Car culture in Southern California is as strong as ever, witnessed by the huge crowd of 25,000 or so enthusiasts that showed up in Long Beach last night for a gathering called Type S Night Lights.
Put on by Larry Chen and Sung Kang, the event was crowded into five floors of the parking structure for the Long Beach Aquarium. An interesting location, for sure, but the crowds didn’t care. It was a little like that scene in the first Fast & Furious movie where all the racers get together, although this one was minus the swimsuits and the bad guys.
Mark Vaughn
“It’s crazy,” said co-host Larry Chen, who was signing autographs and selling his new hard-cover large-format photo book, Life at Shutter Speed: Two Decades of Larry Chen Photography. The book features over 2,000 photos Chen shot documenting car culture all over the world. From staff photographer for Formula Drift, to Pikes Peak, to Gymkhana 10 with Ken Block, Chen is as much a fixture in import car culture and other parts of the enthusiast hobby as anyone he’s shot.
Mark Vaughn
But he had no idea this one cars-without-coffee/cruise-in/car happening would be as big as it turned out to be, with cars backed up in both directions of Ocean Avenue all the way to the 710 freeway.
Mark Vaughn
“I had no idea,” Chen said in between signings. “No idea.”
Mark Vaughn
He might have suspected. It wasn’t their first rodeo. Chen and friends had done three other such gatherings in Long Beach in a park by the Queen Mary, where the Japanese Classic Car Show and Toyotafest used to be held before they, too, outgrew that plot of land and moved to Marina Green Park, just a short scooter ride away from the Aquarium parking structure in which Chen and 25,000 close friends had gathered.
Mark Vaughn
He didn’t have any problem with the turnout.
“It was beautiful. It was really, for me, it just goes to show that car culture is alive and well and very healthy. It’s something you can’t hold back.”
Mark Vaughn
Will they do it again next year?
“My hope is to do it again for the October round (of Formula Drift, which will be held on a section of the Long Beach Grand Prix course). But of course, we just have to figure out where to do it.”
Mark Vaughn
How does he explain the phenomenon?
“I think so much of it comes down to just a love for cars, love for driving. These things (the cars) we give a soul to. They’re not alive, they’re inanimate objects, but we love them. And the passion is infectious, and that’s why.”
Mark Vaughn
He credits movie star and car enthusiast Sung Kang, who is behind barricades across the parking structure signing his own autographs and promoting his own movie, Drifter, about a young person redeemed by the power of drifting and the community that surrounds it.
Mark Vaughn
“You have people like Sung Kang really singing the praises of what it’s like to be a car culture enthusiast. And also myself, my whole point is to just tell the story of car culture, of our generation. And yeah, that’s why I love it.”
Mark Vaughn
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Mark Vaughn
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