This year's 16th Annual Spring Break Nationals and the 2nd Annual Spring Break Tuner Bash once again fell on the same weekend. March 22-24th provided spring breakers with an automotive conglomeration of style, music, and audio competitions.
Super Street teamed up with The Plaza Resort & Spa, which is home to the hottest club in Daytona Beach, 600 NORTH, bringing the car audio and compact performance worlds together. With 100,000 college students "Spring Break Tuner Bash" had the recipe for fun. Wayne Harris's dB Drags, the Dyno Challenge sponsored by Castrol Oil, the Nitrous Express bikini contest, and the original of all originals Ken Miyoshi's "Showoff" car show with the best looking rides of spring break made this a party you do not want to miss next year, if you missed out this time.
There was just so much going on with the simultaneous events. XM Satellite Radio presented a concert for about 5000 Saturday night on the main pool deck of The Plaza Resort looking over the Atlantic Ocean. Last year Super Street had Paul Oakenfold perform; this year XM Satellite presented a DJ set by Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland, otherwise or worldly known as THE CRYSTAL METHOD. Other major concerts took place as well with Pioneer presenting the Goo Goo Dolls, and JVC giving the crowd Tantric over on the SBN side. Music was truly in the air.
With major manufacturer participation from such majors as Audiobauhn, JBL, Pioneer, MA Audio, JVC and several others it seemed as though the whole industry was scattered between the two events. This year seemed to have a better turnout over last year's crowd; both events had tremendous traffic (which leads to tremendously tired magazine staffers).
Spring break is usually the time when everyone debuts their new competition setup or has refined their previous system after the critical judging of finals. What we realized from this event, we needed golf carts or some type of transportation other than the prehistoric means of travel by foot! From walking each show both days, concerts at night and hanging out on the strip to the wee hours all while carrying the photo equipment made for some very interesting time management. We also shot some vehicle features too, needless to say. This was a major event that required a lot of physical recovery afterwards.
Big news leading up to SBN was that IASCA now has a new bus driver and it's not a city bus, but a private coach owned by Paul Papadeas, also proprietor of the famous Spring Break Nationals. So now we are hoping for a major overhaul and forward direction for IASCA. While both dB Drags and USACi are currently holding the voice of the competition arena, dB Drags did traverse up the street to the Tuner Bash for some added diversity. IASCA is now in position to re-gain its prestige, but we will have to wait and see what new plans lie ahead. On a lighter note and after our Trek to Texas mission, a Beach to Beach trip was put together by sound quality enthusiast Fred Lynch. Please read his story in this issue and plan on our staff putting together an official tour for next year's Spring Break. Not too early to gear up.