Checkpoint's Car Culture Weekend in Seattle.
With the borders finally open and the long list of headaches and complications with crossing finally starting to die out, it was time for us to head down to Washington and spend some time with our freedom-loving American friends. The weekend of April 23-24 looked perfect because not only was it providing some great weather, Evergreen Speedway in Monroe was hosting their DriftCon Season Opener, where our good homie Mitchell McGarvey (@mitchellmcgarvey) was signed up to compete in the Big Bounty Tournament.
Although the style of most of the cars competing (and in the StanceWars show just outside of the track) was not really in line with the style that we typically get excited about, we still managed to find a handful of things we thought were awesome. But, more importantly, we were there to celebrate our friend and cheer him on as he fought his way through a handful of high-power pro-spec drift cars in his relatively humble, stock power 350z. Mitchell managed to knock out an 800+ WHP supercharged LS-powered 240sx, as well as an LS-powered 350z, which secured him a spot in the top 16. Unfortunately, a mechanical error caused his car to suffer a power cut in his first battle of the finals and resulted in him getting knocked out. Regardless, it was impressive to see our friend bring so much to the table after years of us giving him a hard time about having not-so-awesome drift cars. We love you, Goob! Keep it up, we can't wait to see your next competition!
The next day, we headed to the Starbucks Global Headquarters for breakfast and linked up with our long-time internet friend, Alec Archer (@rustbunni___) and her amazing, Mexico-inspired, Datsun 510. Between the wheels, the patina, and all the fine details, it was such a treat to finally see this character-rich little car in person. Alec brought nothing but good vibes and energy to the shoot, and we spent the better part of the early afternoon zipping around the SODO district (Seattle’s south of downtown) and wound up making our way over to Alki Beach (or Rafiki Beach, as specifically just Dylan calls it).
After we wrapped up shooting the 510, we all headed into downtown Seattle and visited our new friends at Drip Tea Market (which is just up the street from their sister business, Drip Tea Seattle, a bubble tea shop that has been in business and booming for the last couple of years). Paul (@lefthans), who is one of the owners of both Drip Tea and Drip Tea Market as well as one of the original members of Super Kawaii Crew, spent some time telling us the story of how his businesses came to be as well as giving us an in-depth tour of his red GTS Corolla. We hope to shoot Paul’s Corolla at some point this summer, so keep your eyes peeled!
After leaving Drip Tea Market, we headed towards Mercer Island to link with Ryan Cozart (@kawaiikid__) and Austin Pennington (@austeeeezy) to finish off our Washington trip with a shoot of their cars. Ryan has built an awesome Lexus SC that infuses all of the important and small details that we pour over here at Checkpoint with excellent fitment and true dedication to low-car style. As for Austin and his “UFO” FD RX7, well, you are just going to have to wait for our feature on that coming soon.
We are seriously so excited to put together the complete feature on Austin’s magnificent FD3S, but for now, here are a few teaser photos from that shoot.
There was no better way to end our first trip to the USA in over two years than with orders that were so big they crashed the payment processing system at Sonic. After devouring a proper mountain of hilariously authentic “American food” we headed back home to Canada, ready for a good night’s sleep and prepared to spend the next few days steady grinding on all the editing and film developing we needed to get done to make this article and video possible for you to see today.
