No words. Just watch. Enjoy.
OR ELSE.

The KDF blog says this best:

Thanks to NOS Energy Drink – we premiered Keep Drifting Fun to two totally packed theaters on Thursday May 10th, 2012. There was standing room only at the second screening and for everyone else that couldn’t make the premiere in Atlanta, Georgia – here is the first :90 of the movie. The full half hour length documentary film will be available on Vimeo on Wednesday May 16th.

Obviously, I have a lot more to write about this project and the premiere. Stay tuned!

We have been drifting at Turner Field since 2004. 8 years of safe, sanctioned, fully-insured, and legal events in a controlled environment. Simply put, Turner Field is the epicenter of Atlanta drifting. Without it… where would we be?

An ordinance was passed this week by city council, effectively banning drifting inside Atlanta’s city limits. It targets and singles out drifting specifically. This issue went before city council borderline unbeknownst to the drifting community, giving us no chance to defend ourselves in court. We were given two-minutes to state our case, with a matter of hours-notice to prepare.

Sec. 74-137. – Specific prohibited acts.

Car drifting on private property within 1000 feet of a residentially zoned district. For purposes of this section, car drifting shall mean a driving technique or motorsport where the driver intentionally oversteers, causing loss of traction in the rear wheels, while maintaining control from entry to exit of a corner. A car is drifting when the rear slip angle is greater than the front slip angle, to such an extent that the front wheels are pointing in the opposite direction to the turn (e.g. car is turning left; wheels are pointed right or vice versa).

The ordinance was passed by city council, and now moves on for approval by the Mayor. We are rallying support from the community to help dissuade this from happening by bringing all the positive elements of drifting at Turner Field to the public eye. Anyone who frequents my site already knows these reasons… the positive aspects of these events outweighs the negatives in a massive landslide.

You can help and show your support by signing this online petition to the Mayor.

You can also join the growing number of supporters on the Facebook page.

The date is fast approaching, and the time has finally come. Keep Drifting Fun. Fed up with watching fame, money, and sponsorship deals destroying friendship and camaraderie, I coined the phrase in 2008 in total frustration at the tail end of my professional drift career in this video. I saw too many people losing sight of why we got into this crazy sport, so as I made my exit from professional drifting, I wanted to leave with a message. Keep Drifting Fun. OR ELSE.

Little did I know at that time what an impact those three simple words would come to have on the sport (five if you include my threat). It is a simple message that has been embraced around the world… thanks hugely in part to none other than Will Roegge and Joshua Herron.

After meeting the two of them, and collaborating with them on the Don’t Stop video and the DMGGMASD2 Video… Will and Josh told me they wanted to make a cross-country grassroots documentary in a Volkswagen Bus along the lines of Slide America. They told me they wanted to call it… “Keep Drifting Fun”. I knew if anyone understood the ethos, and could pull it off right, it was these two. And boy have they ever pulled it off. PROPER. I am incredibly proud of these guys, and VERY honored that they chose this message to spearhead the documentary into something invariably larger than the sum of all those involved.

With the help of NOS Energy Drink, the world premiere of WR+Co’s Keep Drifting Fun will be right here in Atlanta on May 10th at the Midtown Arts Cinema… the Thursday night before Round 2 of Formula Drift up at Road Atlanta. There will be two screenings, one at 8pm, and another at 9pm. The entire thing will be available to watch FOR FREE online one week after. That’s right. FREE.

I am VERY proud to be a part of this in so many ways… and cannot wait for the premiere!

In case you missed the trailer… it deserves a repost.

If this were my reel… it would be game over – I win. This isn’t my reel… but it is still game over – they win.
Incredible.

A few snaps that MARLORD™ shot from the last Turner event. I snapped another axle leaving the line for my first run… but with the amazing help of Chris Stein, the car was patched up and back in thrash mode for most of the day! I cannot quite describe how amazing it felt to be back out there. GIGANTIC THANKS again to all my friends and family for getting ol’ girl fixed!

Be sure to come out to Turner Field this Saturday for another all day banger! Drifting starts around 10am until the sun goes down!

Back in October of 2010, two friends of ours, Axel and Martin, came stateside from Germany for a visit. During that week, there happened to be a drift event up in Nashville. My car at the time, had a shattered ring-and-pinion, but I wanted them to drive while they were here. I had a rebuild kit from KAAZ overnighted, and got a new pumpkin from Stricktly German. Matt Foerst got the KAAZ rebuilt, and back into the new carrier. Axel got the diff back into my car while I was busy finishing freelance work.

A very VERY important facet to this story is that… at the time… I was knee-deep in the worst financial turmoil of my life. I had been struggling to stay afloat as a freelance designer, while still falling deeper-and-deeper into debt from drifting. But with the car freshly patched up, we made a last-minute dash to Nashville. To shorten the story up, my first run of the morning, the car’s rear-end was already making a clunking noise. Something broke. There I was, maxing out my last credit card so we could drive at this event… and the car broke on the first run. I drove back to the pit, and told the guys “Fuck it. We came here to drive and that’s what we’re going to do… if it blows up, it blows up. Let’s have fun today no matter what”. And we did. All day. The noise got worse with each pass, and by the day’s end… the car was indeed… very broken.

When we got back to Atlanta, I decided to park the BMW in the garage, and take a break. I needed to get my finances out of the gutter, and that obviously was not happening with it in the picture. The thing is… I never intended that break to extend into the hiatus that it did.

Fast forward to present-day, 2012. I am working an awesome full-time job, finances are doing much better, and in the meantime, the starter died on the car, so I took it up to Koru, where I planned to work on it at least one night a week.

The only problem is, that with work… I could barely find the time to actually work on fixing the car. Good intentions only go so far, especially when it comes to turning wrenches (read: they don’t turn themselves).

Now. Let me introduce you to my dear friend, Kyle Boyce.

I’ve known Kyle since 1992, when we were best friends in middle school. Like many childhood friendships… Kyle and I lost touch for many years after I moved away, but we reconnected through the universal language of the automobile… and… when in 2008 Kyle reached out to me after opening his own restaurant: Manhattan NY Pizza. Kyle told me that he wanted his pizza place to be a hangout for car guys/gals. Where any gearhead could walk in and feel at home. I was immediately on-board with this, and did my best to tell all of my friends and miscellaneous gearheads alike. And it worked. Manhattan Pizza is now a staple for speed-crazy, wrench-turning maniacs from all over Atlanta. All of my friends religiously converge there once-a-week like the gigantic family that they are.

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THIS IS WHERE THE HISTORY LESSON ENDS…
AND THE REAL STORY BEGINS.
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Kyle calls me up, and says “WE NEED TO HAVE DINNER. Just you and me, pick a date, and lets stick to it”. He said “I know you’re busy, and I’m busy, but let’s do this PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE”. I’ve known Kyle long enough to know that when he says please more than once… that it is important. So we picked a day, and stuck to it. I arrived to the restaurant early, and found a table reserved for the two of us. Yes, that is combined weight. ;P

He brings out my usual, and we sit down and eat. Catching up on what’s been new in each other’s worlds. A few of my friends show up, for the normally scheduled “family” get-together. The whole time, Kyle is texting a lot… which I remember thinking – Kyle doesn’t usually text this much… but whatever. Then, he excuses himself, and goes into the kitchen.

Then… one-by-one… in a single-file line… ALL of my friends come out from the kitchen. All wearing the same black t-shirt that had the funny beard-skull illustration that Patrick/Tyler made of me on it… reading SAVE THE SAPP. Nobody said anything to me, most barely even looked at me… and everyone sat down. I’m definitely thinking “WHAT. IS. GOING. ON. HERE?”

Kyle then gives a short speech, which can be Cliff’d along the lines of “We know your car has been broken, and you still come out to all the events and shoot video… which we love… but we love you, and we miss driving with you. So we’re having a drift intervention. We stole your car, had a fundraiser, and fixed it behind your back without you knowing.” At this point I hear my lovely 2001 BMW 325Ci’s unmistakeable exhaust note revving up outside as it pulls up to the restaurant.

Cliff’d Cliffs: STOLE CAR, RAISED MONEY, FIXED CAR BEHIND MY BACK, THESE PEOPLE ARE THE MOST AMAZING. EVER.

I have always said that I am forever in debt to drifting for introducing me to the most amazing people I will ever meet in my lifetime… AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN. I couldn’t even say anything. I just wanted to cry. That’s right. Heavy metal crazyman… on the verge of tears. I got up and demanded a hug from everyone in the entire restaurant… holding back tears the entire time.

I basically didn’t know what to say the rest of the night. This is by far the nicest thing anyone or any group of anyone has ever done for me. Once oustide, and reunited with my Chariot of Fire… well… I guess you could say you had to see this coming. And if you didn’t, then you don’t know me and my propensity for violence on the streets.

The black ribbon atop my car, with message so near-and-dear to my heart… embodied a million-times-over by the kindness and heart behind this special evening.

The fundraiser t-shirt that paid for the parts to fix the car. The extra money raised went to buying me a season pass to attend the S2 Drift Events down at Turner. I can’t even scream at the top of my lungs how amazing this is! There is above and beyond… and then there is what all of these incredible people have done for me.

Kyle made pizza for everyone, and these were literally icing on the cake, care of my amazing Mother.

Group photo from the evening. There were several people that helped make this happen that aren’t pictured here… but everyone in this photo, and everyone involved are easily the most amazing people I have ever met. I am without a doubt, the luckiest guy on the planet. I don’t know what I did in a past life… or even the current one to deserve it… but I am very, VERY thankful to have these people in my life. SERIOUSLY. AMAZING.

I cannot thank all of my families enough (in NO particular order), DriftMechaniks, Team Rowdy, Boyce Family, Sapp Family, and the DRIFTING family as a whole. Words cannot even begin to do any of this justice… but I had to at least try.

I will wrap this up with a photo of myself and Kyle. Except this one isn’t us elbow-to-elbow in the early 90′s as kids. This is of the two things that brought us back together as friends, in front of the restaurant that we both tried our damnedest to make a place for gearheads from all over to feel at home… for good food, great atmosphere, and even better memories.

Thank you, Kyle.
<3

I love it when videos make drifting appear larger than life. Because it is. And it should appear that way. Shreeve killed this one.

For years now, I’ve always seen photos of the mystically bearded man standing right up against the wall at Long Beach as drift cars blast, smash, and crash right by him. His unflinching courage and never-back-down attitude always had me wondering… “WHO IS THIS MAN?!?” Now, thanks to Will, Skylar, Josh, and Hert… we no longer have to guess. He is indelibly awesome, and has easily solidified himself as a part of American driftlore.