Racing Couture

As it turns out, mindfulness may not be for me.

Every time I end up at a Chronicles meet, I end up putting an enormous amount of pressure on myself. Shuffling through back lots of a Whittier industrial complex, these events are the kind of place where I inevitably spot a magazine featured build lovingly being used as a coaster for morning coffee. It’s nothing short of a spectacle, a place where you have to learn to be cool until you can remember that everybody around you is just here to hang out too.

I’ve made this comment one other time before, but this time I unfortunately say it with heartfelt reverence— this is not a community that can ever be meaningfully captured in its entirety. I can tell you from experience, trying to both show off the sentiment of the day while also making sure you caught every angle of every single car without missing something ends up feeling like work rather than something you enjoy. That stress to make something overly meaningful is ultimately how you miss the whole point of going out on a Sunday morning— the joy has always been in washing your car at the place down the street that gives you 12 minutes in the self-serve bay for $3, slipping out of your beater shoes you brought to keep your Jordans dry, and then sliding over to meet with friends you didn’t even have to tell you were coming.

In the spirit of this week’s Test Fit, I wanted to try something new to make sure I didn’t end up forgetting how good it feels to do car stuff with your friends. Some street photography clip I’d bumped into at some point gave me the idea to do a digital film challenge, where you only let yourself take 36 photos. By limiting your whole day down to 36 exposures, you end up being much more intentional and precious about every shot you take rather than holding down the shutter button at anything shiny.

Things were going really well in the beginning— I bumped into a few of my friends, and really let myself take the time to catch up with them while we leaned on the the breezeways in between the nameless storefronts in the lot.

I was really happy with how my photos had turned out in first quarter of the meet when I bumped into Joey himself! It was good to see him, and I wanted to let him know that I was looking forward to seeing his plans for the new FL5 he just picked up— he wanted to let me know the cops were coming.

Wait, The cops are coming?

Unfortunately, the property manager who did not look stoked to get a call about a packed parking lot on a Sunday morning had no interest in learning about the hundreds of hours of work that went into shaving the bay on the EG she was pacing back and forth in front of. I ran back to my car, taking the hint that the meet was over. Still confused, but now stuck in a million dollars worth of traffic, I pointed back towards LA and scrambled to make plans for the rest of my day, sad that I hadn’t had the opportunity to say goodbye to everybody I meant to.

Consider this my goodbye, then— I really will miss Chronicles and Coffee, which at the moment remains indefinitely postponed. In other words, gone for now, cherished forever. Joey, if you’re reading this, thank you for helping bring together a community of some of the most genuine and talented people I have ever been fortunate enough to spend a morning with. I’m looking forward to whatever you do next, and I’ll be there no matter how early I get dragged out of bed for it.

In the end, I didn’t get to finish my self-imposed roll of film. I did, however, have fun trying out some very rudimentary color grading on the shots I did take home with me. I hope looking at the rest of these makes you feel as good as I felt taking them.

Thanks for reading this Friday’s Test Fit— I hope the weekly posts have been as fun for you to read as they have been for me to make, and I’ll have another one up same time next week. Keep doing cool shit in cars, and I’ll see you all back out there soon. ///RC