Vancouver: Thursday Night Rev Scene Meet

In the past, I’d start an article with a time and location and then find eight different ways to say, “Hey, look at this cool car!” If I was lucky, I’d tell you the name of the owner of the car and maybe sling a back story about how the car in question got to be so “cool” – usually the result of time, money and effort. On that same note, this post could be just another formulaic and arbitrary blog post about a random car meet. But not this time. This time I want to show that a car meet is more than a bunch of cars in a parking lot, it’s a community.

Don’t get me wrong – I love cool cars in parking lots, but if the people were awful it would suck. I don’t live in Vancouver, but whenever I visit I try to partake in the local scene. I consider myself lucky because over the years of travelling there, I’ve created some great friendships and now I sort of have a foot in the door to their local car community.

My evening didn’t start in the parking lot. Instead, it started with me being 45 minutes late to our 7:00PM reservation at Romers Burger. Being from Saskatchewan, I always forget that it takes a substantial amount of time to get anywhere in Vancouver. But truthfully, I was late because I was waiting for my DODOlogic cohort, Devan Francis. Regardless, we eventually met up with Death Squad and Big Boy media. I had intentions of documenting the events of the evening, so I took a photo that accidentally captured the entire group – minus Aleks Efromov, who was in the washroom.

Good food is paramount to good experiences, in my opinion at least. In my mind, Romers Burger isn’t anything to write home about. The location is nice and it has a great atmosphere, but the food has never been mind-blowing. Due to time restraints, I decided to skip the fries and just commit to the breakfast burger – complete with a fried egg – and pint of Parallel 49 Seed spitter. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the burger, but I have an inkling it’s because fried eggs automatically make hamburgers awesome.

While I was waiting for everyone to get to their cars, I snapped a few shots of Gaelen Norman’s 180SX. Anyone who knows Gaelen knows that car meets aren’t his first love, but he’s a good sport about it. Although, I think he’s become a little more fond of them since he painted his car. It will be interesting to see just how long he can keep this pristine look now that drift season is upon us.

I passed my camera off to Devan Francis, as it’s no use to me while I’m driving. I may not be a permanent resident of Vancouver, but my 5-speed Aristo is and I try to drive it as much as I can when I’m there. Devan was nice enough to get a picture of me driving to the meet. I’ve never seen what the car looks like in motion so it was a nice treat.
Anthony Bell of Death Squad brought out his  “car de jour” and it is this FC. Driving behind this car is perhaps the worst because you find yourself saying, “What’s that noise? What’s wrong with my car? What’s that smell?” You quickly realize that the FC dominates everything in its immediate surroundings and nothing you are experiencing belongs to your own car. Rather, it’s emanating from his RX7.

By the time we got to the meet, the lot was pretty much half-full and it’s a pretty big parking lot. We ended up parking somewhere at the back and working our way to the front, looking for interesting photos along the way.

Here’s the thing: I don’t much care for Tim Hortons. But for some reason, I get a kick out of shooting cars in front of common retail space at these Rev Scene meets. Once you’ve used Tim Hortons as a backdrop, you’ve pretty much solidified the fact that you are, in fact, in Canada.

While I was shooting Reggie Mah’s now-infamous FRS, I got a pretty big kick out of how the Running Room became the backdrop. I thought it was funny that the car from the Nightrunner video was sitting in front of the aptly-named Running Room. Looking back, I think that’s only funny to me.

I guess Vancity is a bank and the text above the door reads, “Say hello to good Money.”  For reasons unbeknownst to me, I always think the Vancity store front makes a great backdrop for cars from Vancouver. On this day, Sean Manson was lucky enough to snag to prime parking spot.

 I sort of wish that Mitchell Fleischer’s first name was Mark, if only for the sake of this photo.

Any joke I make about that HealthFare sign would be reaching. If anyone has a something clever to say about this Infiniti sitting infront of a HealthFare sign, put it in the comments.

As I paced up and down the parking lot, I was quickly reminded that I was still just a tourist. I felt like I was sneaking around someone else’s backyard. I’m used to reading about these meets on our friends’ site, Art of Stance, or seeing excerpts on Vancouverfitted’s Facebook page.

By this point, Devan and I had become completely separated from the group as we aimlessly wandered the lot looking for cars to shoot. What you never see on the internet is the reality that no matter what scene you’ve stumbled upon, you still have to weed out the great cars from the good cars and ignore the not-so-good. The internet can be a deceiving place, but this S2K definitely deserved all the attention it was getting.

Some friends join softball leagues in the summer, while others go cycling or hiking. My friends and I eat good food, then stand around in parking lot for hours looking at cars. I honestly can’t think of much else I would rather do on a Thursday night.