#subiefest2015

Only feels appropriate to round out the weekend with some music that brings me back to the beginning. Friday, Zedd. Saturday, Subiefest, and Sunday, The Broad opening day. So here’s how it went down:  Friday:  I woke up around 8:30 to do some morning errands. Went to the gym and went to target on my way home- it’s ridiculous how much money you can blow in a store like Target. I walked in needing to buy $3 worth of milk, came out spending a fair amount more than just $3. Had to trek back home to make it in time for a work meeting, which was an interesting experience in itself. The call was scheduled for 11, but we didn’t actually get the call until almost 12. Although I’ve been working for as long as I’ve been, I’ve never really had to do a direct business call vs. just sitting in and taking notes. The girl was incredibly kind and facilitated a straightforward business call despite my lack of experience. Overall the call took about 20 minutes as we only really had one main idea to address. I finish the call and head out to meet up with a friend in DTF for some tea. Sit and chat for a bit before I continue to do more errands, this time heading to Cerritos to pick up something for my dad from his office. The 605 N at this time was literally insane. Complete stand still. Thank goodness for modern day technology, but what is normally a 40 minute commute would have easily taken me two hours if I didn’t have Waze guiding me to avoid these hot traffic spots. I’ll get to this more topic in even greater detail further along in this post, but I can literally sit in traffic in my car for almost any amount of time and still be happy. I notice I still have enough time to pass by Bevmo for a quick alchy run before meeting up with Ysa for the Zedd concert, so I do that and do the tasting. The Bevmo taster was named Cristina and was a total weeb like me. We talked about wine/beer (of course), Ghibli movies, and Korean dramas. Another random solo taster joined in on our conversation and we made jokes about turning the Bevmo tasting time into a weekly thing and catch up with all the anime we watched over the week. His name was Steven and he works in the area doing social media for some shipping company. He went to Bevmo after work because traffic heading to his home would be at a standstill anyway. I really do love getting to meet strangers and hear what they have to offer and say. I just perused Netflix to see if any titles would stand out to me because I can’t remember which ones he actually recommended, but it was beneficial regardless since it prompted me to finally check out the Anime selection on Netflix. Things to definitely check out very soon: - Hunter X Hunter, per suggestion of Ryin and Andrew (Chbeeb) - Princess Arete, per suggestion of Cristina at Bevmo, not Ghibli but still worth the watch apparently  - Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood (Because I just need to finish it) - Kill La Kill (Also because I just need to finish it)

Go my separate ways from Steven and Cristina and grab a 750 mL beer and mini Glenlivet 12.The I grabbed was Stone Brewing Co.’s Your Father Smelt Of Elderberries, which I actually ended up drinking at Subiefest on Saturday vs. Friday night at Zedd. Head home, change really quickly into what I soon realized as I got into the venue (Staples Center) NOT Zedd appropriate concert attire, but no big deal. Hopped on the 60 from Azusa and immediate stand still traffic. Huge accident right off the freeway entrance that took up more than 3 lanes, but once I got past the accident the freeway was clear. I was also slightly delayed because I had no idea where I was meeting Ysa, her work can be at two different locations and I didn’t know which one she was at.  We meet up, call an uber and start drinking in the back. Ysa has some Peach Vodka and I have my leftover 19th anniversary Stone Thundersruck that I had opened the night before and never finished. The Zedd concert is super fun, combined with a very pleasant alcohol buzz and the overall energy and vibe of the concert. I get to meet up with Akiko, a girlfriend from the Subie community that I don’t get to see often. She actually bought her tickets for the concert from Ysa so it was great to catch up really briefly and grab drinks together. I think after this Zedd concert, I definitely want to go and check out an actual rave event. Zedd’s displays were an incredible mix of colors that obviously corresponded extremely well to the music that was playing. Zedd himself was so cute and so into his set, he really had a presence about him as he was playing for the crowds. If I don’t get to attend a rave event soon, I’d probably at least like to get to a standing General Admission ticket for the next concert I attend at Staples Center. Zedd’s special guest for the night was Steve Angello, previously in Swedish House Mafia. If you’re not familiar, here are some tracks I’d recommend since I didn’t really know him until after seeing him life (I’m not really that into EDM.) Payback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6GmT-WJR_k&index=3&list=PLVLdGducruwtFhs6EzEMUrnkY0wk6ze9H Wasted Love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvphz5BD5go&index=5&list=PLVLdGducruwtFhs6EzEMUrnkY0wk6ze9H Favorite tracks played by Zedd that were from his latest album were definitely Beautiful Now and Done With Love. Of course hearing the classics like Clarity, I Want You To Know, and Stay The Night, was also just such an amazing experience. I can understand what people are talking about now when they say they feel a sense of community under the Electric Sky. Music (and food) really has some special way of making you feel connected. Amazing, amazing experience.

After the concert finishes up, Ysa and I are famished. Grab an uber back home and have late night JJ Cafe in Monterey Park. We see plenty of fellow Zedd concert goers there, and we order some fried rice dish and walnut shrimp. Pretty bomb. I take Ysa home and I myself get home around 3:30. Hop in the shower, in bed by 4, let some friends know that I’m determined to make the caravan in the morning, and I go to sleep. Saturday I wake up to my alarm at 5:30 am. I feel pretty awake and figure that if I try to go back to sleep I’ll probably end up missing the entire day. So, I shower (again) to fully wake up, do some reddit browsing and begin getting ready for Subiefest. Basically I spent 5 minutes picking out clothes to wear, 20 minutes putting on makeup, and almost an hour sitting on Reddit. I hear my parents slowly start waking up and getting ready for the day. I hastily head downstairs to sneak my cold alcohol into my car before they notice, since I had made plans with one friend to drink at the event.  Said friend told me to be at meet up spot at 7. I arrive at 7:03 and lo and behold, it’s me and maybe three or four other cars. Cue super awkward, Alyssa doesn’t know how to act in social situations such as these to the scene. I awkwardly smile and wave at the guys there, someone asks me if I was rolling into subiefest by myself, I reply that I’m waiting for a few friends to show up. I begin sitting in my car trying to relax and listen to music, as well as transfer all of the alcohol (the 750 mL beer and maybe half a bottle of Aberlour 12 [Single malt soctch Whiskey]) into Hydroflask canteens that I had brought from home. Side note, Hydroflask bottles are well worth your money. Best insulated water bottles I’ve ever had. I literally take mine with me almost everywhere. It was a pretty great pleasure to be able to walk around a hot event like that and still drink cold beer. So awesome. 

I wait around for said friends to arrive, A and R. A arrives first, typical popular guy within the scene, immediately has people come up to him so I figure I’d wait for R before going to say hi. R arrives and we get acquainted with A and his group, his cousin and his cousin’s friend. Around 8 am, the organizers of the caravan call everyone over, explain directions to the meet up spot, obviously ask for politeness on our end, no revving/racing/taking up every lane on the freeway, who will be leading, who will be tailing etc. etc. Everyone hops into their cars and we roll out maybe 20 strong or so. This was a gangster ass caravan. As I was in the beginning of the roll, I didn’t get to see too many subies in my rearview mirror and really enjoy it as much as I could have. Unfortunately a large part of the group got stuck behind some stoplights on their way over to the freeway, but rolling 5 deep was still sufficiently fun. It takes us about 40 minutes to get to Winco Superfoods in Fontana, which is only a few blocks away from the actual event at Auto Club Speedway (Fontana). R is hungry so we head to the only food in the plaza which was a McDonalds. He accidentally buys two breakfast sandwiches so one gets handed to me, yay. Good luck Alyssa.  We miss the caravan out of the Winco lot, which I was kinda disappointed in, but oh well. The actual event is pretty cool, although in retrospect I didn’t get to experience a lot of it... Some of the cars in the car show were hit or miss for me. There were quite a few fairly basic cars there that I don’t think needed to be parked inside the event per say, but I guess from my understanding, anyone could show their car if they paid the $30 registration, so makes sense that some of the cars could be significantly less gangster than others. I loved seeing all the families that brought their kids along to the event, it reminded me of going to the LA Autoshow with my Dad when I was young. It was super hot at Subiefest, but luckily we ran around grabbing signatures from different vendors to win a free white STi Umbrella so eventually we were all shaded by umbrellas, except A, who for whatever reason didn’t want to carry an umbrella so he ended up stealing shade with mine. Then, when someone came up to him asking how we ended up with umbrellas he just gave his own umbrella away, which was endearing but also slightly amusing and bewildering because we had gone through a few vendors and had to get sprayed with this Subaru tag in order to get it.  We walk around, check out the cars in the show, say hi to some vendors because of course they have friends who are working the show. I take a lot of Subaru towels that they were handing out. Like a lot. Like we were supposed to get one each. I ended up getting 6 somehow (heh). The group splits up halfway through the day, everyone has shit to do of course, so we’re left with A, R and myself. R has to meet someone at the entrance somehow or something, A and I want to refill on our alcohol, but when we get to our cars we end up driving to a Jamba Juice and then when we get back I steal A’s car for a bit and I actually get to do some pulls in it. This experience alone was so significant to me that it prompted me to write about this weekend, hoping to be able to capture something that was literally such an incredible moment for me. I guess to give this moment some context we have to flashback somewhat quickly to 2011. 

It’s my first year of college and I’m attending Cal Poly Pomona. It’s pretty amusing to me setting off car alarms in the parking structure with my (then) stock exhaust. I roll around in the structure for a fair amount of time, checking out the import scene and I’m not disappointed. CPP has some sick ass cars. (This is all while I’m really just hunting for parking spots so I can get to class) get to the third or fourth floor and immediately BAM black hawkeye WRX catches my eye. It has an STi wing, lips, side skirts and some silver Advan RS. It’s lowered beautifully, exactly the same ride height I would want for my car that would be aesthetically pleasing and still functional. I literally become obsessed with this car. I would actively show up to school a little bit early to be able to park somewhat nearby and stare at it from a distance, or when i got out of class at 10pm I would stay a few extra minutes to just admire it’s build. By the end of the year, as I knew I would be leaving CPP, I write the owner a note. I don’t remember exactly what it said, something to the extent of “Hi! I really love your car. - ‘11 PBP STi” fast forward a few days - week or so later and I see a note on my car, something along the lines of, “Thanks! I really like your car and yours is super clean too. - OBP Hawkeye” Typical Alyssa behavior, I didn’t really expect a reply back so I was pretty excited I got to have even this small interaction with the owner of such a beautifully built car, and then immediately get shy and don’t leave a response back, although I probably should have said thank you for the compliment haha. I leave CPP. Never forget that car, but my brother tells me he sometimes sees it at the CPP Import meets he goes to with Bonnie. Continue on with my life.  Catch up to present day, I’m a random/sporadic Tinder user. I notice some people have messaged me while I’ve gone and deleted the app. I believe I was sitting at Ten Ren’s cafe on Gale with Tim when I re-downloaded to try and match with his profile. A messaged me about something in my profile about basketball but was way off, talking about OKC when my profile was talking about GSW LOL. I see this and find it amusing so I reply back, even though it’s been weeks since he first messaged me, but I basically correct him on his basketball slip. We get to chatting when he asks me about a car in one of my pictures, which happens to be a ‘15 WRX. R’s car, surprisingly enough. Long story abbreviated, A is the owner of that beautiful hawkeye from CPP and we meet over Tinder of all places.  So back to Subiefest, for some reason I have his keys with me and I literally hop in his car and move it. Really rude of me to essentially steal his car, but I guess he enjoys looking at it roll from an outsider’s perspective that he goes ahead and tells me to do a pull in it. So I do. I do 3 pulls, and man, that car is freaking beastly. It pulls an insane amount and sounds so incredible. He did the STi turbo swap and all the supporting accessory mods. That external wastegate though. Ugh. Godly.  I feel like I should explain really briefly here how a turbo works. Exhaust gas enters through the manifold, into the turbine housing and spins the turbine wheel, which spins the compression wheel and makes boost. The more gas that comes in, the faster the spin and the greater the boost. The wastegate is the part which controls how much exhaust gas enters through the manifold, so essentially this wastegate controls how much boost can be made, without the wastegate to regulate the amount of exhaust gas that enters, you would either damage the turbine itself or over boost your engine resulting in a blow. 

In layman’s terms, since A switched out to a external wastegate, his car boosts that much quicker and more accurately than mine or any other car with a stock and (most likely) internal wastegate. More boost, faster and more responsive car. Given the context of how much I admired this car, getting to drive it and experience it first hand was really such an incredible experience. Just watching A drive it back to our area from Fontana, pulling ahead of me on the on the freeways was such a treat. So many car goals that were inspired by this car. I’m excited to get to a place in life where I could build my car to be where I would like it to be and then be able take it and track.  We never got back to subiefest, which was unfortunate because I missed the exhaust competition and didn’t get to watch as much AutoX as I would have liked, but there’s always next year, and it was a joy rolling in A’s car. Before heading home A taught me how to launch my car, first by showing, then by having me sit in it. It’s a bit tricky to get an AWD car to launch properly since you have to consider you’re trying to get four wheels to spin, versus only two in a FWD or RWD car. There’s more drivetrain components to consider in an AWD car that you want to avoid breaking (which can be broken by launching incorrectly). I guess since I learned it’s only appropriate to share the knowledge so here it is, SIDE NOTE, do all of this at your own risk please and as much as I try to keep this as accurate as possible always do your own research before attempting. First, make sure the car is properly warmed up.  Build up boost, blip the engine around 5.5 - 6k rpm for a few moments. If you have a launch control software you could set it so that you can just floor the gas and the software will hold the RPMs exactly where you set it to. I don’t have this mod, so I had to do it manually with... my feet lol. Release the clutch too slowly and you’ll burn clutch, release clutch too quickly and the car will jerk, bog and die.  Essentially you want to hit your exact clutch engagement point, release it slowly through the engagement point, feel the car spin, then floor it after you’ve engaged. Thinking about it now, it’s pretty difficult to explain exactly over text. I can see why A was so adamant about showing me before he let me in to try it for myself.

Side note, since he was already in my car from showing me how to launch, I stole his car again to find some straightaway streets where I could practice. He told me to drive it as if it was my brother’s car and was pretty concerned that I would end up scraping all over the place. Pleased to say I didn’t scrape at all. Hehe.  Combining getting to do pulls in his car, learning how to launch in mine- I can’t even express the amount of wonder and happiness I felt in these moments. Add that with the fact that I can’t believe I met the owner of this car at all, felt pretty surreal to me. Launching cars are too much fun. Wishing Tumblr had a feature to allow me to put pics in between my paragraphs for more accurate portrayal of the days.  R has plans after I’m done with my launch my car lessons from A. We hang out for a bit, decide to grab dinner together and then go on my very first ever 7-11 slurpee run. As a slurpee noob, I didn’t realize that there were specific lids and straws for slurpees, which A found fairly amusing. Unfortunately, no sprite flavor and the coke flavor was all out. I was in a bit of a rush to get home, but I still kept trying to stay as long as possible hoping this stupid machine would make some damn coke slurpee. Went home to some very upset parents that I had left the house at 6:30 in the morning and got home at nearly midnight. Heh. Still worth it.. Or was it.

Sunday My dad is pretty upset with me for coming home so late, but I had already made plans almost a month in advance to W to attend the opening of the new museum in DTLA, The Broad, located on Grand Ave right next to Walt Disney Concert hall. I tell W to start asking other people if they would be willing to go to the museum with him because I don’t think I’m going to be able to leave my house with such upset parents. 

On the way to breakfast, my dad and I bond over having an actual legitimate conversation. I’m not going to get into the details of my relationship between my parents but I’ll say this is maybe one of four actual open conversations I’ve had with my dad throughout my life. I think it’s a little sad, unfortunate and unfair that I don’t feel as comfortable around my parents as I do with strangers, and that my parents might have a more skewed idea of who I am simply because I don’t go out of my way (and they don’t go out of their way) to get to know me. He asks me to go run and errand with him, but first asks if I had any plans for the day. So i tell him about the museum. He’s understanding and says that I can go. My mom gets really upset at him for letting me go out again, but hey, I guess that’s part of being a father with a daughter haha. Thanks Dad. I love you.