I can’t even believe it, but Keep Drifting Fun won Speedhunters Video of the Year! What absolutely blows my mind is that it beat out Ken Block’s Gymkhana 5, amidst a long list of equally fantastic videos. Incredible!
I am still super honored to have been a part of this project. Both in front of and behind the camera. I’m so proud of what this simple phrase has matured into, and even more proud of all the people who helped make it what it is today (you know who you are). It is truly amazing.And in case you’ve been living under a rock…
I feel super honored to be included in Volume 1 of Hoonigan’s “The greatest hoonage caught on tape”! The clip is from Will Roegge’s “Don’t Stop” video. So many of these clips are classics, it is awesome to be among them in this awesome compilation.
Also… Motörhead. Need I say more?!
I had a chance to sit down with Will Roegge and Skylar Smith while they were in town for Formula Drift and discuss the current state of the legislation to ban drifting inside Atlanta’s city limits… and really try to touch on why Turner Field is such a special place for drifting.I can’t thank Will and Skylar enough for putting this piece together. It really conveys a strong, positive emotion about the epicenter of our drift community here in Atlanta. Plus, 300FPS slow-motion RED Epic footage in the rain just looks BREATHTAKING.
No words. Just watch. Enjoy.
OR ELSE.
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
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.
I still have SOOOO much to write up about this… but this video that BFGoodrich just released should do a good job of explaining things in the meantime. Click the drivers at the end to jump-off to each participant’s personal experience.My edit. Yes, my phone rings in the middle of it.
Have I mentioned that this event was TOTALLY INSANE the production level from this event was OFF THE CHARTS!? If not… I will.
Full write-up SOON.
Pure. Drifting. Awesomeness. I don’t even remember saying that.
Also… what Ryan Tuerck says in this trailer is SO right on. I am forever in debt to this crazy sport for all of the experiences and relationships with incredible people it has bestowed upon me. Real talk.
My excitement level went through the roof when Will and Josh sent me a link to the rough cut of this teaser! I could not wait to sink my teeth into some motion graphics for the piece. I was worried, however… that my schedule wasn’t going to free up to allow me the luxury. Lucky for me, it did! I was eager to try some new things, and help give the teaser a deservingly polished style with the graphics treatment. I am very pleased how they turned out, and cannot wait to work more with Will and Josh on the rest of the project! I am enthralled at the idea of expanding on what I did for this teaser and further developing it into something even stronger for the project.Hats off to Will and Josh for the shots/edit. I really cannot wait to see more!
It has been a while since I posted up one of Will’s videos… which is crazy considering he is one of the busiest people I know. Will is continually stepping things up with each project, and never fails to impress. He has been teaming up with DC Chavez and Skylar Smith, both SUPER-talented in their own right… making a veritable powerhouse of automotive film-making that is difficult to top. Throw Vaughn Gittin, Jr. in the mix behind the wheel of the RTR-X, and it is no wonder why I love this edit.
I recently had the honor of revamping my good buddy Will Roegge’s logo. He wanted to give his old logo a fresh look, as well as format it with text and without. The original logo utilized lineart of a panda bear, which was a good starting point.
In addition to giving the panda some new life, I decided to do the same to the type. I will love Helvetica ’til the day I die… but I opted for the slightly more mature look of another personal favorite of mine: ITC Avant Garde. I modified the W and the R by hand, and love how the two letters interact with each other. For the non-text logo, I added some gradation to the logotype as if the panda were casting a shadow on the letters. A few subtle nuances tied the Gs together quite nice for the text version, which we opted out on the gradation for.This was a fun logo to work on, and I am really pleased with how it turned out! I am working on some other projects with Will… so stay tuned!
Gran Turismo East – Michelin Spot from Andy Sapp on Vimeo.
HUGE thanks to my buddy Alex for the amazing voiceover, to Will and Josh for hooking me up with some of the incredible footage, and to Cody for letting me borrow his 5DMKII!Biggest thanks of all goes to Kieran at GTE for all his amazing help and unparalleled support over the years – both to myself and to the drifting community as a whole. Atlanta drifting would not be anything close to what it is today without it.If you’re in the Southeast, keep an eye out for this commercial airing on Comcast very soon!
Made a super-last-minute decision to make a pilgrimage to Englishtown for East Coast Bash.
The last time I was there was 4 years ago to shoot Slide America, and I didn’t have time to pull my car off the trailer to drive. With Will and Josh in attendance to shoot for Keep Drifting Fun… it seemed all-the-more fitting to get back there for some driving. I’ve been telling Petty I was coming back for 4 years… so it was time to make due on that.
We showed up around noon on Sunday. This track is so amazingly awesome that I was instantly bummed I wasn’t able to get there on Saturday. So many configurations… none-of-which are bad. I instantly felt at home on this track. The more I drove it, the better things felt. I had such a blast… and cannot thank Petty enough for having us up! Towards the end of the day I felt a weird vibration in the car, and decided to call it a day before I blew something up.
The next day we took the car to Roots Factory in Coatesville, PA to give it a once-over. I didn’t feel like cracking open the diff-carrier… but it seemed like something wasn’t quite working with the diff. It had more play than usual, and you could turn the wheels against themselves if you pulled hard enough. Byron noted that my car looked right at home at this shop.
My buddy Brad Hettinger had already basically stripped his down to a shell in less than a day’s time. We decided to take a funny picture for his build-thread..
The next day we saddled up, and drove about an hour and a half from Hater Dan’s house in Pennsylvania to a top-secret locale for an OG underground hoodrat sesh. What went down inside this warehouse was UN. REAL. Rob Fleming met us, as well as a few local rippers, for a crazy closed-door session that lasted several hours. UN. REAL. Will and Josh piloted the KDF van to the location to document things. They wound up with some of the craziest shots I have ever seen in drifting. MASSIVE thanks to Dan for hooking this insanity up. Keep an eye out for the Keep Drifting Fun DVD to peep what went down!
After that madness settled down, we headed back to Pennsylvania, only to re-pack and head back to Jersey for Gardella Racing’s ‘Throttle Thursday’… which brought out a bunch of FD pro-drivers… many of which (including myself for a li’l while) kicked around skateboards and braved the park on BMX bikes. This was my first time inside a skatepark since 1998… and I was REALLY scared! (more on that in a minute…) We all had a good time, including our jump-session in the foam pit (01:35 in).
The advent of the foam pit was definitely after ‘my time’ in skating. I had never been in one, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I will say this much – they aren’t exactly as soft as you think. Whatever you do… DO NOT open your mouth, or else you get tiny bits of gross sweaty foam in it. UGH. Once I got up on that railing to jump… it was a good bit higher than I originally thought. Either way, I had to get in on a front-flip to complete the night.
Next up was Formula Drift New Jersey. The folks at NOS Energy were awesome enough to let us spring an impromptu booth-space in front of their bunker so we could help sell Will and Josh’s tees. Josh looks asleep in this picture.
Tony brought by some of the new DA American Steel Tees that I designed. They turned out SICKKKKK. These are available in the Slide Style™ store now!.
Alex caught me red-handed in this photo. After my shattered collar-bone in September of 2007… I swore I would never step foot on a skateboard ever again. I was actually banned by friends and family. After nearly three years, I finally caved. I totally understand how people who try to quit smoking feel. For three years I’ve been getting the ‘urge’ to skate like a smoker’s spiral into a nicotine-fit. I have to say… it feels good to ride again – even if I am riding like an old man scared for his life..
A couple funny jump-shots that my buddy Larry Chen snapped while I was wearing Lihnberg’s wig. If you haven’t been to Larry’s site, DriftFotos – CHECK. IT. OUT. Dude is a madman behind the lens – an amazing photographer for SURE. Plus he likes jump shots, which is RAD.
After FD, we headed south to Baltimore to meet up with the Drift Alliance crew to go see Hall and Oates in concert.
I never thought I would go see Hall and Oates… but we had a blast. It’s so smooth! SO SMOOTH.
After Baltimore, we made a quick stop in Philadelphia to get some proper cheesesteaks & pretzels with Will, Josh, and Andy Laputka. On the way back to Atlanta we made a minor detour to Manhattan. After an all-night drive back down the East Coast, we made it back home. What an astounding trip, and an incredible few weeks up North.
SUPER HUGE THANKS to my buddy Dan Bailey for letting us crash at his place for so long, and for the amazing hospitality.
Southeast Drift’s Triple Threat 3 went down the day after FD Atlanta… which was awesome because it brought out a TON of FD drivers to our local shredding ground.
We towed the injured KDF van down to Turner Field so we could set up a booth and sell some swag.
The booth setup was PROPER.
Josh (left) and Will (right) were shooting the event for the DVD. Josh was looking gangster on my bro’s Dyno flexing the Slide Style™ KD Tee. I see Mr. Alvendia up in the mix as well!.
David Lee of Risky Devil was also rocking the Slide Style™ KD Tee while Shawn made a funny face..
Some drifting was had. Tons of awesome tandem with a slew of FD pros like Dennis Mertzanis, Matt Powers, Tony Angelo, Chris Forsberg, Ryan Tuerck, Tony Brokohiapa, and more. It was rad. It is great to see the pro dudes mix it up with the local-folk.
Afterwards we crept through some plush downtown neighborhoods in search of parking…
So we could all eat at an old staple of mine: La Fonda Latina. Good food, good people, and GOOD TIMES for sure.
