Joey Redmond - My Blog

Right after Formula D we drove up to Mooresville, North Carolina to meet up with MMI and get ready for the NASCAR All-Star race weekend. Blair Stopnik took us to a great Carolina BBQ spot called Lancaster’s BBQ. It was full of NASCAR memorabilia.

Check out the #18 hood on the wall from the old Interstate Battery car!

Bryce from Joe Gibbs Racing took us on a full tour of the facility which was amazing. For you non NASCAR fans Joe Gibbs Racing runs the #20 car (Tony Stewart), # 18 car (Kyle Busch), and #11 car (Denny Hamlin). We were unable to take photos inside JGR but I snapped these from the viewing deck that visitors can watch the cars in the process of building.

Right after the Drift Alliance premiere we had Formula D Atlanta. What a blur that weekend was but I had a ton of fun wielding around a 300mm fixed 2.8/L I rented from PPR for the weekend.

Check out the gallery from the weekend here Wrecked Magazine Gallery

Here is my lens as I am waiting for the top 16 to kick off on Saturday.

On Sunday I met up with Antonio Alvendia and some friends to hit up Daddy D’z!

Antonio discovered that I did know where the best corn bread and macaroni/cheese was in Atlanta. He then shot this Chevelle right in front of Daddy D’z for Speedhunters.

Well I made it back to the United States just in time for the Drift Alliance Premiere at the MAC theater in Atlanta. Everyone showed up early and was ready to walk the red carpet and see the new Drift Alliance movie the guys had been working on forever.

Lindsay was my guest to the event.

Here are the guys from MMI getting ready just before the movie started.

Here is Chris Forsberg doing an interview with Wrecked Magazine before the movie starts.

Tanner Foust gave Wrecked Magazine some positive feedback after he saw the movie.

Andrew Laputka doing an interview with Jarod for Formula D TV.

Check out the movie trailer below! Good job to everyone who worked on this Stay Hungry film. It was a vast improvement from the Bad As Hell movie they released a few years back.

Drift Alliance - Stay Hungry

The beef curry was so good at Bape Cafe!? we had to pay it another visit and with full stomachs in toe walking around Harajuku that night we decided to go visit the Bape Store in Harajuku. The store is in a very discreet location off the main roads of Harajuku. In fact, while I was wandering around Harajuku a few days before I almost found it while cutting behind the huge Ralph Lauren store (I just took the wrong alley).

The store looks like a diner inside a building with a very western flair. The outside diner shell almost reminds me of  a place locally called in Atlanta called Marietta Diner. Probably the closest I was going to find to it in Harajuku at least.

The store has some amazing colors that flow very well together and many rooms with different products and elements to purchase for the Bape fan.

The design firm Wonderwall did am amazing job at building this massive structure in Harajuku and my favorite section design wise of the store was by far the top floor where the shoe display is.

After hopping of the Yamanote line we ran right into Yodobashi which is basically a Japanese Best Buy but way more amazing and perfect.

On the eight floor we found an excellent model car collection and I was able to find an EG6 for my friend Yoni at Exedy. When we came out to Japan in January we looked high and low through Osaka and could never find him a EG6 model car but I finally completed the mission.

Many of the subway bands I had a minute to listen to at Shinjuku Station were awesome but this band at the Akihabara station easily had a crowd of  50-100 people dancing along with the band.

The crowd was insane but was managed well due to the main road being closed. It allowed people to not be limited to the sidewalks which was good because I don’t know how you would of gotten anywhere otherwise.

We were about to die of starvation and just got done telling some Japanese girls how we knew about Akihabara and we stumbled upon this Denny’s hidden in this alley. It was amazing, they had some awesome Japanese dishes, it was a nice choice for lunch in the area.

After eating it was time to play some video games at the huge Club SEGA housed in the center of Akihabara.

Jayke wanted a photo of himself in Japan but little did he know this guy was throwing up some Asian scissors behind him for the picture!

A ton of English advertising just doesn’t come off correctly in Japan but this one took me back. It was basically like a Sears from the outside and this was the sign that hung out right in front. Warm welcome and cool price!

After a good 30 minute hiatus from video games we found Taito Station in Akihabara which was the same number of floors as Club SEGA and offered just as much fun. We got hooked into quite a few games of Tekken 6!

I have no idea but it got taken……

This one I just couldn’t believe with my own eyes. I found Mountain Dew in a vending machine off the main roads in like a neighborhood in Akihabara! This is the only time I have ever seen Mountain Dew in Japan.

After the excitement of finding Mountain Dew we took our beverage and all our video games we snagged and headed back to Shinjuku for the night.

That sums up Japan in a phrase better than about anything else I could say. I enjoyed more time and spent more money on this trip living in Japanese arcades sometimes not even really knowing or understanding what I was playing. Here is a photo I snapped on the way to Club SEGA in Shinjuku.

Here is a game that entranced Jayke and myself on the trip and played videos of other video games and random things on the bottom screen as you played.

Playing a drum game at Club Sega in Shinjuku-Ku

I hopped on the Odayku line in Shinjuku and got off in Gotemba Station and headed out to Fuji Speedway for the race weekend. It was my first time seeing D1 since the 2004 JGTC race at California Speedway. It was my first time to witness professional Drifting outside the United States and it was a blast. Rain plagued the event but the crowd and the entertainment was still there! Check out the gallery I shot for the D1 event. Wrecked Magazine Gallery.

Well I don’t really know how to explain Vending Machine Red or it’s power or Vending Machine Zero but it is a robot created by Coke Japan that they made a ton of mini-episodes with that air in Japan. You can visit Coca Cola’s website and purchase Vending Machine Red merchandise Cokestore.jpg.

His arch nemesis is Vending Machine Zero!

These two characters have over 20 webepisodes on youtube that can be found, some with a very very loose English translation. We even started a facebook fan club for them if you wish to join it, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15723133070.

Next time your on youtube just remember to search Vending Machine Red. Just to give you an idea of how great this series really is I am going to embed Vending Machine Red- Episode 14: Beautiful Woman Robot of Mystery (who in this episode is representing Diet Coke). Enjoy!

I was reading on some girls blog about how great Bape Cafe!? in Harajuku was and I had my doubts but I was close by after visiting the BBC store. Right before I caved in to visiting I read something from the New York Times that called it one of the three places you must eat in Japan and I was sold.

If you get off the JR Yamanote line it is tucked away around a few turns but it shouldn’t be that hard to find. I managed to figure it out by memory from a bad map drawn on the BAPE website. I ordered the beef curry at BAPE and was blown away by how good it was. It was the best food I had eaten in Japan to date.

I even though my Diet Coke’s presentation was spot on at Bape Cafe.

The music I thought was pretty killer but it was far from Japanese. It ended up being a Friday night DJ on Power 106.7 they were piping in which is a famous radio station out of Los Angeles.

The place was amazing and I recommend it as a must visit when your in Harajuku. If you want more information on it, just visit the BAPE website BAPE.com and click on Bape Cafe!?, I cannot shoot a direct link because the website is in flash. In the BAPE Cafe!? section you can preview the whole menu and get directions from the train station. To close off this post I threw in some photos of me walking around Harajuku.

I got shot down taking pictures at BBC Harajuku real fast by some employee’s but I scavenged some entertainment for you from some other locations. Let me tell you first off you could miss this place looking for it no problem. You walk down this alley and weave down this road forever passing Supreme and some other well known streetwear stores until alast, you find BBC tucked away in the Basement floor of this building pretty much.

If you walk straight through the automatic doors you will find your way through a space portal that says Wealth is of the heart and mind if i remember correctly. Once you exit the space portal you find yourself in the middle of the Billionaire Boys Club side of the store.  This is definitly the cooler side of the store and where I made a purchase of a Summer 08 tee before the line came back to America.

The Ice Cream side of the store was on the other side of the red spaceship but you must walk back through the space portal to access Ice Cream. Ice Cream was setup like a small ice cream store with shoes in the ice cream dishes behind the counter and all. A very solid setup on that end as well and one of the best clothing stores in Harajuku I visited this trip.

You get to take home your purchase in this awesome little bags. Here is a picture of mine back at my hotel room. They have the spaceman from BBC on the other side of the bag in a black colorway.