Do Cars and Sneakers Mix?
Plus a huge shake-up at Jalopnik.
HAPPY RACE DAY! especially to Kelly Moss Road & Race, a Porsche specialty shop in Wisconsin. They’re hosting an annual summit for teen girls interested in motorsport careers on November 9. It’s free to attend! Register here.
In today’s email: 👇
Jalopnik Sold: End of a tumultuous era
My Night with Sneakerheads: An interesting twist
Links Galore: Everything I’ve been reading lately
Thanks for joining us. Read on for more.
WHAT’S NEW
Last weekend we sponsored a car meet held by the Brekkie Car Club just down the street in Stanton, CA. It was another great chance to show off our booth after debuting at JCCS one week prior (read last week’s post here).
This show is always a blast. There’s a ton of diversity and cars keep coming and going all day. Here’s a shot of our booth next to an awesome Supra.
And later a couple of cool AE86s showed up!
Thanks to our friends at Brekkie for having us. Be sure to catch their next show.
HERE WE GO AGAIN
Another automotive website is in turmoil this week. Jalopnik changed hands between private equity firms, and lost its editor-in-chief in the process.
G/O Media (backed by Great Hill Partners) sold Jalopnik to Static Media, according to reports from Axios.com. Static now owns more than two dozen publications, including the auto site Slashgear.
It’s the latest in a long history of shake-ups for Jalopnik, and the final separation from its origins as part of Gawker Media nearly 20 years ago. Jalopnik stood out for its focus on grassroots and online car culture, and independent reporting that leaned heavily into snark and calling out lazy journalism. It shaped a lot of my early thinking.
Over the years it gave early platforms to writers who went on to Road & Track (Sam Smith, Travis Okulski, Raphael Orlove etc.). It helped launch big audiences for people like Alanis King, Kristen Lee and Doug Demuro. The Autopian started when David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky leveraged their fanbases into a site of their own.
Whatever Jalopnik becomes under new ownership, it will do so without EIC Rory Carroll who confirmed on X that he will not be staying on. (It appears current staffers are keeping their jobs for now.) Does that pave the way for current managing editor Erin Marquis to become Jalopnik’s first woman EIC?
Without much else to go on, I don’t have a lot to add. I’m interested in Static’s plans, and how it plans to avoid pitfalls that have swept across auto media of late. Whether it’s Autoblog, CarID or EVPulse recently, or Forbes Wheels earlier this year (I know I’m forgetting others), sites are closing or overhauling with alarming swiftness. I’ll see what I can find out and report back next week.
WHICH REMINDS ME
Media reporters were aghast that Chik-Fil-A (yes, the fast food joint) is launching a content platform and streaming app recently. The in-house division will produce games, podcasts, and both scripted and unscripted shows.
That reminded me that General Motors (yes, the car company) has an in-house content division, too. To my knowledge it hasn’t produced—published?—anything yet, but it has an editor-in-chief and has begun to hire staff.
What does the EIC of a car company do? Beats me. But in-house content isn’t really a new idea, and I’d predict it only becomes more popular as media outlets dwindle and brands increasingly seek to control their own narrative. There’s a playbook for doing this the right way—the car culture blog SpeedHunters started as a pet project of Electronic Arts to promote its Need For Speed video games. It’s still a vital source for enthusiasts to this day.
I’m doubtful GM will produce anything as impactful as Speedhunters. But I’m also not as outraged at this blurring of the lines between editorial and advertising as I may have been a few years ago. Traditional media channels are being cut out of the picture from every direction, as reporters move to independent networks like YouTube or Substack and brands look to create their own content—GM isn’t the only one and it won’t be the last.
In-house editorial content is only lamentable if you compare it to the good old days of vigorous, credentialed independent journalism. But those days are so far past us the world in which they existed is almost unrecognizable. To pine for that would be to ignore the hyper-optimized, super-synergized spoon-fed reality in which we now live.
Is it better? No. Is it more convenient? Probably also no. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to stop. We’ll find out the ripple effects soon enough.
DON’T FORGET
I’m heading to SEMA in two weeks! Here’s my post about what I plan to cover while I’m in Vegas. If you want to spring for a paid subscription to support the trip, that would be swell.
FEATURE ARTICLE
Fresh to Death
Saturday I attended a “Cars & Kicks” event in Santa Monica, which aimed to combine two of the hottest cultures of the moment together in one celebration of style. Curated as a kind of mini-museum exhibit, Cars & Kicks arranged notable high-profile sneakers alongside cars that connected with their design, attitude or era. It was a fun idea. And one that appeared tailor-made for 25-year old me (when I was deep into sneaker culture and obsessively consuming car media by the minute).
To be sure there was plenty to see. Held at The Motoring Club, a trendy car storage facility and workspace that’s entrenched itself in the L.A. car scene over the past five years, Cars & Kicks offered rare shoes from big-name designers and some very impressive rides, too. Part of the fun was observing the guests and their own personal sneakers, many of them rare or special themselves, adding to the exhibit by providing art of their own. It’s hard to stand out with a car show in Los Angeles. This was an interesting approach.
But I have to admit, once the initial excitement wore off, it was difficult to determine what message we were supposed to be taking away. The point was muddied a bit by the sheer number of interests at play. Parties involved included:
Hypedrive: An auto-news site owned by Hypebeast, the online fashion and culture juggernaut.
Jeff Staple: A designer who achieved fame with pioneering custom Nikes and was the featured guest for the evening.
ADVAN Essentials: The clothing line for Yokohama tires which debuted its latest collection. ALSO: Tarmac Works gave out free diecast models; Leen Customs gave out free pins; and Inozetek raffled off a free car wrap.
If that wasn’t too much, the theme of the night lost direction during the panel discussion later on. The chat included Staple, SEMA vice president of marketing RJ de Vera and Motoring Club founder Michael Rapetti. Panelists discussed the roots of their passion for both shoes and cars, and attempted to find common links between the two. Together, they came up with the fact that both are collectible, both are used for flexing your personal style, and both are modes of transport.
And that was kind of it. After a couple of personal anecdotes and stories of childhood poster cars, questions from the audience quickly turned—in typical L.A. fashion—to asking for advice on entrepreneurship and building a successful brand. Staple is an inspiration in the streetwear community and this was attendees’ chance to pick his brain. “You’ve gotta know you’re going to make way more mistakes, and hear way more ‘No’s,’ and just numb yourself,” he offered.
But there wasn’t much else on the intersection between cars and sneakers. And maybe that’s because there really isn’t much else. Sneaker culture is a very specific movement that inspired a generation in the ‘90s and exploded in value and popularity in the 2000s. Millennials became obsessed en masse, and in the late 2010s when they finally achieved financial flexibility they could afford the cars they’d been pining for, too. The L.A. car scene became a great place to flex both at the same time. We’re living in a convergence of two childhood fantasies that really aren’t all that related except that they tangentially speak the same hip-hop inspired language. Stay fresh. Do you.
There doesn’t need to be a deeper meaning. These can simply be two things we love to celebrate. And to me that was the one enormous success from the event: tearing down the traditional walls erected by both cultures. Cars & Kicks created a fun, welcoming environment for everyone to enjoy cars and sneakers at their own level without the need to prove their knowledge or credentials.
One thing the two passions do share is that they can both be incredibly snobby. (I’m shocked that the panel didn’t bring this up—jk.) To its credit, Cars & Kicks didn’t expect me to prove myself. It expected me to show up as I was and appreciate the show at my own level. It made it okay to simply enjoy the fun from your personal perspective rather than from the high bar of the experts—which is a distinct shift.
If the Millennial mindset helped lower barriers for people to enjoy and appreciate cars, which is essentially the thesis of my 2019 book Slow Car Fast, then Cars & Kicks really did achieve something special by mixing sneakers into the same formula. It made room for everyone, no matter their expertise. That’s worth celebrating.
LINK CENTRAL
Here’s a short collection of interesting stuff from around the web:
I enjoyed this Pit + Paddock article on an east coast meet called Grassroots. Agree that there’s a magic to creating “a curated event that doesn’t feel stuffy.”
RM Sotheby’s is auctioning off a remarkable Jaguar XKSS in November and they let Chris Harris toss it around London just for fun.
Apparently there’s a ring of counterfeit car parts—i.e. brakes and airbags—running amok in the UK. Here’s the ad the government is using to crack down:
By 2030 about half of all car parts will be purchased by “digital natives,” meaning mobile sales will be increasingly important. Traditional retailers are at risk.
The McLaren Formula One team built a Hemi-powered ‘73 Barracuda and painted it Papaya Orange to celebrate the US Grand Prix in Texas.
Our friend and Cult of GT-R editor Sam Smith was a guest on The Smoking Tire Podcast this week! You can listen here.
This video from the Japanese seat-maker Bride (pronounced “Bridd”) might be the coolest commercial I’ve ever seen.
AND FINALLY…
F1 was in Texas this weekend, but plenty of eyes were on drifting instead. Formula Drift capped its twenty-first season with an explosive finale at Irwindale, as Irish driver James Deane became the first four-time champion in the series’ history.
I really enjoyed these ceremonial burnouts, and getting to watch Deane celebrate with his family and team. Is he the GOAT of FD?
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