him a hella long time! He is cool as hell! Next tie you see him, go up to him and give him a hug! And then hope he doesnt beat your ass for that public display of affection. haha

Oh and homeboy is straight comedy at Tapioca Express! We were chillin out eating popcorn chicken and watermelon slush... and then my friend Jay was tellin me... "Oh dang! There's an unwrapped condom on the floor right next to the cash register!" and when I saw it, I was like WTF! So I walked back to the table with my black tea, and I told Dee, "damn man there's a condom on the ground right in front of the cash register" and he was like "wait... what color is it?" Red I said. And he was like "Oh shit, that shit's mine" and he got up to go get it. HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAAA me and Jay were rollin laughing~!! Fuckin Dee! hahahahaaaa....

VIP Car Meet at Autobacs

2006-10-08T07:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was running around in my zenki 86, doing some errands... I went to the Pacific Rim warehouse to give my friend Julian some photography tips, and let him borrow some lenses for his trip to Vegas for the Lowrider Super Show.

They were going to Vegas to trailer up our friend Linda's uhmm.. trailer. She sells shirts and other merchandise out of that trailer, and she cleans up shop! Linda kicks ass! She is a successful Chicana herself. Props to her for doin it big! Her clothing line is called Chicana Wear, and she sells em to all the people that go to events where there are a large population of latinos. The Lowrider Super Show would definitely be one of them. There's gotta be a ton of 64 Impalas riding 3 wheel motion over there... and you KNOW there's gonna be a ton of hynas around. No not hyena. Hyenas are the animals from the Lion King which were trying to eat Simba. Hynas (dude I dunno if I'm spelling that shit correctly or not. Frankly I don't really care either. It's not a part of my every day vocab anyway.) are the latina chicks that chill out posing on the cars. If they were asian chicks, they might be called import models or hoodrats or something.

Okay. Damn I'm off topic again. We were supposed to talk about VIP cars, but we were talking about hynas instead. Focus! Okay so after I left Pacific Rim, I went to Walmart real quick, where I saw a whole lot of hynas... dude! Stop talking about the hynas dammit! Okay well anyway I went to Walmart real quick and I was trippin cause I saw that they have pretty damn good digital cameras there!

I'm a professional photographer, and I only have my big Canon equipment. I love my Canon digital SLR, but sometimes it's just too bulky to take around. Especially to clubs and going to dinner and stuff. So anyways, I saw this Casio Exilim digial camera for only $225! Damn that's hella cheap. It's a 6 megapixel camera with a big ass screen, and it's very SLIM so it fits in my pocket! Dope! I bought it cause I had some extra cash laying around, and I have been needing a small camera for years.

So my friend Joyce called me up and said "yo I'm on my way to your pad to pick you up. Let's go to the VIP Meet at Autobacs." Okay so I jammed home real quick and got ready. I didn't buy a memory card yet, since my Canon SLR uses CF cards, and this Casio thing uses SD cards. I didn't wanna spend $88 to buy a 2GB SD card at Walmart, when I could buy it online for like $40 or 50 bucks. But I was excited to try out my little camera, so I brought it anyway.

I was pretty disappointed with the VIP Meet at Autobacs. There werent really any VIP cars there. I mean there were a few Infinitis and Lexi, but most of them were pretty far from VIP to be honest. When I say VIP car I say I want that thing first and foremost to have an aggressive stance. What I saw there were some Japanese luxury vehicles "in construction." I mean, I don't want to say anything bad, because meets aren't carshows or anything. It's just a place where owners of a particular type of car get together and talk abotu their cars and help each other out. But to be honest, I wasn't feeling alot of the cars there. They were either not low enough, didn't have good enough wheels, had ugly aero, or didn't have good enough wheels. Wheels are a real big thing to me. If your wheels don't look good, then the rest of the car doesn't matter.

One good point about the meet is, the Groovy Drift guys were out there doing an RC Drifting competition. The Groovy Drift guys put on a very professional event. The RC track looked pretty professional, and I liked that. They are certainly elevating the level of RC car stuff. It's not just a toy to play with in your driveway anymore. I have never really sat around to watch one of those, but I had nothing better to do at this meet, so I did. It was cool to see that these guys had some realistic replica RC cars of real drift cars! Some guy had a Kumakubo "Team Orange" WRX STi, and one other guy had a Toyota Chaser painted to look like my friend Hiro Sumida's smashed up JZX90 Chaser, which he drove to a podium finish at Formula D New Jersey. Dope! But the highlight of the Groovy Drift event, was import model Jeri Lee was there. She's pretty cool, I like her. However, I kinda don't think she's much into RC cars, so I was wondering if she was bored or not. Well she didn't look bored so that's a good thing. Models should always LOOK like they want to be there, even though they really might not wanna be there. It's part of the job. Ya hear that, models???

So anyways we chilled out with some of our friends from an OC crew called Goodfeeling. They aren't a VIP crew or anything, but shit, my friend Paul from Goodfeeling has a Miata with a stance that many VIP cars should be envious of. And it's a Miata! It's a small convertible car that most people don't even think about. But his car is pretty bad ass. Definitely one of my favorite Miatas around, except I dunno about your horn button Paul. I know it's supposed to be funny, but I'm just saying! hahaa

So I decided to chill out with Joyce at the cafe/bakery thing next to Autobacs. They have pretty good smoothies, and it looks like Paris in there. They have grass with picnic tables and the sky painted on the ceiling and shit. They have drinks that are called "Smooth exhaust" and "Orange headers" and stuff. Pretty cool, cause they're next to Autobacs. But it doesn't match the Paris decor. But I dig that place, it's good.

Yeah yeah so Joyce's boyfriend Jay rolls up in his blue AE86 coupe. We chilled for a bit, then decided to get ramen at one of my favorite spots, called GOMEN. Gomen is on Katella Road, and they are famous for their Tonkotsu Ramen, but I really like their Chicken Mabo Tofu Ramen. It's the bomb! I ordered the super spicy one cause I forgot that I liked it medium spicy, so my mouth was on fire! Anyways after we ate ramen, we went outside, and I wanted to take pics of Joyce's Lexus with my new camera's onboard memory.

I think Joyce's 161 style Lexus GS400 is pretty dope. She just got the car recently, and she fixed it up in pretty much the same way I would have. I think that's awesome because she is a GIRL and her car looks more bad ass than many so called VIP cars owned by GUYS. She started with suspension- she got Tein coilovers with EDFC, and then she got some Junction Produce Scara wheels. She wasn't sure if they would fit at first because they were pretty wide! 10J and 11J to be exact! Just remember that this car is owned by a GIRL and SHE is the one making decisions about what to do to her car! It's not like her boyfriend made all the decisions on the car for her... he does help her get parts, but it is Joyce who makes all the decisions on what she wants to buy, and she is very picky. I think that's good. Picky people who know what they like, usually don't settle for BS parts, and they usually have nice cars.

She needed some tires to stretch over her wheels, so I helped her get some Falken FK452 tires, which are pretty much my favorite tire for doing the stretched VIP car look. Thanks to my boy Kelvin at Falken Tire for helping us get the tires! I talked to some of my other friends about tire size, and advised Joyce about it... then she was like let's do it! So we got the tires and stretched them out over her super wide Junction Produce wheels! She went to our friend Marlon Langit's shop, S&M Automotive to get the tires mounted and balanced, and to check wheel fitment. Marlon is a super cool guy, and he is an awesome cook! Get your car worked on at his shop, and he will invite you to one of his super dope BBQs someday!

He put the car up on the lift, and we test fitted the wheels. At first, Joyce was like "oh nooooo!!! It looks like frogger!" which is her term for "it sticks out too much." But I guess I have a different style cause I'm a real 86 guy. I LIKE the wheels to stick out a little bit. Not like Mexican lowrider style, but I do like the lips to protrude from the fender ever so slightly, as long as the top of the tire is still inside the fender.

I kept telling Joyce "don't trip! It looks soooo PERFECT to me!" I knew that all she had to do was add more camber to get the tires inside the fender, so it didn't look like a lowrider. But she was still worried. But like I promised, it was all good, and it came out perfect! See! Now Joyce knows that she should always trust me when it comes to wheels and food. I know what I'm talking about! =)

So check out Joyce's car!

This is the back of Joyce's Lex outside of the ramen shop we ate at last night. Good offset right? She wants her car to look more professional and subtle, because she sometimes needs to take clients out in her car. That's totally understandable. However, for me... if it was my car, I'd be down to have it stick out a bit more, because all my clients work in the automotive industry, and I'm just kinda gangster like that. I do think Joyce's car looks very sophisticated and clean. Totally shows her personal style.

This is Joyce's Junction Produce Scara wheel on the front of her GS400. See that fitment? And it's NOT on air suspension. This girl drives her car everyday, rocking COILOVERS! And her wheels fit more aggressively than most guys wheels! Time to rethink your offset guys. You just got schooled by a girl.

The weapon of choice... Falken Tires FK452. This tire is excellent for stretching out and making your car look gangster. Falken Tire is an innovator in the automotive industry, connecting themselves with VIP styling early in the game, before the other duplicators knew what was going on. And it isn't a marketing ploy. Quite a few people at Falken drive VIP cars, including their Brand Manager, Nick. Get more information on the Falken FK-452 tire by clicking on the Falken FK-452 Website.

Here's the front of Joyce's Lex. The wheels fit like an AE86's wheels are supposed to! I'm so proud of her. Just wait until you see the car with her new front lip spoiler!

I'll take more pics in the morning later, so you can see. These pics were taken with my new Casio digital camera, without flash. Now that I've tested this camera, I think I'm going to return it and buy the next model up, which allows me to switch to higher ISO settings (1600 film speed) for night time shots.

Goodbye Green Mango

2006-10-07T23:45:00.000-07:00

Well most people didn't even know this, but aside from my clean orange original paint 1973 Corolla SR, I also had a clean "pea green" 1972 Corolla Deluxe coupe, which filipinos also refer to as "raw mango." I think the actual term for it is "mangan hilaw" or something. Sorry I'm not the most filipino of filipino guys, since I grew up in Cali since I was 3 years old. Anyways.

So shortly after my last trip to Hawaii, where I was chillin with my new friends and mango owners Mike Whaley and Justin da Bull. They were telling me about how their friend was looking for a clean TE27 (mango) body and I mentioned I had one. Well no joke, their friend sent me some money right away, and I ended up selling the car. Of course, for me I didn't want to let it go, because it was sooooo clean and factory original. However, I just felt that right now I didn't have enough time or energy to focus on the car, and give it the love and attention it deserved. So, I had to see to it that it got taken care of by a new owner who would make the car more of a priority and focus on its restoration more. See, for me, the orange 1973 Corolla SR would always take priority over this 1972 mango.

Okay, so anyways the OEM Toyota downdraft POS carburetor needed adjusting, and the car's idle was a bit messed up, as it kept dying when you cruise to a stop sign. So I brought it to my friend Ray's shop in Diamond Bar CA, Racetoys. They worked on the car because i didnt have the OEM carb know how, and frankly, no time to deal with it.

So Ray adjusted the carb (which needed to be replaced) because the new owner of the car said, don't worry about anything, I'm gonna swap the engine and transmission as soon as it gets to Hawaii. So we just tuned the carb as much as possible, and turned up the idle... and decided to gas it up and drive it home.

I had my friend Ronny come with me, so he could follow the pea green mango home, with my red zenki AE86. So we were getting on the 57 freeway, when we ended up having a bit of trouble. This carburetor was really a piece of junk. It couldn't accelerate up the hill, it was having such a hard time and I was flooring it. I discovered there was some fuel leaking from the side of the carb.

So F it... I decided to just pull it over and tow it. This happened sometime last week, and I was just talking to my friend Eugene today, and he was like, "Yo I think I saw you... were you on the side of the 57 freeway last week with your car? I saw your red AE86 and another older Corolla..." Yeah that was me! And my friend Ronny. Good lookin out for stopping Eugene! haha!

Within 20 short minutes, the AAA authorized tow truck came to the us, parked on the side of the 57 fwy Northbound, and began picking up the car to tow it to my place. I had my Canon digital SLR in the back of my AE86, so I decided to take some pics...

My 1972 TE27 Corolla coupe Deluxe (mango) chillin out on the side of the freeway. My friend Ronny is up front, talking to the tow truck driver.

The front view of my 1972 TE27 Corolla coupe Deluxe (mango). Pretty clean right! This car has original paint and interior, and has never been in an accident, ever. This car is 34 years old! It's almost as old as Jay Yoshida and Herb!

The tow truck driver is hooking up the car, while cars pass us on the side of the freeway. Those cars were going pretty damn fast. You can see my red zenki AE86 in the background. Ahh... I love AE86 and TE27!

But I don't like it when TE27s are broken on the side of the freeway. Ya know, just because the car is old, I don't want you to think TE27s are unreliable. The car only stopped on the freeway cause it just wasn't accelerating up the hill. I knew the carburetor was bad, and I could have replaced it... but I had just sold the car, and I also knew that the new owner would remove this engine and carburetor anyway, so there was no point in fixing it. If you're driving the car around town (not up a hill) then it runs fine. But at least my 1973 Corolla doesn't have problems going up hills. My 73 Corolla is fast as hell!

Anyway, I love the body lines of these cars. They have so much detail and character! Shit, I guess I'd rather have a broken TE27 than like... a running Dodge Neon. A non running TE27 still looks alot cooler than a Neon. By all means. If you don't agree, then you don't know what you're talking about anyway.

When the tow truck driver was pulling my chuki (middle version) mango up the ramp, even he said "man this is a cool car! This thing's pretty clean huh!" Well no shit. But too bad the clean car can't accelerate up hills due to the POS Carburetor. Normal 2TCs and 3TCs have no problem. Those are real strong engines.

Here's the tow truck driver hooking up the back of the car, while people speed past us.

This car is currently in a shipping container in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on the way to Hawaii, where it will be greeted by the cool ocean breeze and swaying palm trees, the strumming of ukeleles, and hot ass chicks in bikinis on the beach. Hey bradda good luck yah! Shoots!

Ohhh... by the way.
My 72 Mango has been on TV! It was recently feature on REDLINE TV on Speed Channel, in one of my photo shoots. The Redline TV crew came out to my house, and then followed me around for a couple days, filming a "day in the life" kind of story on me. Not that I'm special, but they came out to film because I have just written the first hardcover book on DRIFTING! Get a copy at www.DRIFTINGBOOK.com<

On the day of the photo shoot, I had to take a catalog photo for my clothing line, called Cipher Garage Clothing. You can check out the clothing I make by clicking on the photo below. You can watch the photo shoot on TV, watch for Redline TV on your local cable TV Guide. Anyway, here's my chuki mango in the photo shoot.

Smogging in California sucks!

2006-10-02T17:34:00.000-07:00

Dammit, I gotta smog the zenki 86. But even though it has a new motor and less than 3000 miles on it since the rebuild... I just took it to get smogged, and I found out there's no way in hell I'm gonna pass. The reason why? I need a new catalytic converter.

Hmmm that's all good, my boy Edrick at www.tlsperformance.com sells high flow cats, and I know he'll hook up a good discount! Ok time to order that joint Edrick!

Hopefully my friend Jay at Wesco Toyota can order me an 02 Sensor also. Hmmm... well I guess, I'll try just replacing the cat first so I don't need to waste unneccessary funds on the 02 sensor. God knows I could spend the money on other things right now.

Hopefully Ray finds out how much those adjustable height camber plates will cost me also, so I can lower the front of my zenki! Now that it has the nicely stretched 185/60 tires over the 8J and 8.5J, I need to lower the front because there's more sidewall clearance now! Damn, more parts to buy, but screw it, the stance will be dope as hell.

Stance= the combination of wide wheels + negative offset + stretched tires + negative camber + the proper slam! It is everything to your car. It governs the whole look of the car, and the feeling you get when you're driving it. More on this later...