#Hot rod fink thumbsup trial#

So that day, a few days before Christmas in 2011, this huge American company that espouses its dedication to its employees and “keeping jobs in America”, eliminated our entire development team. No, it felt a little like we were being led to a cliff. Our entire department sidled into the enormous conference room that, up to that point, was used for parties, news events, or whatever. consumer electronics company, a facility wide “meeting” was called. Rewind to late December 2011, while working as an industrial designer for a big U.S. The bagger, the chopper, the sport bike, and now even the electric! Regardless of who you are or what you ride you are welcomed! And if you don’t ride even more of a reason to just check out the vibe on a nice summer day one block off the east river. They are the rich, the poor, the black, the white. Bikers, riders, or whatever you wish to call them come from all sectors of life. First the main theme is motorcycles, motorcycles, and motorcycles. And for those of you who do not know these worlds, they are motorcycles, art, and music. On Aug 20 th this summer at Culture Lab LIC, which is a beyond cool not for profit art gallery located in Long Island City, New York we will have what I am calling the ultimate Chill Fest! NYC being the melting pot of American, I have always felt how cool would it be to bring the 3 worlds I love the most under one not so crazy event and have a one-of-a-kind special day. What is Kulture Fest you may ask? To me it is several events rolled into one, or maybe two. Soon after, Shige became a fixture at the shop and good friends with both Dean and his wife Shirley. Dean took the enthusiastic Shige under his wing and guided him through the horsepower learning curve. These photos became a pictorial history lesson for Shige about how Dean’s ingenuity, speed products and personal sense of flair influenced the early days of California hot rod culture with mythological status.

#Hot rod fink thumbsup trial#

Speed trial culture at Bonneville had long been legendary since the 1930s. El Mirage was only one-hundred miles from LA in the western Mojave and a favorite destination for illegal street racers who congregated there instead of being arrested on LA streets. The walls of Dean’s Santa Fe Springs MOON Equipment shop were covered with his framed black and white photos of cars at local drag strips but also on the dry alkali lake bed at El Mirage and on the salt at Bonneville. Shige also learned the double eye MQQN logo started at a local drag race during the late 1950s: Dean’s car was numbered 00 but as a joke, somebody painted in eyes and the MOON EYES logo had been born.ĭuring the Korean War, Moon was in the Air Force photography unit and he was skilled with a camera. His funky barefoot shaped MOON gas pedal and small 3.5-gallon MOON dragster gas tank (A front mounted system using natural rear-forced gravity to literally push the fuel into the twin carbs), MOON Disc wheel covers (to reduce wind drag and shave off time) quickly became must-have hot rod accessories and sold in the thousands. Moon’s marketing flair combined innovative ideas with a sense of the showman to sell his products. Shige learned Moon was a legend in SoCal drag racing culture and had designed a twin carb fuel block system of increased fuel delivery and horsepower. History writes itself sometimes── a young, motivated Shige followed his gut into Dean Moon’s shop in Santa Fe Springs and became an inquisitive regular visitor. Shige returned to California in 1978 as an exchange student until 1981 Shige somehow found his way to a drag strip where he witnessed the drama of high octane fuel elimination racing for the first time and met an enthusiast also from Japan, Chico Kodama (who would later become president of MOONEYES USA). His camera documented everything: he thought without the photos, friends back in Japan wouldn’t believe a word of it. Dizzy from the intensity of the situation, Shige pulled over more than once to catch his breath. He was literally surrounded with the shiny, iconic, preserved cars, vans and bikes of his dreams. He traveled LA free-ways and was completely overwhelmed (kid in a candy shop) by the scale, historical depth and diversity of California moto-culture.

At twenty-one years old with little English language ability, Shige boarded a flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles for a three week trip in search of parts for his 1960 T Bird. Today in Japan, Shige Suganuma and his Yokohama based MOONEYES has dropped nostalgia, style, velocity and sense of self into Kustom Kulture overdrive, but his story stretches back to 1977 California.