Just a quick, random snap from my point & shoot Canon Ixy Digital 910 IS pocket camera. When we first began talking about our Southern Cali theme this month, I made the statement that "if you live in Southern California, you could pretty much do something car related every single day of the week if you wanted to." What I'm talking about is car meets, car shows, race events, tradeshows, and yes, even club events. These type of club events are a bit more rare; they're definitely not the norm… and I honestly haven't brought out one of the cars from my collection to one of these type of events in several years… but these types of events do happen once in a while!
Some people say that car life has nothing to do with nightlife, fashion, and/or music, but I disagree. (And there are plenty of TV shows, magazines, clothing lines, etc that back that up.) Especially in Southern California, you tend to see fixed up cars everywhere. Sure, not all of them are tastefully done… but the point is, they do exist, and depending on where you live/hang out, you can see them out and about pretty often.
Last night, I was invited to the Import Tuner 10th Anniversary Party in Hollywood by my friends Carter Jung and Luke Munnell. Actually Luke hit me up about the party when we bumped into each other at the Japanese Classic Car Show in Irvine, so I decided to come out and check it out and support their function. After all, we are friends, and I think that people within the automotive industry should stick together and help one another.
People at the Import Tuner party saw a ton of import industry people in attendance, as well as several ex-Import Tuner cover models – Courtney Day, Sunisa Kim, Ruthie Huang, Lisa Fleming, Natasha Yi, Jenny Chu, Ashley Sarto, Alicia Whitten, and some other model chicks whose names I forgot. There were also several modified cars parked up front – a bunch of well known cars from car crews such as Team Hybrid, and even Formula D cars like Michihiro Takatori's R34 Skyline.
So congratulations to Import Tuner for staying alive for 10 whole years… I think I still actually have the first copy of the magazine somewhere in my magazine collection – those who have been part of the automotive scene for a while might remember this one. It had the Remix Twins, Jenn and Liv, on the cover, with a yellow CRX, on the signature white Import Tuner backdrop. Who remembers that? What's the oldest car magazine you own?
-Antonio Alvendia