Cali is hot and it's not just the sun! West Coast heads know how to throw a car show as they proved with this Autofest, turning up the heat on Sunday, October 7th 2001. A big shout to Ed, Emil and Junior Arguelles, Ale and the entire Autofest Team. Jumping off at the Coors Amphitheatre in San Diego, we wound up in a long line. It went all the way down the block, around the corner, and over to the water park in the next lot. Autofest got real estate! And it needed it.
It happened to be the weekend of the dB Drag year-end Finals. The Car Audio staff crisscrossed the skies. Some flew right to Nashville, TN, dB'in it to the hilt while we flew way left to represent in Cali. The Finals may have been in Tennessee, but there was dB action right in S.D. A clever touch was the draggers doing their thing in the tent. Seems like there's no stopping SPL competitions with it gaining even more steam. Lines of cars waited patiently to prove who has the skills to take home the trophy.
Clearly this weekend was highly anticipated. Things got started early as crews of car show true schoolers were in the yard by 4 AM, holding it down for their machines and car clubs. You had to love it with all the whips, rides, slabs, even hoop-dees, call them what you will. Imports galore - some of the sharpest we've seen. These enthusiasts didn't consider any detail too small to attend to and it showed. But that's not all. This event also included street riders, pocket bikes, RC cars, skate crews and DJs.
Lifestyles of the wild and shameless - it was an all-out exhibitors' and exhibitionists' paradise. Nice for the voyeurs, too. It seems most of the well-known models in the car show circuit made it to the event. For example 935 Draggers had mad females and I mean that in more ways than one (if you were there, you know what I mean). Touring with their entourages, doing they're jobs, representing the various big brands and companies in attendance. On the exhibitor side, sponsor BF Goodrich was claiming the most real estate with a hauler and made their point with the nice yellow bags.
SoCal Riders were out strong, row after row. After seeing that I felt compelled to tell my boys from the East Coast, Rob and the Underground Riders, to make an appearance next year. The street bikes are a sexy look; and I found plenty of people to agree with me on that. While we're on the subject of two-wheelers, Autofest also featured cool pocket bikes. They are little machines, but you could see they have some pull in them. It was definitely one of the more popular spectator arenas at the show. Someone out there caught a wild pocket bike wipe-out. Ouch!
Remote Control was "big", too. Don't count on the hobbyists going anywhere; they made a ruckus and drew large crowds with their RC car slaloms and battles. It was like watching drivers venting our collective road-rage without the bloody real-life consequences.
Car clubs like Xclusive, Swift, Techna, Art n' Motion and many others with mobs of lowered SUV's, candy imports, as well as a nice variety of other whips made you delirious at the spectacle. Some funky classics, low, laid-back and chromed were serving it up for the traditional slab lovers. It was great to see new enthusiasts getting into it. The diversity of vehicles was something to behold.
On the music side there was a different kind of battle going on. DJ and B-Boy head-to-heads drew no blood, but it was fiery just the same - friendly fire, you could say. Cuts and scratches of the vinyl sort. Although, I fail to understand why the breakers had no lino out for the spins. How about some East Coast B-boys in the mix. And what happened to the females?! I used to see girls working out the moves back in the day. Speaking of B-boys, I saw some kind of B-boy-for-life license plate over the weekend. It goes to show that people are definitely as interested as ever in B-boy/B-girl culture; it's 20 years strong and just won't die.