This post was originally just going to be me blabbering about how I practiced low-light photography at the OriginKazoku grand opening meet this past Saturday. But I felt like a poser covering this event without even actually knowing anything about Origins and OriginKazoku, so I did what any badass journalist does and started Googling some shit. I still don’t actually know what the difference is between Origins and OriginKazoku; their Instagram announced a few weeks ago that a podcast will be out soon that explains some of the history behind the team and their events. Check that out if you wanna learn more, for now my best guess is that OriginKazoku is the brand name used for anything related to car meets as ‘kazoku’ means family. Unless your parents were divorced and your sister shut you out of her life for a decade, then ‘kazoku’ might not bring up images of fun social gatherings in your mind’s eye. 
I think that’s a good place to start actually, me feeling like a poser. Well, that’s just business as usual you might say, carcrazydan. You’d be right, but allow me to make my point here first. There’s something very cool, kind of exclusive feeling about attending an OriginKazoku meet, which threatens my inner poser’s safe haven, deep within my core, probably around my pancreas. I learned that Origins meets started as pop-up gatherings around 2015, with the location remaining a secret until just hours before the actual ‘meet’ itself began. So it’s this not-quite-underground, but sort-of-underground type vibe that surrounds the meets of the Origins ‘family’ that makes you feel like you’re in the middle of the original The Fast and Furious movie, and sets the uncool parts of myself on high alert. My brain: “Hey bro, there are cool dudes and hot chicks here, let’s GTFO! Let’s stay home and watch Jersey Shore reruns in the safety of our room.”
And the man who started it is Chris Calderon, that is if the article I read is correct. A lot of other stuff in this post is based on that article as well so let’s hope the writer wasn’t as lazy as I am and checked his facts. Basically, Chris wanted to start a new car meet in SoCal that was well-organized and didn’t have all the excessive noise and attention that gets meets shut down. And he did a pretty good job.
I’m not sure how big the crowds were when OriginKazoku, just, uh, originated (yea, I planned that joke even before I started the article), but for the past few years they have been drawing lots of pretty cars, and lots of pretty people at their functions. Yes, that means you too. At least one meet that was shut down in Loma Linda in October 2020 got a pretty big write-up in The Sun, which covers San Bernardino County. The article stated that up to 3,000 people were at the event.
Looks like a frog’s eye is looking at you. Italian Ferrari frog says “buon giorno a tutti!”
Besides the article from DTLA Weekly that I linked to earlier, it’s hard to find any interviews or mainstream media coverage of Origins and OriginKazoku, at least through a quick Google search. They promote themselves mostly through social media with Instagram and TikTok but otherwise seem to keep a low profile — like a 30 sidewall tire (Man, that was a really bad car analogy joke). And I assume word of mouth as well because that’s how I learned about them.
I accidentally stumbled upon the Toyo Tires Shutter Space car meet at South Coast Plaza in August of last year after having dinner with my family. At the time I had no idea who was hosting the event. I just saw that there were a lot of people, and overall a very high caliber of exotic and modified imports, with the best examples sitting inside a large garage under professional lighting. I wanted to know who the organizer was so I asked some spectators who simply said “OriginKazoku.” Now to clarify this wasn’t an OriginKazoku meet, but they helped promote it. So I started following OriginKazoku on Instagram knowing that would lead to info on future meets, which hopefully would lead to better stories for my blog, which hopefully would lead to no longer living in my mom’s basement, living off cheesy poofs, and wearing sweatpants the entire day.
Oh yea, low light photography. It’s hard and requires much more patience and effort than shooting hand-held during the daytime. 3 or 4 seconds doesn’t sound like a long time but when you’re trying a shot over and over to get it right those seconds add up. As does constantly readjusting the tripod and having to squat, bend over, or kneel to check the viewfinder and the LCD screen. Hey, no one said building a $100k a month passive income blog was going to be easy, right? Or don’t they all say that it’s going to be easy?
