Things aren’t always as they seem… it’s cliché, but true. I could pretend that our event coverage came together perfectly for the 2016 illmotion Sunday School Show & Shine in Calgary. If I didn’t mention it, I could probably convince you I was there and not 970 km away in Vancouver. I might even be able to trick you into believing we used a new photographer for this event, and these photos weren’t shot on Richard’s cell phone. But most of these details likely go unnoticed, and I’m not sure if people even pay attention to who shoots an event and writes the article. Still, in an effort to be transparent, I’ve let you know exactly how our coverage went down. Our photographer backed out of shooting the event at the last minute, so we had to make do with what we had.
One might think this idea of making due with what you have would thematically fit with the current state of Alberta and more specifically, Calgary. I say this because it seems like whenever people discuss Calgary these days, they mention the economic downturn. But the home of the Stampede is much more than the recent headlines would have you believe.
Illmotion meets tend to attract the best of what the import car scene in Alberta has to offer – and this year was no different. The number of quality cars gathered in that random parking lot on that sunny Sunday afternoon was astonishing.
A longtime friend of the site, Eric Zapata (a.k.a. Eric of Hotboyz), mentioned that he was even surprised by the turnout. Not that he expected less, but that the lot was full of the unexpected. Sometimes local meets can start to feel monotonous, almost like you’re just going through the annual motions of looking at the same cars over and over. This was not the case for the illmotion meet. Eric said he spent a lot time looking at quality cars he never knew existed in his hometown and impressing folks with the fact that he daily drives his 1JZ-GTE powered S15.
Other people, like Ross Braithwaite, used this event to debut the latest version of their car. Ross and Edmonton’s Speedtech Racing Development managed to get his R34 GTR together in time for the meet. I’m not one to swoon for GTRs, but Ross’ R34 makes me feel all sorts of things.
DODOlogic used this event as an opportunity to capitalize on our friendships with Eric Zapata and Arif Jina and guilt them into representing us at our well-aged tent.
I often give my Alberta friends a hard time about their province, mostly because they used to give me a hard time about living in Saskatchewan. Now that I’m in B.C., I feel like I can dole out some payback. However, in the continuing spirit of being transparent, I actually have a lot of admiration for the Alberta car scene. Some of my favourite car people and cars are from Alberta, and DODO has a long history of promoting cars from Alberta. One could argue that most of what DODOlogic is today was built on the back of cool cars from Alberta.
Although our coverage is pretty much being held together with Popsicle sticks and chewing gum, it’s pretty clear that our idea of making due with what you have doesn’t extend to the Calgary/Alberta car scene. I think this speaks volumes of the commitment of automotive enthusiasts. And even though their economy has become a hot button topic lately, it doesn’t seem like it has got in the way of their thriving automotive scene.
I mean, I could be totally wrong, maybe things are awful and everyone is barely just hanging in there. Maybe everything I saw posted from the meet was all smoke and mirrors. But I highly doubt that. If you caught me at right time on the right day, I could maybe – just maybe – make the argument that the Calgary import scene is second-to-none in western Canada.
Regardless of what I could or could not argue, I will leave you with this one simple comparison: the illmotion crew is sort of like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams. Summer School is the baseball diamond and all those cars are the ghost baseball players. They “built it” and the people came. At least, that’s how it looks from my seat.
