Joey Redmond - My Blog

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.

I woke up at the Keio Plaza Hotel and searched through Shinjuku most of the morning. The night I got in it was raining so I didn’t really do much but visit Club SEGA and settle in. My first order of business was to visit SofMap to purchase a JDM Thin White Playstation 2. I picked up a ton of games for it including Intial D and Gran Tursimo Tokyo Edition. I even snagged Gran Tursimo 5 Prologue for the PS3 back home.

Right down the street from Shinjuku Station is a huge Tatito Station (the founders of Space Invaders) have a huge 8 story arcade filled with some exciting video game action.

Japanese arcades are very different from ones in the United States, many people can be found on dates in suites, and most girls come by the droves to visit the third floor which is photo booths.

Battle Gear 4 is an amazing racing simulator that has a full simulation mode that requires you to use the clutch while shifting your vehicle. For extensive players you can even by a key for 500 yen (around $5.00) that saves your game and progress on the key for when you return to Battle Gear at any arcade. It even has a pretty sweet Drifting mode that allows you to utilize the real e-brake. Here are some more photos of the system.

Here is the in car view while driving a Honda EG6. The cluster, rev limit and details of the car are very accurate.

This is one of the main intersections I walked through everyday on my way to the train station in Shinjuku. The crowds become huge during busy travel times of the day that you can barely cross the road. In the background is my favorite Japanese fast food place called First Kitchen.

I left for Tokyo a day earlier than Jayke as he connected in Narita to Changi Airport (Singapore) for the trip of  the year to date. Delta just started a direct flight from ATL to Narita which was amazing cutting out a leg to get to Japan. Earlier this year the re-route in Detroit was brutal! Delta has amazing leg room on the flight.

My seat controls on the airplane. Sleep mode is the best invention ever.

I never was awake for the meals on the flight but I made the third meal served on the plane which was this odd breakfast. The rice side was pretty good for plane food.

Delta provided hours of HBO Entourage for my entertainment on the flight.

I got into Tokyo in the early afternoon  (I think?) and hopped on the JR Narita Express which dropped me off at Shinjuku Station.

I arrived in Shinjuku-Ku and walked outside the station to this sight. It was truly amazing but that is all you get for now. I will keep you updated on the adventures of Japan.

Somehow we got suckered into driving to the state of Misery Missouri instead of flying but we could tolerate it to see our homie Logan and the Adrenaline Motorsports team who is based out of St. Charles, Missouri! Here we are driving through Kentucky.

Almost to Misery!

We arrived during the Friday practice/qualifying event that was cut very shot due to rain. Tyler Cox brought his redone S14 out with a 6 inch back exhaust on his Nissan for a new look.

Danny Lim shot photos all weekend for Wrecked Magazine and did an amazing job. Check out the Wrecked coverage at wreckedmagazine.com/gallery

The Nissan house has the 350z, S14 240sx, the Infiniti G35, and more Nissan’s in the garage! Camp Nissan out in the midwest. Chuck sadly had some car problems with the new setup all weekend. Hopefully he will make it out to Columbus in a couple weeks.

Logan is Chuck and Susan’s little baby. Here he is Monday morning before we left back towards Atlanta. He is sporting his mohawk and driving his little Nissan car! He is getting ready to start racing himself pretty soon so watch out for him.

I picked up Marty downtown at his hotel and he rode shotgun with me on the way home since his support vehicle broke down in Kentucky. What a mess but we had a great time rolling home. This was our last glance of St. Louis and the arch.

24 hours after arriving back home it’s off to Tokyo!

Formula D Long Beach was a great event at one of my favorite Formula D locations. Smack in the middle of downtown Long Beach the Formula D drivers get to tear up public roads on a closed course built for the CART series that runs the next weekend every year. I had a chance to pick up the good ol 30D and snap some photos for our magazine and respective clients. Andy who directed the Stay Hungry DVD got tired of battling the fence to get good shots and climbed a tree.

Ken Gushi debuted his RWD converted Scion tC and was able to secure a top 16 finish for the weekend.

Chris Forsberg in his NOS Engery Drink Nissan 350z defeated the competition to take home a win after edging out Sam Hubinette in the finals!

Wrecked Magazine Gallery: Wrecked Magazine Gallery

After the event I found a new Pinkberry in Long Beach. Kate STILL owes me Pinkberry from my trip in February but she was in India when I came to visit so she still owes me Pinkberry and I am not going to forget Kate! Haha, the area this Pinkberry was located in was a strange place but my order came out perfect! The rice cake topping is just to good to be true. They need to hurry up and get Pinkberry on the east coast.

Global Warming is really hitting California………no really. However it was hot for mid April the day after the Formula D event, 102 was registered in our rental Buick in Pasadena! Ick. Speaking of ick look at the joy Southern California brought us in the form of traffic.

All in all it was a fun week in California and on Sunday night I hopped on a plane to St. Louis, Missouri for a photoshoot with some of my favorite people at Adrenaline Motorsports.

The first time I fully watched the video it reminded me of some low budget version of a bad 80’s film about blow…..but you know, I watched it again and I kind of liked it and then a third time with some more enjoyment. For all the celebustalkers out in this world you will notice a quick Lindsay Lohan appearance which made my day. Lindsay Lohan in this music video is perfect! The BBC blog just released a remix of this song with C.R.S and Pusha T. It is a great listen and for all you N.E.R.D fans the album comes out June 10th, so be ready!

Pat Attack and myself joined forces to drive from Redando Beach to San Bernardino’s NOS center so we could sneak a peak for the Wrecked Magazine viewers of what Falken Tires had in store for us around the corner at Formula D that started in around 48 hours. It was a long drive….and I mean long and whatever crappy Tiger Woods Buick they put us in did not help, that stupid Enclave!? ick! Here is Pat excited that I took him out of P.E. or whatever classes 17 year old race car drivers go to during the week.

Once at the NOS Center we found Darren McNamara’s new Falken Tires Saturn Sky unwrapped and freshly rolled off of a trailer.

After a long haul back towards the beach we landed a couple minutes early and visited RSR to see how Rhys Millen and Daijiro were doing on their collective cars for the weekend. Then we hit Huntington Beach and waited for Q from Pimp my Ride and our Lamborghini we were to take to the beach.

Once we all met up we swung into Starbucks for some quick coffee and the “special” employee behind the counter decided to rename myself  to Joyce. That is a new version of cosplay on me!

We found a public beach that was still open a few miles from the pier which was nice and deserted for the photo shoot. The sun and location came out perfect and I had a blast shooting the Drift Alliance for the Issue 4 cover in preparation for the new film Stay Hungry!

Here are two snap shots from the photoshoots in RAW unedited format. These photos would both be used for the Issue 4 cover story in Wrecked Magazine.

After all that I had to pay for the Lambo rental with some beer and taco’s at FRED’s right up the street on the pier. We rushed right over after discarding the minors we had with us *cough* Little Pat *cough* and went to get rested up for Formula D setup day which started very early Thursday morning.

So the blog is still like a month plus behind but I am going into high gear to get caught up before anything interesting really happens….or so we hope. I hopped on yet another Airtran Flight to LAX and landed very early Tuesday morning.

I took off from LAX and headed to Pine Street on Long Beach where the roads are already closed off for Formula D Round 1 and the Long Beach Grand Prix.

A few drivers and many media attended this day to see the new rides for 2008 and view the first public Drifting runs of 2008 on the Long Beach track! The sessions were short but it was nice and very exciting to get back into the Drifting mode.

I ran to Beverly Hills to visit the myspace.com office to visit some friends and the new cafe they installed on the top floor of the complex. I actually got a great sandwich from up there and snapped a nice photo of the Hills from the cafe window.

From myspace we took off to Anaheim to attend the Riceboy TV Dromo 1 go kart party. It seemed like everyone had a great time and I got to catch up with an old friend from IGN.com Justin Kahler who is now working with Riceboy TV full time. Pat Attack was dominating in the go karts all night long!

We hit up Miami and drove up to Moroso Motorsports Park. Beforehand we stopped by some friends offices and enjoyed southern Florida.

Ryan Meloy shot photos over the weekend for Wrecked Magazine and showed us where the Pizza Rustica was in Boca! Good call Ryan, we ate there three times over the weekend!

Saturday Gallery:
Wrecked Magazine Gallery
Sunday Gallery:
Wrecked Magazine Gallery
Also since I did a poor job at shooting photos over the weekend with my phone here is a 30 second video piece we made for NOS Energy Drink as we followed Chris Rado and Norris around for the weekend.

NHRA Miami - Chris Rado - Drag Racing at Moroso!