Surfing the interwebs for some cool car videos brought us to a twilight zone of Chevy lowrider culture. Keep in mind that we had the sound turned off as we bounced from one video to another. Most of the YouTube videos start to look alike after an hour of surfing – until you run into one with english subtitles – which is exactly what happened to us.
We found ourselves watching an emcee, that was trying too hard to look like he fit into to the lowrider culture, interviewing a member of the lowrider community about the car club that he belonged to. This scene looked like it could have been anywhere in Southern California on any given weekend. We read the subtitles for a minute then we turned the sound up for that warp drive into a different dimension.
Then we heard it: MOONSPEAK! Instantly we knew that these amazing Chevy lowriders were halfway around the world. The host of the video is actually a California businessman named Steve, and he hosts videos about Japan and their car culture and lifestyle on his YouTube channel. Steve has over 20-years of business in Japan and Asia, is fluent in both Japanese and English which allows him to do consulting, translating Japanese and English, bi-lingual video production along with editing and almost anything else related to video work.
We listened, watched and read as the interview took on a very traditionally polite Japanese tone as the leader of the car club explained the genesis of the club and the background.
Steve’s sense of humor adds to the videos, especially this video featuring the Homies car club in Japan. Knowing that the Japanese (like people in every other country of the world) know english curse words, Steve asks his interviewee, who is identified only as Mr. Kudo, “Which do you prefer, Ford or Chevy?”
The result is hilarious as the response is a very clear, “F@%k Ford” with the hand gesture for emphasis. We have to agree with Mr. Kudo, F@%k Ford.