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And 10.
Tax Act understands you haven't memorized the tax code.
That's why Tax Act has live experts to help.
Tax Act can even do it for you if you prefer.
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Well, other than going back to college
and obtaining a bachelor's degree
and accounting with a minor in finance,
then interning somewhere and becoming fluent
in all tax forms, but that might be hard
to accomplish before tax day.
So maybe just stick with Tax Act.
Let's get them over with.
So you guys ready to put the tinfoil hat on?
Let's do it.
Here's my theory on this, right?
So that's when the economy collapsed
and then I couldn't get a job.
And I was like, wow, this college thing really paid off.
Then I got the call one day.
It was like my friend's mom was like,
hey, you really serious about moving out to California?
So I was like, hell yeah, I just can't afford it.
And she's like, look, you guys can live in our spot.
Just try to press on and figure out
what we could do to make everything work
and then try to bunch of different stuff.
Eventually fell into randomly quitting my job
and then trying to figure out
how to use a camera for a year.
Around that same time,
we wound up meeting the crew from Hoonigan.
Brian was like, yeah, come on down
like this day here this time.
And I sat outside of his trailer.
I was like sitting out there for like hours.
And then like, I was like, yo,
is this dude gonna come out, you know?
And like, oh, what are you doing here?
I was like, yo, you set this meeting, dude.
And he's like, oh, shit.
He's like, okay, well, just give me a minute.
Like four hours later.
What's the sketchiest in that yard?
What's the sketchiest it's been
or the time that you're like,
oh, shit, this might go real bad.
One time that went real bad.
That's right over his shoulder
is a great one for you to look at.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have breaking news here.
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Zach Mertens.
Mertens.
Well, thank you for having me, sir.
Mertens.
Mertens.
It's kind of, yeah.
I like to put a little redneck on it, little Mertens.
You kind of got to, you know,
you got to sprinkle some sauce,
otherwise it just sounds really Dutch,
the appropriate way.
I think you're supposed to say it.
Dutch.
You can handle the redneck side.
Yeah, I can.
That's honestly, really, that's a great segue
because I'm really,
I've been looking forward to doing this episode.
We got to meet each other for the very first time today.
We did some fun car things
and walk around in some good media.
I was always wanting to know,
because I knew of you as the only one
on Hoonigan that spoke a little more of my language
and seemed to be into all the things that I am into.
So I wanted to know.
That's not a compliment.
Yeah, it's, yeah.
We're bonded today.
I take it as a compliment
because I like those things, you know what I mean?
You know what's funny about that
is the best part about
the original setup at Hoonigan, right?
And that we all loved is we always call ourselves like,
it was kind of like a street gang,
but it was like the Wu Tang clan of car culture
because everybody had their own thing.
And Brian was really like,
Brian could see the top-down vision.
It was like, this is perfect
because like you got your guys that are into,
you know, JDM stuff, drifting, German car stuff, whatever.
And then like, we needed a redneck-y truck guy
and like, this is perfect, you know?
It really, really worked and it was like,
I wondered for a while of like, was that purposeful?
And I also then questioned like, is it authentic?
Like dude, is he playing a character or are you that way?
But then very quickly, I was like, oh yeah,
that's, he's just that way.
No, I'd like V8s.
I'm very, very steadfast in that.
I don't know why, like there's just something
about the sound and the just raw violence, you know?
Like just, other stuff's cool.
I can respect other builds and shit,
but like, there's just something so fucking badass
when you just got like a big-ass cam
and a lot of displacement and just thumping away, you know.
Well, take, I wanna know about the origin story
because you're, I mean, you're SoCal guy now.
You've lived a little bit of everywhere,
but SoCal's starting to wipe some of the redneck off
and you're getting a little, a little Cali, right?
But it's still under there.
I could have sworn like watching all his Instagram
and then like seeing him, like he was from Australia.
It's, you've, burnouts, big, huge motors through the hood.
There is a lot of, there's a lot of crossover
between Bogan culture and where I grew up, you know?
I mean, I mean, Australian rednecks are great.
They're hilarious and like, always a lot of fun.
They like to crush cheap beer, you know?
And like do big, nasty burnouts and like, you know,
they still love stupid fucking blowers through the hood.
You know?
Well, let's face it, country is country
regardless of geographical location.
Country is country.
There's something that breeds it.
When you don't have like a bunch of people
all on top of one another and you, you know,
you can do things where you can get away
with some stuff, right?
And it just, it works a little better, right?
And it just, it molds to that.
You know, the community kind of matches it, right?
Yeah, that's just kind of, you know, that's how it works.
But yeah.
Why do you think it is, it's interesting you talk about that
when you have more space to spread out?
Cause I've talked about it before,
that that's the problem that's wrong
with Southern California is the people, too many people.
There's just too many people.
Yeah.
But why does less civilization
make people generally more civilized?
Well, usually because, well, you got to rely on one another.
And then also usually everybody has guns too.
You know what I mean?
So like you can protect one another.
It's, you know what?
Here's the thing.
I think there's actual like studies on this.
Don't quote me because I'm not that smart, right?
But, you know, there's, there's studies that show
and you can see it in real life in real time
where when there's a ton of people,
like people aren't saying hi to one another.
You know, it's like you're just kind of like
trying to stay out of everybody's way, right?
Whereas like you live in a really small town,
you're waving everybody as you drive by.
You know, there's that, there's a community aspect
and there's kind of like that tribal aspect.
And I think that there's,
there's some sort of science that shows it's like
when it gets to a certain number of people
and like it starts getting too big,
that dwindles rapidly.
Now.
You're too crowded, too many people.
You're fighting for space.
You're fighting for space.
Like it, not, I think subconsciously,
but subconsciously you're trying to like,
you're starting to get a little, a little close.
Yeah, inherently.
And yeah, you can't be fucking living on top of one another.
I mean, it is wild,
but like Southern California is pretty sick.
I mean, yeah, there's a lot of shitty parts to it.
Like taxes, the price of everything,
some of the governing bodies,
but you know, we don't have to get in all that.
I don't need to be on some list right now,
but I'm already in no trouble with this.
You've been on that list.
Yeah, I know.
But you know, there's just,
I don't know, there's a lot of cool stuff.
Like being able, obviously, weather is sick, right?
You walk outside, you're wearing a T-shirt,
and you're like, oh, I'm not gonna sweat.
I can just wear pants today.
I can wear shorts, I don't know.
Let's wear some flip flops, right?
The beach is right there.
Some mountains are right there.
It's really pretty.
There's tons of good looking girls, you know?
Like, I'm sure there's a lot of pretty guys too,
just not really paying attention to that aspect.
But like, you know, in spots like
where my shop's at Huntington Beach, right?
There's still, if you're outside looking in,
there's a lot of bad rap for California, right?
But there's like, most of California is pretty rad folks,
especially out in the desert, you know?
And like, you know, there's people that love
to do the same stuff that we do.
And then Huntington Beach is that like last holdout
where they're like, fuck yeah, man,
well, what you got in that thing?
Like, there's no reason that-
Before the Teslas.
Oh yeah, I mean like, look,
none of my vehicles are legal whatsoever, right?
And they're all really loud.
If I drive my K5 around anywhere,
most people are like, how do you get by driving that thing
in California and not get arrested all the time?
But it's usually, cause cops are like, hell yeah, dude.
Cause it's like, they can respect it, you know?
And like, they can, they get it, you know?
Also, if you're driving like a banged up G35
with like straight pipes and shit, you know,
you're probably gonna get slammed on that hood.
They're probably doing something illegal anyways.
Yeah, you know, or like a stolen Hellcat.
I don't know, you know?
It's, I don't wanna call it stereotyping,
but you know, there's-
There's a pattern.
Yeah, there's pattern recognition, if you will.
Yeah, but now it's cool, man.
And there's definitely a lot of cool cats.
I love, I love Huntington Beach
because like, all of my neighbors are rad.
Like anytime that I've taken a car out
to do like test hits on the street,
soon as they like, they'll hear everything fire up
and you'll get out on the street
and then like everybody's outside their shop
with their phone like, hell yeah, let's go.
Let's see what it's got.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Versus, yeah, getting run out every time you did something.
Yeah, it's a cool community.
Born and raised in Missouri?
Yeah, so Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee.
So, you know, up and down the Mississippi.
And then I lived a little bit in Amsterdam for a couple years.
Really?
Yeah, I went to school over there.
For what?
To the party, not international businesses.
Okay.
My actual degree, but you know,
you know, I spent a lot of time enjoying myself.
You get to learn come of age.
Yeah.
Amsterdam's a place to do that.
It was definitely interesting.
I tell you what, it was a weird time
to be there because we were going to war with everybody.
It's like everybody hated Americans, it seemed like.
And I'd never experienced that kind of vibe.
Like when people would hear me,
my accent was way thicker then, right?
And people would hear me talking,
they'd like spit at me and be like,
fuck you, you're a bush.
What the fuck, man, you don't have a bush.
Oh, my president, sorry.
So, yeah, this is like 2006, seven, you know,
we're banging on all cylinders in Iraq
and going to Afghanistan.
They're just pushing buttons.
Yeah, so, but it was cool.
You know, it taught me a lot.
You know, when you're away from everybody
and everything, you know, I didn't go over there
with any friends or anything.
It was just, you know, go check it out,
see what we can figure out.
It turned out cool.
Reigned a lot.
How'd you decide to go there?
It was on accident, actually.
I was supposed to go to Australia.
You on the wrong plane?
No, no, they canceled the Australian exchange program
like six weeks before I was supposed to go.
And they were like, well,
you got to figure somewhere else.
I'm like, I don't want to go somewhere
where I got to learn a new language.
Like, where's a place that they speak English?
And they're like, Amsterdam,
pretty much all the Dutch speak English very well.
And, you know, it's pretty cool.
And I'm like, that sounds pretty rad.
So I was like, fucking, let's just try.
Australia would have been cooler, though, like,
honestly, like.
Yeah, you could have got your burnouts
and blowers through the hood.
Exactly, you know, not a whole lot of people
driving cool cars in a, you know,
basically ancient city with cobblestone streets.
Amsterdam is pretty laid back.
Yeah, everyone's high as shit.
Well, yeah, I was gonna go there, but.
It was different then than it.
I've been back a couple of times
and it's changed a lot and it's like cleaned up a lot.
Not that I'd say it was dirty,
but like it's not the same energy.
Like it looks like a, like,
you know, like when corporate comes in
and like kind of straightens up the party a little bit,
you know, that's kind of how Amsterdam feels a little bit.
Yeah, it's not the same rager perpetually going.
What took you to Memphis from Missouri?
Parents got divorced.
Stepdad got a job down in Memphis and yeah.
So mom and stepdad moved down there.
Dad and the rest of the family were in St. Louis.
So yeah, just bounced back and forth.
And then there was a catastrophe in 99
and parents lost everything.
We moved back to St. Louis.
Damn.
Hey man, it teaches you a lot though.
It does.
The, I want to get into Hoon again
and get into California and stuff like that,
but I think that it's important.
I'm gonna act surprised because I've heard this story,
but it's so good that you're gonna have to tell,
you can tell whatever version
for the airways that you would like to tell.
Okay.
This is gonna, you don't have to tell the car
that you purchased, but you can tell how
you were able to purchase your first car.
Oh man.
I don't mind telling the story though.
I think it's funny.
I think it's fucking hilarious.
You got insight on your knowledge.
I do.
I heard this story today and I was like,
damn it, I wish you would have told me this
the first time on the podcast.
Well, no, so when I was about 10 years old,
you know, I'd spend summers with my dad
and my dad had a, you know,
we have like a family HVAC business, real small, right?
And they used to have this old shop
in downtown St. Louis and a real crabby neighborhood
and it was, you know, like a building built
in like the early 1900s,
but it had an apartment above it,
which they basically used for storage.
So when my dad would be down building,
like bending up sheet metal and stuff
and, you know, prepping for jobs,
I'd be up like playing around in the shop
and I'd go up to the, you know, just perusing around,
you know, like you do when you're a kid,
you know, getting into things you shouldn't be into.
Well, I found this closet that was filled
with these cardboard boxes
and inside of those cardboard boxes
were just like stacks of playboys and penthouses
and like club magazines.
Sweet.
How old were you at this time?
10.
So of course,
treasure chest.
I basically struck gold.
It was like in, in there will be blood, you know,
and that is a huge one.
Yeah.
So then I basically started, you know,
I'd sneak out a couple every day, right?
And so then I go back to Memphis
with like a duffel bag full of nudie mags, right?
It was like vintage, like 50s, 60s or?
Well, actually in those boxes,
this I feel really bad about this,
but like it went back to like the 50s
because I think it was like my grandpa's.
And then it was like,
everybody always had like subscriptions,
but they kept all of them.
So like, I never took any of the really old ones.
Like I'm more of like a, you know,
I grew up in the air where Pam Anderson
and like Carmen Electro were, you know.
So, but yeah, like so I would go back to school
and you know, you're obviously like showing friends
and stuff and like, oh, where'd you get that?
You know, like I want one of those.
And then like I jokingly was like,
I'll sell it to you for 50 bucks.
And then some kid came up with that $50
and I was like, oh, I got something here.
So I basically started selling those
and then figured out that I could get more
if I was like, hey, you know,
you buy three magazines, you give for a hundred, right?
And that worked out pretty good
because the school I went to, there was some,
you know, the neighborhood was pretty nice.
So there's some kids with some cake.
I grew up poor.
So, you know, this was a good setup, right?
And a 100% profit too, you have nothing in.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a really good business model of, you know.
So, you know, I kept doing that.
And then I started figuring out
like my parents got one of the dish network,
satellite dishes, like when they first came out, right?
And then when you got those,
you know, you got all the channels
and my mom and stepdad were like out at the casino
like one Friday night, you know,
I was on there home alone
and I happened to stumble upon Cinemax
and then I got the wise idea to record it
so I could show my one friend, you know,
like this is what I found, dude, you know.
And then I can't remember how it came about,
but like it was the same thing of like,
people like, oh, like get me one of those, you know.
So I was like, tell you what.
So then I started selling the video tapes
and then I started doing like combo deals
with like two magazines and like a VHS for like,
this is like 150 bucks.
Like Saran wrap and shrink wrap.
Oh no, not even, not even.
That would have been better, like packaging.
If I would have figured that out,
I think I really could have done somewhere.
But no, it wound up like it was banging
for like a couple of years, right?
And then it all came to an end
when I came home from school
and these like my three best customers
are these like three completely degenerate kids.
Like they're three brothers.
They just destroy everything kind of guys,
you know what I mean?
They were my best customers.
Well, they got caught.
I guess their mom found like a Zippo lighter or something
and then she goes rifling through all their stuff
and she's finding like all sorts of contraband
like butterfly knives, like nudie mags,
like basically everything you shouldn't have
is like a, you know, the early teen
or like not even teen boy.
So they rat me out saying that I sold them all this stuff.
So she goes, my mom, you know,
so they're there waiting for me
when I get home from school.
And mom was like, hey, you know,
she wants to talk to you.
And then, you know, she was like,
you sold my son all this stuff.
I was like, wait, no, I sold the playboy, right?
And, you know, she was like, you sold my kids porn.
And mom was like, hold on, I'm gonna pump the brakes.
Let's playboy.
It's not a big deal.
So I was like, go give her the money back.
So I went upstairs in my room
and like broke off 40 bucks and I gave it back to her.
And then like, you could see her just like boiling over
since she like clearly left
to just go beat her kids, right?
Like it was very clear what was about to go down.
And my mom was actually impressed.
She was like, why?
Like you made $40 and I was like, no,
I made a lot more.
And so I had this shoe box, like an old Nike shoe box
that was just crammed full of cash.
And I showed it to her and she was like, holy shit.
Like, look, I'm not mad at you.
This is really impressive, but you can't do this anymore.
So she went and she's like, here's what we're gonna do.
So she went and invested the money for me.
And then by the time I turned 16,
I was able to buy my first car,
which was a Mustang Cobra.
But it was like one of the slow ones.
It's pretty awesome.
Tell me that's not an amazing story.
It's an amazing story.
It was good times, but that car basically
would be the death of me.
Not death.
I mean, it was just like, it was so expensive to keep up
with, you know, you're working at $5.50 an hour job
trying to like pay for gas, crazy insurance.
Probably a lot of rear tires.
A lot of rear tires.
And then, you know, like it always had this feeling
of like, this is never gonna be fast enough.
Like I can't afford this.
And it actually made me not want to do cars.
So I got, I was like, you know, I can do sport bikes
for like 4,000 bucks.
I can have 1,000 cc sport bikes for 200 miles an hour.
So that kind of like converted me over to motorcycles
for a lot of years.
Actually, until I got to Hoonigan
and Brian was like, you should build a car
and you should build a truck.
I wanted an El Camino, but I couldn't afford it
at the time, you know, because like El Caminos
were like sky high, like 2017, 18.
Got your redneck.
Super redneck.
Well, I want something I can throw the bike in the back of,
you know, because like a road bike.
What was your first street bike?
When you saw the Cobra, what was the first?
So first street motorcycle.
I didn't get a sport bike right away.
I got like a Honda Shadow Sabre 1100 or something,
you know, very reliable, usable, you know,
but it just is cool, you know, being like 17,
you know, it's a bike.
I've got a motorcycle.
Most people don't.
Exactly, it's me and my friend, Brandon,
actually the guy that got the Z06.
Okay.
Yeah, we had the same motorcycle in high school.
We were the only two in school,
which also caused some trouble with,
we were easy to point out.
Yeah, did you have any way in high school
to have a motorcycle?
I didn't know, but.
There was one kid that had a motorcycle.
You have fingerless leather gloves too.
No, but he was different.
They wouldn't count it as, he wasn't,
it's not the same.
He was a kid that happened to ride a motorcycle to school.
It's not like.
It's not even my choice.
Yeah, it's not like it.
Yeah, he was, he was a little different.
And I think that's just like,
he probably chose to find his parents motorcycle
and make it run so he could get to school kind of thing.
So it doesn't count.
It's not like a.
I just wanted to pick up chick and go fast.
Yeah.
Oh, I mean, dude, I remember my parents just like,
there's a lot of things I probably could,
I've talked about before, my dad's preacher still is
and I grew up in that type of household.
This is where you are.
That's 100% where I am.
But there's a lot of rules and regulations growing up.
There was a lot of things I probably could have done
that were considered bad, bad before
I could have gotten a motorcycle.
Like it was not a thing that was even kind of.
So motorcycle is like the,
this is the top of the mountain
for the worst thing you can do.
Yeah.
And then.
It's the devil's transportation.
Here's crack.
Yeah.
Like I don't, you don't ever catch it.
I remember music was a big thing,
especially in the nineties right yet.
Selling porn probably wasn't like high or low on that list.
I don't know.
It wasn't even on the list.
Like that that's not even something they would have fathomed.
I got to gotten away with that.
You know, just like, oh no, it's like what?
The, you know, there was a movie came out
like I think I was probably in 10th grade
like hell's bells or whatever.
You remember that?
And it was like all of the secret messages
and all this rock roll
and went to a Christian school.
And I remember like, they terrified you with this stuff
of like, if you just hear it,
like you don't have to even listen to it.
If you just come across and it's playing
and you hear it, like you're all of a sudden possessed
and going to hell, right?
Yeah.
It was super like terrifying.
And then I remember like not long after that,
like being around somebody playing like ACDs or something.
And instantly they're like,
Hey, this is some ACDC.
And I was like, oh no.
And then listen like, oh wait.
Did you cover your ears?
I thought it was gonna be like bad.
That's bad ass, man.
Like run it back.
It's not bad.
That was actually my first cassette tape ever.
Hey, hell's bells?
No, but back in black.
Back in black, that's what I meant.
Yeah, hell's bells was like my favorite song
as a four year old.
Yeah, my buddy Josh, his dad gave me his old,
it was, I remember it had this like weird brown stain
down the middle of it.
It was a white cassette.
Yeah, I used to play it on my little play school.
You know the one with the microphone?
You know, it's like, yeah.
So I would be, I would put it on my shoulder
thinking I was, you know,
four years old, thinking that's cool, you know.
It's funny how that's, there's two albums
or two bands, I'd say, like going road trips
and stuff where we do a lot of road trips
or just driving, it will burn out on music
because I listened to just about everything
but I get into a circle of like, all right,
I've listened to Waylon, you know,
for the last three, four days straight, right?
And now it's like, all right,
I've already listened to Hank Jr. for this
and I go through my run.
There's times you're on a road tour and you're like,
I just need to mix it up and we're just gonna drive
and we're starting to drive a little more spirited
for the next, you know, two hours.
Norah Jones.
It's AC DC or ZZ Top, every time.
AC DC or ZZ Top, all the time.
AC DC, Guns N' Roses, never a big ZZ Top guy.
Oh man, I love some ZZ Top.
You know what's funny?
You know what turned the corner for ZZ Top for me?
I liked ZZ Top as a kid.
I wasn't like, you know, buying albums and stuff,
right, but when I was 18 or 17,
I went and saw ZZ Top, Ted Nugent
and Kenny Wayne Shepherd with my dad.
And like, it was ZZ Top's headline,
the show's beer drinkers and hellraisers tour.
And like, I was just like blown away.
I was playing music at the time too.
It was like, this fucking three pieces
filling so much space with sound, right?
It was just such a badass show that I was like, hell yeah.
And like, I was trying to, what's funny is
I went to Sturgis a couple of years ago
and the only reason I was gonna go
was like, I'm gonna go
because like ZZ Top's headline
and I wanna see ZZ Top one last time
before somebody dies.
And then, oh yeah.
Dusty.
Yeah, Dusty Hill passed away
like the week before Sturgis.
They still played the show
and they, you know.
That sucks.
So like, he hung his hat on the mic stand.
But yeah, it was like, such a bummer.
Have you watched that Netflix documentary?
Oh yeah.
Did you got to watch it?
Dude, it's one of the best on,
the Skinner's one was really good
but the ZZ Top one, the sound,
like everything they did,
I mean, the cinematography of it,
it's great but.
Longest running original lineup of a band
in American history.
Really?
Yeah, 50 years at that point.
They got a sound.
Oh yeah.
It's crazy that their first show,
they were opening for Hendrix.
Like so that's how long they were playing.
Hendrix died in like 70.
So like, in the 60s,
ZZ Top was a band and playing
and made it all the way up until basically 2021.
Yeah.
2021 or 22?
21 I think.
Yeah, 21, I think.
Now whatever, math.
Hell yeah.
It's crazy run.
So what took you to,
you get out of school in Amsterdam,
you come back, what do you start doing?
So that's when the economy collapsed
and then I couldn't get a job
and I was like, wow,
this college thing really paid off.
So then I was trying to just figure out
what I was gonna do.
I even applied for Naval OCS
because I always wanted,
I thought flying fighter jets would be bad ass, right?
Pretty cool.
And I went through the whole application process
and the testing stuff and I'm like, cool man.
Like, hey man, you tested the high enough,
like you couldn't pick whatever you wanna fly, man.
Last step is the background check
and I was like, cool.
And then I admitted to having some arrest,
which not for like bad stuff,
but like I threw a keger at my house
and had a burnout competition in the driveway at 2 a.m.
And the cops got called and I, you know.
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That was like held you out?
Yeah, so, but it wasn't even credit for you.
Yeah, it wasn't on my record though, right?
But I admitted to it and he's like, dude, we can't take you.
This is before, I mean, now I feel like
they're pretty blacks on stuff
because they need signups, but like then it was like,
dude, you can't be an officer if you've had,
like if you admitted to an arrest,
even though it's like, dude, it's not on your record.
Like I couldn't even find it.
I figured they'd be able to find it
because it's like, you're in the government,
you're probably accessed to all sorts of stuff.
I'm starting to find a significant and no judgment
because it's quite similar to my life choices,
but from the selling of the adult material
to a motorcycle to running to Amsterdam
to then want to be a,
you've done a lot of things for the opposite sex
in pursuit of.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know,
but also like, also I like going real fast.
I truly find peace and solace at speed, you know?
Like, I don't know why, but it feels really comfortable, right?
And it really like kind of boils me,
especially like in Los Angeles traffic,
like being behind people are slow, just yeah.
There's nothing that like, it just makes me so tense,
but like, if I can go real fast,
like I feel real calm.
But that's a stretch, dude.
Like I don't like being in traffic or waiting in line,
but a fighter pilot, that's an opposite into the spectrum.
Like that's, those dudes are fucking legit.
Yeah.
That shit's a different fucking breed.
You might've had it.
Maybe did.
Yeah, maybe, but I don't know.
We'll never know because I couldn't get the opportunity.
I'm a little bit too old now, if you like,
but I would love to go and experience it.
Like even in like riding the backseat,
like it's got to be.
Yeah, it looks bad.
It's terrifying.
I'd probably puke.
Yeah, I would black out.
Yeah.
I can't imagine, I mean, similar to like to, you know, F1,
you know, the speed at which your mind
has to be working to make those decisions.
It would be interesting for a short period of time
to be in control, be perfectly calm,
being in control of a fighter, you know, not.
Oh yeah, well those dudes have to be on
and it's like long stretches too.
You know, you got to be up in the air,
like on patrol or whatever and, you know.
There's not that much shit to hit up there though.
You don't have to.
True.
True.
Imagine getting in a dog fight though.
It seems like it'd be like, you know,
it's like keeping your, just the spatial awareness and,
you know, especially.
Throwing me off pretty bad.
That's probably puking.
Yeah.
But no, you're saying like you find that
in the pursuit of Tang.
That's generally, fortunately and unfortunately,
that seems like fun, would be super cool.
The bonus is, I bet they think it's cool too.
Oh yeah, of course.
I mean, realistically though, like,
isn't that like the entire origin of everything on earth?
You know, like that's.
The cool stuff.
Our species is like, I mean, at our very core,
it's about like, what can I do to procreate?
You know?
I mean, like if, let's face it,
if we could live in a cardboard box,
if chicks would like not be completely repulsed by it,
you know.
Yeah, yeah.
I would say the cool stuff.
Cause there's a lot of things,
especially in the last probably 30 years
that we're not created in the pursuit of that.
I mean.
Fair.
Yeah.
Well, you know, we're living in weird times.
We are living in weird times.
Yeah, man.
Look, I like that.
I mean, the men's unitard that came out,
what, a couple of years ago,
everybody was like the onesie,
the shorts and tank top thing like that.
I don't think that was created in the pursuit.
How many, how many did you own though?
It was created in the pursuit of something,
but it just wasn't the pursuit of.
The same act.
It was the same end result, right?
Not, well, it's the whole procreation part
that can't happen.
You can practice.
Good God.
Yeah, man.
Look, by the way, I appreciate you guys having me out here
and, you know, being willing to open up
some of your badass builds.
Like, I can't believe how,
like I told you guys this while we were doing it,
I still like, I was just talking to my buddy
on the phone and like,
I can't believe how fucking dialed everything is, right?
Like it's like, you know,
I've been privy to be able to like,
operate some pretty cool stuff, you know?
But like, to have something so sorted and so balanced,
you know, and like, the fact that I drove a C-10
with like, better steering feel
and like, suspension feel
than a freaking Corvette that I own
is like, it's still like, messing my head up.
You know, like, it's really a testament to like,
it's cool to see it online.
It's cool to look at,
but like, to be able to experience it
was a totally different beast, you know?
Yeah, that's our best sales tool ever.
That's how Scott, that we built the Grand National Forum,
built a couple other cars.
I took him for a ride in a Chevelle
and he was a big supercar guy,
took him for a ride in that,
scared the living shit out of him,
had an absolute blast.
And we've built a couple of really insane cars for him
after the fact, because he never thought
a muscle car could do that.
And he even had a couple of muscle cars,
not on chassis before that.
And that was where it was,
which we talk about, so many people get burned
where it's, you go from supercars,
we talked about, you know,
the younger generation getting means faster, you know?
And like, I want a muscle car, I want a 70 Chevelle.
But go online, that one looks really, really nice.
I'm gonna talk to the guys and send me pictures.
It's shiny, it's got no rust, it's all new.
They've restored it.
You know, plus, plus, plus equals, it must be good.
Right?
It's definitely a vibe, but it doesn't work well.
Then you get it, and then you're like,
damn, I never drove a 70 Chevelle.
But I imagine what it should have been.
But I imagine in my head how great this was gonna be,
and this is not great.
And then, sometimes, you know, they start asking questions
and they're still so passionate
that they get educated that they move
to the next correct thing.
Oftentimes, unfortunately, then it's like, all right,
well, maybe muscle cars are just not for me.
Maybe those guys that enjoy those muscle cars
just like that feeling.
And I'm gonna go to a super car, I'm gonna go to this.
You go through some life and then you're like,
well, these guys keep talking about these muscle cars
drive really good.
I've had one, they drive like shit.
And then you get behind the wheel and you're like,
oh, all right, so it's not just the car.
It's the sum of parts, right?
You've gotta do this thing, this thing,
this thing, and this thing.
And it's like it's a complete reinvigoration of like,
it's completely my fault.
I fucked up.
I didn't know the things that needed to go into it.
Now I'm ready to go.
Like, let's build it.
Let's make it fucking awesome.
Yeah.
Now it's rad, like, it's like, I mean, there is,
you know, we can't get away with the shapes
and the design cues of like that era anymore
because of all these stupid rules and laws
and like, you know, manufacturers wanting safety,
you know, make a whole bunch of money
and obviously be able to sell in other countries, right?
And so like, it really screws up the design
because of all the implementation of that, right?
So like, the lines and the shapes
and the sizing and stuff on muscle cars
or just classic trucks, it's like,
you're never gonna be able to get that again.
Like it's, it's iconically cool.
And like the way paint lays over steel too, right?
Like you just, it's not the same as plastic parts
or anything like that.
But to have something that functions that well
and that planted and that confidence inspiring,
that's another thing like,
you need a hit in front of us.
It was just like, God damn, like,
I can't believe how fast that thing was moving so quickly.
I sent it to my buddy and he was like,
yo, is that thing all wheel drive?
And I was like, no, no, it is not.
It just hooks that hard.
And that's on a, you know, that's not on a track.
There's no prep.
That's on street tires.
A lot of dust on that street too, if you're looking.
Yeah.
Mexico does have, you know, stick your ass off though.
We were right down there, right down the road.
Yeah, you know, but, you know,
thankfully the, you know, federales,
they, you know, they were cool with it, yeah.
But no, it's just cool to see it done so well
and to like, to be able to touch and feel
and like really experience what that is.
It now like, I almost, I almost feel like
I just opened Pandora's box
because now like I'm just reflecting upon all of my stuff
and I'm like, God damn it.
But the problem like we talked about outside
when you get done with the C10 or whatever,
you know, tell them how good it was
and being very complimentary of it.
And I said, now you kind of see where it's,
it does open a Pandora's box
where when you fix all of the little small things
or come as close to OE or as close to dialed
as you can possibly get.
I won't say, you know, perfect,
but you try to get close to perfect.
The steering is right.
The NVH in the car is right.
You know, things are tight, not rattle.
And, you know, you're not,
the seat's not bucking you when you're driving.
You know, the shocks are not bad.
You know, everything's like, you're,
like you said, dialed.
It's completely in control.
Then all of those things become not a thought anymore.
Well, the only thing you have to think about
is how much faster can I go?
So what used to be 600 horsepower
with a pretty good suspension,
but not really good tires
and not stuff like that or whatever,
now has to be 1200 horsepower
because everything else doesn't,
it doesn't take your attention away.
So now it's like, well,
I rolled the windows up and the air's blowing cold.
So I'm not thinking about being hot.
I'm not thinking about how rough it rides.
And I'm not thinking about those road transitions.
And I'm just driving, now I'm bored.
So why isn't this thing, as it's 850 horsepower,
it should be faster.
But it's just in your mind.
It's like, now you have to go so much more horsepower.
We're talking about, you know,
back in the day, a decent little,
you know, bolt-on suspension and a 265 and,
you know, 450 horsepower to the tires
with bad steering, that's fast.
It's not, because it's scary.
It's hairy.
Yeah, it's not because it's fast.
It's because it's, it's hairy.
Horsepower to tire ratios.
It's funny, there's so many people like,
what are you gonna do?
Like, would you gonna fix the chassis on your K5
or like put like real suspension on?
I'm like, I don't know if I want to,
because it's fun, because it's absolutely terrifying.
Like, most people that are riding it,
they're like, you'll get me out of this, dude.
You know, because like, you can feel it flexing
all over the place.
It feels like it wants to flip over.
It won't, if you just stay in it,
it'll just keep melting 35s
until you come out of the throttle, right?
But like, you know, there's something really fun
and rickety about it that, you know,
that makes it special for how it is.
But then also on the other side of things,
it would be really nice if like, you know,
everything worked correctly and like, you know,
there wasn't any, like, it was like,
oh, if I have to like, break real like, real short
and you know, be able to steer out of the way,
it's like, you know, it'd be nice
to have a little more confidence in stuff, you know?
And like, I was thinking about it,
because you guys got a big printout of your,
oh man, what's the closer to OE truck chassis?
Legends, yeah, sorry.
You know, you got to print out a little legends chassis
and I was like, you know, it's like,
it's kind of crazy because like, that's really good
for like, I mean, like honestly, for like, what it is,
it's like, that solves so many problems on it.
It's the ultimate daily driver hot rod.
Because like, I mean, you know,
just driving just newer trucks,
like they work really good, you know?
And it's like, the fact that if you can have like,
the look and feel of an old truck,
they have all the functionality
and then you can like, throw more power at it
without being like, well,
I'm just gonna grenade a bunch of shit or, you know,
worry about X, Y and Z happening, you know?
That's like, that's really nice, you know?
I will say, I mean, it's obviously your truck
is making significantly more power,
but the amount of customers that have had
the legends trucks that we've built
or bought chassis that have done the LT4
and then Jeremy's personal truck
that was the prototype version of this,
he's got an LT4.
It's wild.
One, how many people want to race,
even though it's just a square body truck, right?
It's not screaming, it's not, you know,
loud like your truck, it's just a truck,
but it's for whatever reason, they see it and they're like,
oh yeah, that thing's got something,
but it's wild.
And LT4 in those trucks that don't weigh all that much
and they hook up will absolutely hurt 95%
of the people's feelings that you come across
on a daily basis.
And it's-
Put that in four high and just gone.
Oh yeah.
It's wild to see their faces.
This is another thing.
I wish I could like launch,
I tried launching my truck in four wheel drive before
and like as soon as it hits second,
it changes lanes so drastically
because like that it's got a Detroit Troushack front-rear,
right, and so like it's-
Lock and unlocked.
Yeah, so it's like it just, but you're just like,
oh, you know, and obviously the steering is
more of a suggestion, right?
You're moving 30 degrees to turn one.
Yeah, but it's also like, you know,
there's a little bit of slack in it, you know.
Take some expertise.
Yeah.
I also switched over to a crossover style steering,
but I have a like a Borgensen quick ratio,
like a way too fast of a ratio.
And so now it's like real twitchy, which is good.
If you want to like just chuck it in,
but you got to be like full commitment,
ready to like, you're here to party, you know,
but you got to stay in it.
Cause if you come out of it,
it feels like you're going to flip over, you know.
And we were going down the path
and we got, we got a little sidetracked.
We're on the path on, can't find a job.
Oh yeah.
Economy's taking a shit.
Oh yeah.
So what do you do?
So I worked at a, I worked at Gold's gym for a while
and wound up actually doing real, I was doing sales there
and I had this awesome boss named Glen Uzinski, man.
And he didn't want to like be the manager there.
I think he was like a vice president at Bally's
and then they got like folded up.
And he's like, look, man, I've done this way too long.
I don't want to be like talking to people.
Look, it's like, I'll give you all the leads.
You do whatever you want as long as you hit numbers.
And but he let me try some things.
So like, you know, in order to hit sales, like,
you know, there's some things that we could do, right?
And we had a marketing budget, but like they didn't pay attention.
It was a technically corporately owned gym, right?
Like, so it wasn't.
Where's this at?
This is in St. Louis.
And, but it wasn't like a,
it was under the corporate umbrella.
It wasn't like a franchise,
but like it was a super low performing gym
and they were just like, man, whatever, right?
So I was like, hey, there's all these colleges around
there, there's a ton of colleges around there, right?
And there's all these apartment complexes.
And like during the summer, you know,
that's a bunch of kids want to parties.
Like, can I take some of this budget
and throw some keg parties at these apartment complexes?
And then like in order to get a free keg cup,
you got to sign up for a $30 a month.
No, you know, so I did that.
And like it crushed.
And then I also found out that like,
piggyback some old bootleg playboys on top of that.
Well, no, but it follows this kind of suit.
I noticed there was a lot of, you know,
like girls that like worked at like Hooters or like hot shots,
you know, like basically, you know,
sports bar kind of thing.
And then a lot of girls that worked at some of the strip clubs
that were across the river would come in there and work out.
But it was like the same time that a lot of the dudes
would be getting off their job for like,
you know, working plumbing or something.
You were at 334 o'clock, right?
And I sold some memberships.
This is how I found out, like some guys come in
and they're like, yeah, they're like,
you know, they're kind of like blowing the whole thing
off and they look and they're like, oh, shit.
We should get memberships here.
And so I was like, I clicked.
So I basically told the girls, hey, if you want,
like your friends like come work out here,
like I'll hook them up with memberships, right?
Just, you know, any of the girls you work with.
Stack the deck.
So then it became this thing where there was all these,
you know, this female talent working out there.
And it was always at the time when like, you know,
so it just worked out really good to keep getting people in.
And they liked it because it was attached to a tanning salon.
So they could like tan and get the workout in
and go dance till six in the morning, whatever, you know.
Yeah, it worked out good.
And so we just, then we wound up like being able
to find a good play to like get people
to get personal training at the same time.
Like I taught some of the trainers like to,
how to sit down and like go through like,
this is how we can change your life kind of thing.
And then that, you know,
we sold a ton of personal training.
So it worked out, it was actually making great money
there, like, but it's not what I wanted to do.
You know, like when I actually,
my last class of college, right,
I had come out to California
because of my high school friend and moved out here.
And, you know, stayed for like three weeks
and I was like, this is awesome, right?
Like there's something totally different.
You know, I could say some completely cockamamie idea,
you know, and no, like there weren't people like,
that's ridiculous.
Like you'll never make it.
Like that's, you know, there was none of that talk.
It was like, oh dude, I got a cousin that does something
like that you guys should meet.
And so like, I was like, I want to be there,
but I couldn't afford it, right?
Because, you know.
California's not cheap?
No, like compared to Missouri,
like I think like my apartment in Missouri
was like 300 bucks a month, you know,
and like that's like, you know, in California,
especially anywhere close to the beach,
it's like, you're not getting in for,
especially at that time, this is like 13 years ago.
So it's like, you're not getting in for less than,
at that time, 1200 bucks for like a studio
and like a just crap little place with no parking
and kind of, you know.
So I basically went home
and then that's when I worked at the gym
and saved every dollar I could.
I've moved back in with my mom and stepdad, you know.
And you know, that was cool.
Like they're fine.
It's not like they're weird parents or anything.
And yeah, and just then I got the call one day.
It was like my friend's mom was like,
hey, are you really serious about moving out to California?
So I think Dylan needs a friend.
So I was like, hell yeah, I just can't afford it.
And she's like, look, you guys can live in our spot.
Like they had bought two condos in Long Beach
and one of them was like a really nice thing.
They came up hard because it was like economy collapsed.
They just built this brand new building
couldn't fill the last like couple of units.
So they got it at like a steal,
like an impossibly good deal.
So she was like, you guys can like live in there
a couple of months and figure out a place to live.
And then, you know, at least give you a head start.
So yeah, it just started like that.
It basically picked a,
found a way to ship my sport bike out.
And then whatever the date that it was gonna land,
that's when I just booked a flight.
Did you have a job lined up or anything?
Any direction? No, I did not.
But I had like 60 grand saved up,
which I thought would be a lot more runway than it was.
And I figured we'd go and figure out also to like,
I figured they were like, yeah,
if you want to work at Gold's, you know,
they had the corporate gyms here.
The Long Beach was a corporate one.
And obviously there was a Venice,
but I tried doing that for like two weeks.
And I was like, this ain't it.
Like this is not why I'm here.
So we just, you know,
just try to press on and figure out what we could do
to make everything work
and then, you know, try to bunch of different stuff
and then eventually fell into randomly quitting my job
and then trying to figure out
how to use a camera for a year.
Just, yeah, like-
Teaching yourself how to do it?
Yeah, well, luckily I had some friends
that were really great at it, right?
And I had some like really awesome mentors
that taught me so much.
And they saw I was dedicated to it, you know,
because I was gonna dedicate every waking hour
to learning that, right?
So because of that, they were like, all right, like,
look, let me just show you how to do this right
so you don't gain any bad habits, right?
And, you know, I just like pressed as hard as I could.
And so I would Airbnb my spot out
and like sleep on people's floors
and couches and shit.
And like, so my buddy Mike Tornabenni
and my buddy Nick Delacat,
they taught me a ton about this,
but I would be also sleeping on their floors
and, you know, couches to make it all work
or just, you know,
I had like a check I was seeing out in Vegas, you know,
so I'd like go out there, like,
just rent my place out for two weeks
so I could just sit and like edit her place all day.
But it takes a lot to get that flow
and but you just gotta like do it every day,
like every waking hour.
What videos are you doing?
So at the time, like, at first I was just kinda like
messing around with the camera
and then my buddy Mike wanted to buy an Aston Martin
and then I made a joke that I was like,
look, you wanna get a V8 Vantage,
but like, if you see a V12 Vantage pull up,
you're probably gonna be like that fucking sucks.
And I was like, I got a friend that works
at Aston Martin Beverly Hills
and I'm pretty sure he'd probably let you like just drive one,
you know, like just test it out, you know,
go have some fun.
And he did.
And then he was like, yeah, I absolutely need one of these.
Like if the one that he drove,
this guy had like traded it in
and it had like long tubes on it, no cats.
And like, do you remember those GMMG mufflers?
That were like just dimpled stretches of metal
that they used to put on Camaros and trans amps.
All right, so basically that's all it had for mufflers.
It was ridiculous.
That's an F1 car.
It sounded so rowdy, right?
I don't know how those Aston Martin V12 sound
as like guttural as they do.
I don't know if it's like firing order
or like the, you know, anything,
but like it just sounded badass.
So he winds up buying it
and that salesman was like, dude,
I needed that sale so bad
and like you guys saved my job.
So like, look, I'm going to do this for you.
Just keep it on the DL.
But he gave us these two tickets
to go to this thing at a thermal club.
And it was like for everybody
that pre-ordered the Lamborghini Aventador SV
and paid in cash kind of thing.
And so like, you know, they had like go out there
two days, put you up in a really nice hotel
and then they like let you go,
just bang on Lamborghinis all day at thermal.
Basically, so they could probably
sell some more Lamborghinis.
I watched two catch on fire, which was sick.
Yeah, two different Chinese dudes.
Like their Aventador is just fully on flames.
They're like, eh, whatever, not a big deal.
Get another one, fuck it.
Yeah, they, it wasn't hurting them at all.
But I brought, I just got some GoPro's and stuff.
And I was like, oh, let's like film something
for like a little memento for us, you know?
And like, I wanted to see about how that worked
because like video versus photo
was like drastically different.
Like the way, you know, you got to think
about everything.
And then Mike saw the end product.
Dude, we should make a show out of this
because it was funny because we're two idiots
that are like fish out of water, right?
And we definitely didn't belong there.
You know what I mean?
And he's like-
Did you film with the Lamborghini crowd?
No, not really.
And so Mike had already had
a really successful YouTube channel, right?
And like, he's a great comedy writer
and he's really good at basically
anything he does, he like, he's like
just painstakingly like gonna get it dialed.
So yeah, he was like, we could make a show out of this.
I'm like, what are we gonna do?
You know what I mean?
Like it's kind of ridiculous.
He's like, no dude, I know how to do it.
Like, let's go for it.
So we basically just like, literally just went for it,
you know, and we were just like, let's figure out
like how to do this kind of, kind of like top gear-esque.
But we wanted the production quality to look good,
but like we wanted to keep it like a small team
and see like what we could make for ourselves.
And like the first episode was basically shot
on my 30th birthday.
We went to Vegas, we rented a C7 Corvette
which was like new at the time.
And then we went off-roading with it,
like took it down some like trails
and blasted it through like the dry lake bed
and just like, kind of not mangled it,
but like it took a flogging.
Didn't do good things for it.
No, no, a lot.
And then like, you know, and that was like the,
that was technically the first episode.
So many people were pissed by the way.
It was like the first time I could ever experience
people like having negative comments, you know?
Like, and he was like, oh, we're gonna,
he wound up taking it down too.
Cause he's like, this is like the wrong look, you know?
But it was like, it did really good numbers, right?
Cause it started getting-
There was a bunch of negativity.
Yeah, well it started getting like good publicity.
Like there was like Corvette blogs
and like magazines writing about like two dickheads.
Yeah.
And yeah, this is like 2015, right?
And so then it was basically like,
we would just go on these like trips
to go do like car centric stuff,
but it was just like, it evolved into,
we used to have like a rolling tag, right?
Cause everything would always go wrong, right?
So it just like, it was like, world's worst car show, right?
Like the show was called NAR-PM, right?
Like NAR, yeah, NAR, yeah, anyway.
Kind of ridiculous, but whatever.
And, but yeah, so we did that for a while.
It was super fun, but then it started getting
really expensive as, you know,
anything car related does.
And that's also at the same time
that they kicked on the algorithm for YouTube.
So like it went from, like our videos would do
like 500,000 views or so, you know,
and this was like no, this is not like paid stuff.
And like it's just like putting it out there
and people just like really enjoy it and would share it.
Well, then it, I remember the video we put out
and it was like, all of a sudden it was like,
it got like 15,000, 20,000 views and I'm like, what?
Like we worked really hard on it.
We're like, this one's gonna bang, right?
And then it just was like, nobody knew it existed.
And like, what the fuck?
And then as it turned out, like there's a bunch
of like creators making videos like,
what's going on with YouTube?
And then, you know, come to find out, this is what happened.
Around that same time, we wound up meeting the crew
from Hoonigan, right?
Because Mike would get his car washed across the street
from Golds when we'd go work out there.
And this was like at Google has their headquarters
right there for Southern California, you know,
the Venice headquarters.
And they were like, oh dude, like, you know,
you guys do like the car YouTube stuff.
Like we know these guys, like we go and wash their cars
like once a week, it's called Hoonigan.
I was like, yo, can you get me somebody's number?
Like it'd be Brad to go and like just check it out.
So we wound up like getting in touch.
And as it turned out, Brian and Ken would always watch
Mike's old videos when they were on the WRC circuit,
like in like turkey and shit,
because like there's like nothing on TV
that they can understand.
So they were like, watch these old Domizetti videos.
And so they were like, yeah, come on by, you know?
So there was like, it was such a weird cycle
of things, right?
And yeah, but we were there, you know,
we had kept in touch and Brian was like picking our brains,
like, how do you do this like daily YouTube content stuff?
Because obviously with the algorithm
and everything's changed, like, you know,
what are you guys figuring out?
And, you know, there were some conversations I had,
but once we were gonna like,
once an RPM was coming to kind of an end
because we're like, we can't just keep this up.
And also too, Mike was basically funding it himself.
And I'm like, I can't let my friend
be like going bankrupt for this thing.
You know what I mean?
I'm gonna like drag a homie down, you know what I mean?
So we're like, let's just like kind of stop doing it, you know,
and figure some other stuff out.
And so I wound up going to Brian and I was like,
hey, you know, like I know you guys
are starting the daily content
and they had just started daily transmission at the time.
And it seemed like talking to Vinny
and suddenly the other guys are like, yeah,
like the whole team's kind of like underwater
because it's like, how do we keep up with this?
You know, and like, we were like,
need to find editors and stuff.
And I was like, yo, I edit.
Like I edit all of our stuff
and like I do the backend for the channel.
So like, I don't think Brian knew that.
He just thought I was like the dude in a denim shirt
that liked to crush beers and, you know, jump stuff.
Which you also are, but yeah.
But also, you know, I was doing the double duty.
So yeah, basically just kind of pitched myself.
And you know, it's funny cause like too,
Brian was like, yeah, come on down like this date
here this time.
And I sat outside of his trailer
cause his office was inside like the old like Airstream.
And I was like sitting out there for like hours
and then like, I was like, yo,
is this dude going to come out, you know?
And like some people would end, you know?
And then he was like, oh, what are you doing here?
I was like, yo, you set this meeting dude.
And he's like, oh, shit.
He's like, okay, well, just give me a minute.
Like four hours later, he's like,
oh dude, I totally forgot you were here, man.
He looked just go talk to Teague
and see if he can get something set up.
Teague was basically heading up the,
like the production team at the time.
And so basically I went back to talk to him.
And he's like, okay, here's a hard drive
with footage, make an episode.
Just watch some YouTube videos, you'll figure it out.
Wow.
And so I was like, all right.
So I took it home and just banged one out
and sent it back the next day.
And he's like, you're not done.
And I was like, yeah.
He's like, there's no way it's this fast.
I'm like, yeah, dude, this is easy.
And then he's like, oh, shit.
And he's like, well, really he's like, you,
I used to, so the way I was taught
is like my buddy Nick makes like TV shows.
And like, you know, there's a lot of like elements
to that like transitional stuff,
like the way you do like sound ups
and like, you know, bringing these like,
different effects and things, right?
And like, he's like, dude, you can't do that.
Like there's no way to keep up with that pace
to try to do like five videos a week like that.
And I was like, all right.
So he's like, dude, we just got to dumb it down.
You know, like we got to keep it purposely shitty
for like the parts, you know,
because it makes it feel like you're there.
And then we keep the beauty parts
and the action really dope.
And I was like, oh, it's sick.
All right.
It's way easier.
It's fun all your work in half.
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, that's basically how I got on board.
That was a really long-winded explanation.
No, that's exactly what this is all about.
That's fucking amazing.
We're always amazed in, you know, that transition story.
Like, it's the next thing, the next thing,
who you know, be in the right place at the right time.
And it's wild how that.
I wanted to go, you talk about the algorithm.
Explain to me what you know,
especially in those early days,
because technically, obviously,
and I'm this, you know way more than I do.
And so I'm dumb talking about this,
but technically the algorithm should, in theory,
be promoting content to an individual user
that he or she should be already interested in.
I think the main goal of the algorithm
is the reason they did that
is so they could place ads, right?
Like, and they need content to be published nonstop
and they need it to be like kind of like distilled down
or it's like where, you know,
because they do like a,
if you're gonna buy ads for YouTube,
if you're like some like huge conglomerate, right?
It's like, you don't pick the videos that you're actually,
you're just basically, it's like an auction, you know?
And so that was, I think, the original purpose of it.
And when it began, it was serving the,
actually the companies or the channels it was serving
were like ones that were dumping content out.
Like, so if you had like an hour long vlog,
an unedited of you just doing random bullshit
and you were pumping one out like every day,
some people two a day,
those people were growing crazy fast.
Like, I know some very specific people that came up
and like grew like a million subscribers in like a few months
because that's what they were doing.
And it was like, how is this trash doing so well?
Right?
Just looking at volume and eyeballs.
It was volume.
So many more of much volume for the ads.
Yeah, and also at the same time,
there was a big stink raised about YouTube
from all of the like NBC, CBS, all that, right?
But then like, that's the exact time
you started seeing them really dive into YouTube
and they were like, you know,
they have a full production mechanism
where they're like just dumping out like 17, 20 videos a day
where it's like a cut downs of like news segments,
all this stuff, right?
And you started seeing those channels
like go from kind of nothing to just like ballooning.
But it was all content and it was already in the can anyway.
Basically, yeah.
So it's like, it's like repurposing
all this stuff for like TV shows, stuff they shot, you know?
And again, I'm no expert on this.
And like really it seems like nobody actually knows
because even through the Hoonigan days,
we had like a dedicated YouTube rep
to take the supposed to be like our inside person.
And like it got to the point where they're like,
dude, we don't even know what the fuck the algorithm does
because it's all AI driven and it like changes.
And like we are constantly trying to figure out
just what it does.
So just we can kind of guide people in the right direction.
It's like everybody we've talked to.
Nobody knows it's social media, YouTube,
how any of it works.
It just kind of does.
And you explode and then all of a sudden it drops off
and then it comes back and yeah.
The amount of like he said, the amount of AI
and it's constantly learning,
I think is the reason why nobody can know
because whatever you think you might have figured out today,
it's completely different tomorrow and next week
it's a different landscape.
There's some channels that seem to get like caught
in the, you know, it's like they catch this insane wave,
right?
And it seems like nothing they put out can fail.
And like, you know, which I like, hey,
I'd sport anybody to create
and it just like going for the dreams, right?
Like it's a big fucking leap to do that
and to trust yourself to just be like,
I'm gonna do this no matter what, right?
So like this is not be talking shit on any channels
but it does seem like some people like no matter
what they do will just be like million views
first day all good, you know,
like and it just like perpetually grows.
Yeah.
I look at a lot of like the,
like if you go back to some people's channels,
you'll see like it seems like almost every channel
has like a cutoff point, right?
We're from most of their videos.
You'll see some stuff that just like blows out, you know,
and it's like crazy views.
But for the most part,
it seems like there's a consistency
on where the views stop, right?
They're all 20,000 or 500,000 or like,
there's like a 5,000,000, 5,000,000,
4.9, you know, that's right there.
And you know, like we saw that a lot at Hoonigan.
Now, you know, doing it myself,
which a big reason I wanted to do it was like,
so I could actually like get in the trenches
and see what it's like to be like a creator
from the ground up.
You don't see what kind of like struggles they go through
because I help a lot of creators
with like getting people deals and stuff
because you know, business development is kind of my thing.
But like, you know,
you got to know what they're going through.
You got to know what like, you know, what's happening.
And even with mine, like I've seen a rhythm
that was like, you know, it'd be like consistency here.
And then there was one thing I did.
I remember there's one video I put out
that had a belt fed machine gun.
And it wasn't even firing,
but it was like shown as B roll
because like Silencer Co was a title sponsor
of burnout wars in the first year.
And they had an M243, you know,
with a fake belt of ammo, you know, chambered up in it.
It's like at their booth.
And that video, when it started out,
it was like cranking,
like it was going to be like my best video.
And then at 12 hours at video,
like views completely stopped
and it never grew from there, right?
And then after that, where my videos were doing
like roughly like a hundred K was basically average.
It dropped down to like 50, 40.
And then I had to like bust ass
to like climb back out of that hole.
But then I noticed it's like the video,
the views will just basically, you know,
there'll be like stretches where it'll just stop
at almost like dead on the exact same,
like within like a thousand views, like for stretches,
you know, and then maybe there's something
I try to do that's like new
and then like that gets a little more traction, you know.
And like, if you look at like the watch time,
engagement rates and stuff, like comments,
like it doesn't really make sense to like,
it seems like, okay,
if that is like what they're basing it off of,
then why is this one so low
and comparatively, it's got like three X the comments
of like a video that's got double the views
or triple the views, you know what I mean?
Like the watch time's like way higher too, you know?
So it's like, I don't know what it is,
but it seems like there's a point at which it's like,
we're gonna turn the tap off and you're sure.
Yeah.
It's like, we're just gonna not promote it anymore.
It's wild.
I wanted to hear from your side
because coming you were pre algorithm
and then saw what it did.
It's interesting because, you know,
my thought, if I were to create an algorithm,
you know, if you've got videos pre algorithm
that are organically have a fan base
that is consistently watched, you know,
half a million views, you know, you're hitting those,
you would think that that's one of,
that would fall in line with a piece of this algorithm
like, hey, these people like this content.
I know so much about these 500,000 people.
I also know so much about these other 30 million people.
I bet there's others like this
and I need to put that out, but it's not that way.
It's crazy.
Yeah, I don't know.
Like I even look at stuff that I get served
and from phone to TV, it's different, right?
But like, I watch a lot of YouTube TV now.
I do as well.
And like, I noticed that it's like,
most of the people I actually subscribe to,
I don't even see their stuff pop up,
but it's like, it's like feeding me some like,
kind of a Jason chip,
but it's like the same accounts are getting fed it.
Even though I don't watch the videos at all,
but it's like, you know, when you're trying,
you know, they got that stupid layout
where it's not like a grid.
It's like, there's like, oh, it's this type of video
and then there's like an endless scroll this way, right?
Like, it's like all this shit that I don't really want to see.
Some stuff that I think is really cool,
but like, you know, 90% is like, eh, I don't care, right?
And then when I think about like, you know,
creators that I do follow pretty consistently
and like Vinny for instance, right?
Like, I've been following Vinny's channel
since he started it, but like,
a lot of times Vinny's stuff
doesn't even pop up into my feed.
And I was like, I watched DM Ural's videos
and I gotta go like find them.
Like I gotta go like physically go and track it down, you know?
It's interesting.
That's really wild.
It's also wild because you said like,
it is obvious that certain bits of content, topics,
whatever, the algorithm does not like, right?
And you're gonna be punished for that.
Yeah, but they're not gonna tell you're punished too.
No, they're not gonna tell you're punished.
Like it'll still be monetizable,
it won't be any kind of like,
hey dude, you can't post stuff like this.
Oh yeah, sorry, there's so many things.
The ones that you do get,
we get unfortunately dinged way more
than we think we should on the podcast side.
It's probably-
It's because you're dropping F-bombs and stuff.
Yeah.
But there's a parental advisory,
we follow that thing,
but it's always shocking content.
That's the thing that gets hit.
But then you ask and then, you know, there's no-
It'll tell you what it is.
It'd be different if it was a copyright infringement
or how you did this.
Well, hey, right here, this timestamp, you know.
So you guys ready to put the tinfoil hat on?
Let's do it.
No, here's my theory on this, right?
So if they were to tell you, right,
I'm pretty sure that this stuff,
that they have some internal censorship shit going on
that like technically goes against constitutional stuff.
And so if they were to actually legitimately be like,
hey, you did this, we don't like this.
It's like, well, you fucking can't tell me I can't do that
because that's, you know, it's our right to do it.
I feel like that if they were to actually expose the things
that all the stuff that's being like censored
and shut down, that it would cause a big uproar, right?
But it should cause a big uproar already.
It should, I mean-
You can't say that you've broke a rule,
I just can't tell you what rule it is.
Oh, exactly.
How the fuck are we not supposed to break it next time?
Exactly.
It's a-
I'll tell you which episode
is not gonna get distributed.
Probably this one.
Sorry, guys.
It might go more, it might go more.
Welcome to the YouTube black list.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be your host today.
It's no, it's funny though,
when you're talking about what you get served up
so many times where you're like,
why the fuck am I seeing this?
But if the content that most of us,
especially sitting at this table
and most of probably the listeners are most interested in
is the exact content that YouTube is not wanting
to promote because it's the same content
that we're getting dinged for providing,
then of course you're not gonna see it.
Like, where's all the gun shit?
Like, I wanna see way more of the gun shit,
but you're not showing me any of it.
You know, here's an interesting,
well actually, there's a-
Unless Grantham, he gets out.
Yeah, or like, there's a couple guys
that actually like their stuff gets good track,
but they have like really strong organic followings,
right?
And like, if you build an organic base,
like there's not shit that could be done
because like people are legitimately sharing that, you know?
And that's what you need.
And that's what Hoonigan basically was,
like we didn't pay for ads.
We just like busted ass to figure out
like what makes this work?
What do people really like?
And like what's actually, you know,
we wanted to do fun, cool stuff
that we truly enjoyed that was rad.
And if it didn't work out,
like, you know, we'd try a ton of different stuff.
Some stuff that would later become like a final nail
in our coffin, like doing scumbag labs
and doing like the testing the bleach burnouts
and then realizing that that was actually,
that's technically, I think that was the final thing
that made us lose the Long Beach location.
Really?
Yeah, well, it was the Australians there was like,
you know, them doing like a ransacking of our yard
and shop, you know, just like rowdy day
of just nonstop and just absolute destruction, right?
Which was awesome.
It was a lynchy, cranky and, oh my God, it's a,
oh, what the fuck is his name?
And he's such a rad brasher, right?
Mick Brasher.
But then that was like a, you know,
police fire department's getting called.
You look like a nuke went off, right?
Then, but the next episode that came out
that the day after we filmed that
was the first scumbag labs.
So we were testing if bleach actually
makes your tires smoke more, right?
So we're pouring bleach on the ground,
doing burnouts while in the middle of the yard
was a big drain, like a storm drain.
So like that was the thing I think they used against us
to be like, these guys are causing
like a chemical spill kind of thing.
And you videotaped it.
Yeah, it was definitely played behind everybody
at a city council meeting on a big screen.
Yeah.
Prove it.
It was like, explain yourselves
as water in a bleach bottle.
That wasn't me.
Yeah, so, but that was, there was,
I mean, they had been trying to like
get the place shut down.
It was just, there was really this like capital group
that was trying to buy up buildings down there.
And, you know, they'd kind of like
assemble the group of people to be on their side
and, you know, kind of go against it.
Were you guys like the last holdout?
I don't know, man.
We didn't own that building or anything.
We rented it, but it was a,
the building was never zoned for anything.
So it was like a, it was a depot
that they used to service old mail trucks at, right?
But it had been like that.
And so like, I guess it had never really been zoned.
It got rented.
You know, we were doing what we were doing there,
but, you know, we were running all of our like shipping
out of there, all production, design, all this,
you know, basically everything Hoonigan,
except for like any of the Ken Block stuff
other than like editing, you know what I mean?
Was all done out of there.
So like, that's how they figured they could like
kneecap us.
They're like, if you do any more of these burnouts
and this shit, like we are going to cripple your business.
So that's eventually what we had to move to Compton there.
Which Compton spot was cool,
but just wasn't the same vibe, you know,
didn't have the danger of the loading dock and, you know.
Plus when everybody's so accustomed to a certain backdrop,
when it changes it's difficult.
But I will say it's kind of a good thing
because like every single time I went to film,
it was like this, this unshakable feeling
that like something really terrible is going to happen
because we were having to push people
so much harder every single time
because it was like, how are you going to one up this?
Like it got to the point where
if you're going to come on the show,
like if I'd be talking to somebody like,
look man, I'm just going to tell you straight up, dude.
If you are not going to attempt to do manline
or jump your car off the dock like
or do something real wild, like you just can't come.
Like everybody's seeing some burnouts.
Nobody gives a fuck.
I don't care how cool you're like,
your car has to be like,
like if you guys brought something there,
that's like different, right?
But it's like most, you know,
if it was like some spectacle of a build,
like, yeah, that could work.
Well, that's what you did the build biology stuff on too.
With some of the stuff that was like,
okay, well, of course,
they're not going to like jump it, right?
And of course they're not going to burn it down because,
you know, that gave us an option to actually like,
you know, do like a detailed walkthrough
without having the need for absolutely savage action,
you know, but yeah, for like the action stuff
for daily transmission was like,
dude, you got to do something real bad.
Like I don't care, man.
Like if you don't push anybody too far.
Yeah, maybe inspired them to go too far.
There was a lot of scumbag and dude, like, you know,
it was just like, dude,
this isn't going to be an episode unless you step it up.
Floor it on the roof.
Pull them panties up, brother.
Like let's get down, you know, like it had to be,
I mean, it just, it got to the point
where like people were just doing such wild shit.
And like it looked cool,
but like if you ever saw that lot in person,
it's really small.
Like the width of the lot is like a little bit wider
than this room from the loading dock
to the shipping container is maybe,
I don't even think it's double the width of this room.
Oh wow.
That's tight.
Yeah, it's real tight and it wasn't that long.
So like if you go back and especially when BJ Baldwin
bought rampage there and like commenced a nine minute long
just terror session, I was, my mind was blown
because like it really solidified like,
so Ken and BJ and I'd say like Reese and,
oh, I can't think of his name, the all American golden boy.
I can't think of his damn name,
but like those are some of the best like dudes
with car control I've ever seen,
but like BJ was like, he's whipping a gigantic truck
with like very low visibility with like, you know,
so much suspension.
Yeah, dude, it was like, how is this dude,
he didn't hit a single thing
and he just, just parked that thing on the limiter.
It was like, you know.
That was, I remember that video.
That was an awesome one.
Yeah.
The thing that he didn't see in the video
was his warm-up session around downtown Long Beach
that we were like, yo, BJ is going to jail, dawg.
It was like, he does not care.
Like this dude is, he was like, yeah, I just gotta,
you know, just gotta get the fluids warm
and then just like goes out
and we thought he was just going to go around the building
and then we were like, we hear him just, what?
And we were like, where's he going?
Was this before or after Blake's drama?
Wilkie's drama.
What do you mean?
Well, was this before or after Blake
had already gotten arrested for getting
on a shitty and shifted tool?
Oh yeah, this is hard to say.
Yeah, this is after.
That came out like way before that.
But yeah, we were like, we could hear it
and obviously that truck's pretty loud
and it's pretty like bottled.
And they were like, yo, he's going real far away.
Like, and you could hear him just on the, just wide open.
We're like, yo, he's driving around Long Beach
and that thing like, god damn dude.
That was like, I've never seen a person
give less of a fuck.
And they came in, he's like, all right,
we're ready to go.
Let's get it.
And it was like, yes.
What's the sketchiest in that yard?
What's the sketchiest it's been
or the time that you're like, oh shit,
this might go real bad?
One time that went real bad,
there's the two twin brothers that are the car designers.
Damn, I can't think of the name, Ilya.
Oh, and Nikita from Oil Sting?
Yes.
And Nikita was just on, yeah,
just two or three weeks ago.
Yeah, so they went and they had that,
what the hell was that, that Alfa Romeo.
And it had basically like, you know,
like a faux suspension lift
and it had some like knobbies on it
that you would put on like a UTV, right?
And I remember, it's funny because
as we're going through the episode,
me and Vinny are doing the walk around
and I'm like, yo, this, is this oil pan cast?
I was like, and it's in front of the cross memories.
Like, yeah, like, you know, it makes it to where,
you know, you gotta, you know,
really be careful about pulling up too close to a,
like a parking bumper.
And I was like, oh, and I made a joke about something
about, you know, shattering it or, you know,
the jump in the car.
Kiss of death.
So later we set the ramps up for him to jump, right?
And he does the first one real like soft
and we're like, oh dude, this push ramps like,
you just got to, you know, it just hit it a little faster.
But like, he went way faster,
like grab second gear and like launch this thing
into the air.
And like, it just goes, whew.
And I was like, oh, it just hits the ground.
You hear the oil pan shatter
and just oils everywhere.
And then it just rolls and just slams into the gate.
And we're just, but it was like the post of the gate.
And we were just like, uh, like, I have,
I had a great video of it.
It's probably on my Instagram.
But yeah, like, but he just turns around
and he's like, oh, then it like cuts really fast.
And I felt so bad cause he like,
he smoked his head on the steering wheel.
It was like a wood grain wheel, you know,
we were just like, damn, but like,
that was the worst feeling one.
Cause it was like, this, this car is cool.
And this is definitely not somebody
that deserve that, you know?
But you know, sometimes you get a little peppered up.
You know, like you get a little like,
yeah, you know, I have definitely over jumped
basically everything I've ever jumped, right?
And like, you know, you get a little too familiar
and you're like, I could hit that a little faster.
And then that little faster is like triple the speed
you should be hitting it at.
Instead of you guys doing all the hyping up,
have you ever had to bring somebody back down
or like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like,
hmm, I don't think so.
Okay. So you've all, no matter what,
the level they come in, you're trying.
Yeah, it was, it was basically like,
it was like, just keep the cameras rolling.
We had one rule that Brian had one rule.
Hoonigan is like, I don't give a shit.
If you, if you do something dumb,
like you will get fired if there's not cameras rolling.
Like you can do the most destructive dump you want.
If it's caught, if it's on camera,
if it's not, you have just like, you know,
like, I mean, shit hurt.
We tried to drift the dock on a forklift.
Like the ramp and the rolled it,
which that was scary.
He hurts, hurts always been really quick
for a bigger guy that he could move.
He's got the fancy feet, right?
And like, I watched him bail from that forklift
so like gracefully and quick.
It was just like, but we watched it in slow motion.
You know, those are not light.
No, and they don't come back over easy.
So you can just tip it back on its wheels.
We had to take, you just leave it.
Yeah, we had to take Brian's,
that OBS Ford power stroke truck
and we had to like chain it up
and like to the top try to like pull it back over.
And yeah, that's when you realize
that forklifts weigh 10,000 pounds.
You know, it says real big right back
what they weigh.
Yeah, you know.
But no, there was like, there was, you know,
there were some, I think like the sketchier stuff
kind of happened with, you know, there was some like,
I remember we used to have surveillance footage of it,
but bad daddy Braddy was decided to do some wiring
on like with the battery connected to the sunlight car
that like the fuel on the fuel cell with the cap open
and then like arched it.
And then the fuel cell caught on fire
just like started shooting like a, like a jet flame out of it.
And I like, luckily danger Dan came through
with the fire extinguisher with the quickness
but like it was like, damn you burned the shop down.
There's a couple other instances like that, you know,
people flipping stuff over and, you know.
You know, when Brian was on, it was really good
talking with him and he talked about a lot of some
of the larger productions and stuff.
We never really got into, we talked a little bit
about I'm really interested in the brainstorming sessions
with the team of like the next thing.
Like how does that, what's the like detailed environment?
How does it work like?
Yeah, picture this.
Yeah.
Well, just worked 75 hours this week
and then the last minute of Friday, Brian's like,
hey, let's all get together real quick.
Like I was just gonna do like a quick,
quick brainstorm session.
Famous last words.
And you got like 12 dudes around on crappy couches
nine hours later with a whiteboard.
But it really, it was like a lot of it was like
spitballing, just ridiculous.
How long land-ish of ideas were thrown out there?
There was, there was some dumb stuff
but like a lot of times those like creative meetings
were just like burrow downs, you know?
So like they'd get derailed a lot.
That's, you know, that happens to be why
they would last so long.
People are starting to tell stories,
but like when you have a bunch of creative people
together, you know, and like somebody comes up
with something that'll like spark inspiration.
And then that inspiration kind of like snowballs
and like people just start kind of
Oh wait, what about this?
Oh, and we do this.
Yeah.
That's not like, I mean, one of the favorite,
I think it's a, I think I could speak
for most everybody, but like scumbag labs
was like really fun to do because it was like,
what kind of ridiculous ideas could we come up with
to have like a science show that was just like unhinged?
Right?
And like with some of the stuff with like this,
you know, the smoke bombs,
like can you drive through like the smoke bombs
or like the, you know, like shooting all those sparks
and crap, you know, and like it just,
it came out hilarious, right?
And it was really fun to do because we were like,
yeah, we're just gonna see what happens, you know?
And we'd like set up a course and just, you know,
ransack stuff and just destroy things and just fun.
It was a good time.
Sounds pretty fucking awesome.
Yeah.
It also got a whole new audience in.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, like some of those, like the,
there's like the all wheel drive launches on dish soap
with the rally cross car, you know?
It was like, that did a ton of views.
I mean, like millions of views.
And we just, that was like a simple like,
What was the scientific experiment?
I don't know.
I was like, can you do it on just?
I don't even, I honestly don't even remember.
It was just like, you were like, hey,
dish soap, all wheel drive, burnout.
We were like, let's see what, you know,
what the effectiveness of the all wheel drive system
on the rally cross cars basically had like a slip
and slide built for it.
And yeah, I don't know, it was fun.
It just worked out good.
You ever fought with any golf carts?
Oh yeah.
We built a two stroke, like a 900 cc,
basically we had a John player livery on it
and we had an engine from a snowmobile.
It was a two stroke 900 cc.
And then we took it to Tilly's,
because Tilly's was like, Tilly's are pecs son.
I think it was Tilly's, but they had like a golf tournament
thing and like Rancho Palos Verdes, you know,
they would have like a bunch of their,
you know, important people out.
And then we rolled our own golf cart out with it.
And then we fire that thing up dude.
It was so fucking loud.
And they were like, hell yeah,
this is awesome for the first like two holes.
All right, enough.
And then, yeah, they were like,
you could see them kind of getting visibly upset.
And you know, we were having a blast.
And then it got, so you know how snowmobiles work?
Cause they usually have a, like a radiator thing
that the snow is thrown on and it kind of like cools it.
We didn't really have that, right?
And so it got so hot that the expansion chamber
melted off and fell off somewhere on the course.
You don't even realize where it happened.
Cause we were just bombing down hills,
going way too fast.
It was so sketchy, so sketchy.
It is just blowing smoke everywhere.
You know, it's, you know, proper two smokey sand traps.
Anything cool?
Yeah, we tried to, you know,
we took it over some little bumps,
but it was like, it was, it was way too fast.
Like it was uncontrollably fast.
Like 25 in a golf cart is too fast.
Yeah, well it would do like 70.
You know all the times when me and Jarrah are like,
man, that would be really cool.
And then you're like,
hey guys, we're probably gonna get kicked out.
That's not the time or the place for this.
There was nobody there saying
that this is not the time or the place.
They're just like, oh fuck yeah, it would be cool.
I was gonna piss a lot of people off,
make sure the cameras are rolling, dude.
You know, but it was, it was fun.
But yeah, that, uh, yeah,
leaving the expansion chamber somewhere on the course
probably wasn't a good, you know,
good look at, uh, like a nice golf course.
That Tilly's contract signed, right?
Yeah, check, good, let me get a wire on that.
How's that, yeah.
So yeah, that, uh, yeah,
the golf cart thing, that was, that was fun.
And I tell you what, you know,
some of the best stuff we did,
the most fun came from like the stupidest things.
So like, shit car, for instance.
It was like a $200 BMW, like a little four cylinder.
I love the name.
I don't remember.
Shit car.
It was like, it was just like a beat up,
it was like an E30, something.
I don't know BMW as well,
but like, you know, like 90s boxy BMW that like,
you know, everybody that lived in Beverly Hills
and was their first car kind of had, right?
And, uh, we just like, the whole idea was like,
oh, we'll just like beat on it until it blows up.
And then it just didn't.
And then we just kept beating on it.
And like every day,
like Hurt would go and fire it up with his foot
all the way to the floor
and just parked that thing on the limiter,
like as soon as it lit off, right?
Like basically everybody did that.
And we just like slam it into things, you know?
And it was like, it kind of became this like,
it, it became its own character.
And then it, so it kept evolving.
Like we kept doing,
we put like Lambo doors on it.
You know, we did like,
we would do like a spray paint livery, you know,
we changed the livery up a couple of times.
And I think like there was one point where,
uh, it was like a glove company at SEMA was like,
hey, can you send a car out?
And they're like, okay, you can get like Brian's RWB
or you take shit car,
which would actually be hilarious.
And they're like, that's actually funny, right?
And they're like, yeah.
So if you have that, they're like,
you can have people taking pictures,
like standing on top of it.
And like, there was so many pictures from that
of just like crews of people,
just like, just like standing on the windshield,
like just not caring, you know, cause it's like,
and this was before SEMA kind of got a little
more creator heavy, you know, like as SEMA used to be.
And then now it's kind of like a little bit more lax,
you know, so this was like a,
this was a far departure from everything else you'd see there.
But yeah, that thing, like it lasted so long.
I mean, so long, we could not blow it up.
I don't know when that thing went together,
but it must have been like a Wednesday car, you know, like.
Was there ever a brainstorming session?
It was either your idea or anybody else
is something that you really wanted to see happen
that didn't, that you can still think about that,
you know, never got to do the thing that you wanted to do.
There's a couple, I mean, like, well, I mean, now I do it,
but like taking burn yard on the road, right?
Always wanted to do that.
Cause like, you know, it was always super fun
to plan those shows out and like, you know,
obviously it was always hosting them, right?
Like I just love yelling on a microphone
to people and just getting people hyped, right?
It's fun, but it's also cool to give these like
drivers a platform to come out and like, you know,
show people what they're made of.
And like we were seeing a lot of these people
like gain substantial followings and like get like
sponsorships and stuff because like, you know,
people were catching wind of what they were doing.
And, you know, I always wanted to like take,
I saw a bigger vision for it, right?
And I think a lot of people were on board with it,
but something happened along the way with like
the wheel pros deal where like now some suits were involved
and then there was like, oh, if we take it somewhere,
you know, we got to get at least, you know,
quarter million bucks to show up.
And it's like, that doesn't make sense
for some of these shows.
And like I was never really, I was never allowed
into any of like the bigger conversations
with like monster jam or any, which I should have been
cause you know, that's kind of my thing.
But also like I can usually find value
or find like a way to make it work for everybody.
And so, you know, when, you know,
when I was departing Hoonigan,
I was like, I fucking want to take that show on the road
and just so happened, like before I was taken off
my now business partner, Zach Pena could called me
cause he was like, dude, I had this vision, man.
Like I love being at Seaman doing that shows.
Like I want to do my own.
I just want to, you know, I just want to check
with you to like, I don't want to piss anybody off here,
but do you think it'd be cool if I did my own show?
I had this like, this name and everything.
I was like, you know, I haven't announced it,
but like I'm out the door
and I've always wanted to take this on the road.
So if you're serious about it, we should partner up
and I think we can make this work.
You know, I have the formula, right?
But like there's some things I want to change about it,
you know, because I always wanted to give drivers,
you know, like with the Hoonigan days, it was like,
hey, show up and just basically destroy your car
for clout, you know, and like, you know, it's cool.
And like people gladly did it, right?
But like I wanted to see people like be able
to make a career out of this stuff.
Kind of like, you know, when you go to Australia,
they have like a pro level burnout competition
like everywhere, right?
And like people are like making like a living doing it.
Or they're also like, there's cause
for elevation of the builds.
So like there's like super clean cars
that are like show cars out there just getting down.
And like the skill sets, the build quality
is all like super elevated.
That's been going on for so long too.
Was it Street Muscle?
What was the magazine?
Oh, Street Machine?
Street Machine, yeah, back.
Remember getting that magazine
and it would be, you know, the Holdings
with the big blower and it was just
A blower on top of a blower with a blower on top.
The burnout stuff, like it was so wild
to like just a different culture, completely different,
but so similar.
And I wanted to see that here and like, you know,
we were doing our thing and it was like,
it was more of like a, it was a showcase, right?
And I was like, well, what if we could like
figure out a way to, you know, give some cash prizes,
which, you know, that starts to,
that starts to give some complexities, right?
Cause then you have to have like a formal
rule structure and stuff like that, right?
But I didn't want it to be like Australia
where they're so stringent,
where it's like if you tap a wall, you're DNF, right?
Like people love seeing cars hit concrete, right?
But if it's not going to stop your run, that's awesome.
Or like catching on fire, right?
Like some of the guys, that's like part of their,
their stick, right?
Like their cars are set up
to essentially catch on fire, right?
All the Mexican boys, you know?
Freddie, like all those dudes, right?
Like they, you know, they, they got it dialed
to where they know exactly when it's going to like,
that exhaust is going to shoot a flame
and it's going to catch all that extra rubber on
and then it's going to make, it's awesome looking, right?
But they have it under control and they know how to do it.
So it's like, but in Australia, it's like,
if your car is like half on fire, like you are DNF
and they're like hosing you down,
which I understand why.
Cause you know, it could get out of hand,
but like there's, there's a, there's a line, right?
And so I wanted like stuff like that.
I wanted it to be like this like spectacle
that brought all this, this entertainment value
and it wasn't just like a clear cut competition style thing.
You know, we wanted it to be a big party.
Wanted it to be something fun.
And then also I wanted it to be a catalyst
for people to be able to grow from it.
And so it's not just like a huge drain on their bank account,
but it's like something that maybe they can see success from.
Maybe they can see a new revenue stream from.
Maybe chase their dreams.
You know, I know what it's like to be like,
fuck, I really want to do something.
It'd be kind of like on the,
on the verge of wanting to try it, but not doing it.
So get them that platform to get started
and get some exposure from.
So yeah, so that's, you know, when we did burnout wars,
that's like, that's what it is, you know?
And it's been working good, you know?
And like the, the end goal is to, you know,
try to be able to structure some partnerships
where it's like we can get some of these big brands
to see the value and like some smaller people
like to basically grow with some of these guys.
Right. And to like put money in their pockets
so they can continue on.
And like, cause there's a lot of guys
that follow us around the country
that like are in a lot of our shows, you know?
And so like that's badass.
Like I didn't expect that.
Like there's some folks that like they're,
they'll be in like six shows a year
and they're like going all like,
whether it's in, you know,
Atlantic city, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Nevada.
Like they're just like they're putting in a lot of work
and a lot of money to do all this stuff.
How do you, you said you got to create some rules,
especially if there's cash prizes?
What, what is the?
We have a judging structure and there's like,
now we keep it like independent from us.
Like we have like a separate judge
cause that's like it gets like,
you don't want to be in the middle of that.
Right.
You know?
So it's like there's either usually two or three
that like, you know, that are,
that have like a list of items
to which they're gauging people's run by.
What's funny is like violence
is one of the categories, right?
Cause like, you know, you need violence.
Right.
You know, you need to come out hard and fast
and like the crazier run looks like that's awesome.
You know, it's obviously got to be controlled.
You got to use a lot of the space.
You know, like you don't want to just be
in one little area that just looks whack.
You know?
You want to be scrubbing the walls.
It's like ice skating a little bit.
You know, take the whole.
Exactly.
But yeah, we want, you know,
you got to, you got to blow up all the time.
Yes.
It's a thing.
Yes, it's like, it's like.
Yes.
Redneck ice skating.
Exactly.
With a little more fire and smoke and yeah,
noise.
Yeah.
Little more heterosexual ice skating
and some gasoline.
It's like ice skating, you know,
Van Halen's first album.
Yeah.
Every rotation in our shows.
There was, we can edit this as well.
There's a little incident at SEMA
with the burnout contest, right?
Which one?
Wasn't there a wheel going?
Oh yeah, that was, that's actually a,
you know, I can talk about it.
Okay.
If you can, I didn't want to.
No, no.
So, you know, during that time,
like so I was the person choosing all the cars
as me and then, you know,
Guy Wally, like we just put at the end of the day,
like I take great pride into what cars
are going to be in the show.
Cause like I have, you know,
the vision is an entire run of show
and they're stacked up as they should be.
And sometimes that changes.
Like if somebody breaks and, you know, whatever.
But we always did this, you know,
we knew who was in it.
And then like the very last day,
this is the funny part about that, by the way,
the whole like board at SEMA came up
and they were like, we just want to thank you guys
because this has been great.
And you guys have gone off without a hitch
and they made us like a necklace
of all the fire extinguisher pins
that we had to use throughout the week.
Right?
So this is the very last show, right?
And I remember getting there in the morning
and I was like, what is this stupid fucking dodge here?
Like, you know, it was just had a dumb rap on it.
No offense if that's your car,
but like you pulled into the show illegally.
So basically what happened was, I guess,
this guy knew one of the security guards at SEMA
and like snuck the car in at like five in the morning.
So the car was like in the hot pits.
Oh, you're in that version.
Yeah.
So when I was there, I was like,
what the fuck is this thing doing here?
Cause I didn't pick that.
Like, I know what cars are in it.
I picked all of them myself.
And I know that, you know, and so even,
so I'm like, okay, maybe somebody
just parked their car back here, you know, and whatever.
So I'm doing the show, you know,
running through cars, it's going great.
Everything had been like perfect safety protocols and stuff.
And then all of a sudden I like, I'm like,
like, send him out, you know, I turn around and I'm like,
and I even said it, like if there's video of it,
I'd love for somebody to send it to me.
Cause I'm like, what the fuck is that thing doing in here?
And I said it on the microphone very like blatantly loud
cause it was like, this isn't supposed to be here.
And then he starts doing a one wheel appeal.
And I'm like, who let this guy in?
You know, like I was saying it over the mic, you know?
And you know, you know what happens when you put
all that power through one wheel
and it's like a 10 year old plus tire thing blew up, right?
And it took out, dude, when this thing took out the fender,
it was so much Bondo and shit that like came with it.
That was like scattering.
And then like, I missed part of the belt
and it hit this guy.
Luckily this, this dude was behind me.
Cause you know, he was part of our crew
and a bigger guy and luckily he was standing there
cause like he got smoked in the head with it.
And it, there was like a baby behind him.
Like he literally was running block
for this like child without knowing, right?
And then the other huge chunk of the gator
just went over the grandstand
and then landed in Maguire's booth
on some dude's hood or roof, you know,
of like a, like a real nice.
Mini truck, wasn't it?
And it was like a show.
It was like a, like a OBS or OBS.
Oh it was OBS.
Yeah.
So yeah, definitely put a huge ass dent in,
I can't remember if it was a hood or the roof,
but like it wasn't good.
And it was just like, oh my God,
that this is going to be the death of us.
Like-
So what's the first thing you do in that situation?
First I asked everybody, is everybody okay?
Nobody got hit, you know?
And everybody's cool.
And I was like, all right, on with the show.
And you know, we like ran it out.
And then I ran over to the wife.
I was like, who's that?
And he's like, I don't even know
what that dude was doing to me.
I thought it was like you brought him in or something.
I was like, absolutely not.
So then he immediately goes
and you know, like Wally's a ruthless, you know?
So he immediately had some people on the phone
like just circled the horses and you know,
figured out what was going on.
And yeah, it was not good.
But like, obviously we have insurance for that stuff.
And it definitely was like a 50 plus thousand dollar,
you know, thing.
But you know, it's like at the end of the day,
like the thing that sucks is like,
somebody could have got hurt with that, right?
And it's not like that shouldn't have happened
because somebody snuck in with their,
like their heap of shit, right?
So now like at burnout wars,
like we actually do tech inspections
and like we inspect all the cars for like in their tires,
like you can't be showing up.
Like I know you're there to blow the tires,
but like they can't be out of date, you know?
Like there's cheap tires you can get, right?
Yeah.
That's okay.
As long as they're, but like when you got old stuff,
that's just gonna just dry rotting.
Yeah. And then also everybody's gotta be
on like a locker or like a limited slip at least, you know?
But if we see a car starting to do a one wheel peel,
they immediately get x'd out.
Like they are out of the show.
Like don't bring that here, you know?
And like little things like that,
like there's a number of like things that we look for
and like make sure to like do,
but like most of these cars that are coming in the show,
pro show, they're well prepped.
Oh, they're, yeah.
I mean, we have a pro show and then we got the bro show.
We got like the run, which run kind of bro show, right?
Cause obviously you can't be competing
against these guys that have like, you know,
1,000 plus horsepower methanol blown setups, you know,
that are just purpose built to do this.
And you know, if you're just in there
and something pretty cool and you can wheel,
but it's like, it's not a fair comparison.
So we try to have two different segments, you know?
So we can give like the grassroots folks
of something to look up to and, you know,
something to compete for.
And it's still cash too.
I gotta put cash in people's pockets.
Just a little more cash when you're in the pro show.
Yeah.
So yeah.
They'll put on a show, it seemed,
I remember that was a crowd of people there like all week.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Big crowd.
So they didn't take the necklace away from you after that,
right?
No, they didn't.
But it was a little preemptive to do that.
If you want, I can announce something
that's been secret here.
If we have breaking news,
that's right over his shoulder is a great one
for you to look at.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have breaking news here.
We've been talking about this semen thing
for a little bit.
Well, I'm here to tell you,
first hand, we're coming back this year, baby.
Same spot.
Whole lot more violence.
Same crew.
SEMA.
2026.
Wait, 2025.
Sorry, it's 2025, but we're coming back for 26 months.
Yeah, we're coming back.
We're coming back again.
We're bringing the thunder.
We're bringing the whole crew.
And we got a whole lot of really rowdy,
rowdy cars coming.
It's gonna be a banger.
Same spot.
Yeah.
And it's actually partnered with Hoonigan to do it.
Really?
Yeah.
That's coming full circle.
Well, you know what?
It's about time.
We worked real hard to build that brand
and a lot of us killed ourselves.
And it's hard to sometimes see it.
You've seen something you've enslaved endless hours
trying to make cool to kind of dwindle into dust.
And there's some really good people there still.
And some of the bad folks are out, right?
Not gonna name any names.
But it's all like back in.
They're the ones that aren't there.
I'm sure the ones that aren't there anymore know exactly.
Yeah, it's not like on camera people, by the way,
anything like that.
It's like back end stuff that had to do with like Wheel Pros.
So, you know.
But yeah, it was cool to, you know,
I heard that they got the Silverlot.
And then, you know, there was some like Rumblins
and they're like, well, we wanted,
we'd like to do a burn yard,
but we want to do it right.
And so I reached out, I was like,
hey, you guys trying to do this?
Do you want to do it?
You know, cause like now we've got a well oiled machine.
You know, we've we've upped the quality of the shows a lot,
you know, and like the actual back end of it,
you know, like driver communications and, you know,
like support and stuff like that.
And, you know, we've been practicing now
for two straight years.
Bring your A game this year.
Oh yeah.
I mean, look, if we can crush it at NASCAR,
we can, you know, hey, we're dialed, you know,
it's been, it's been fun.
We've had like a really good run here.
And so we've always like,
I've always wanted to come back to see him.
I know that Zach and Lacey both have, you know, like,
we love that, you know,
and there's no like beef with hoonigan, you know,
like we just want to do it right.
And so we're, we're doing it.
That's going to be cool.
Oh yeah. It's going to be cool.
We got a bunch of Australian maniacs coming.
We got a bunch of American maniacs coming.
It's going to be a good show.
That'll be really fun.
They should, that's almost the thing that should be,
I know they got their, you know,
Seema Fest and nighttime things like that,
but that's that lot, that location and that type of show.
That needs to be like a, in the evening time.
Well, guess what folks?
You heard it here first Friday night.
It is going to be in the evening.
That means all sorts of fire.
That means all sorts of destruction with the night cool air.
Cause it's difficult for, you know,
if you're guys that are working the show, you know,
all day long to see anything, it's, it's quite exhausting.
You're just getting beat down by the sun.
You're trying to be all entertaining.
And then you got to do it again.
And then, you know, again, right?
And then you get back and everyone's like,
Oh, you've been in Vegas all week long.
That, that that's awesome.
You know, yeah.
I'm like, I want to die.
It's like, yeah, Vegas.
Dude, it's like, I didn't do anything.
I went to my hotel room.
I slept and I woke up early in the morning.
I came and I yelled on a microphone for a few hours
and I went in a, you know, I went and caught away
in a air conditioned trailer and wanted to die for a little bit.
And then I like got back out, did it again.
And then I ate fair food and usually like skipped lunch and,
Oh yeah.
It's crazy, man.
Like it's a, it's a lot of work doing those, man.
Cause like, you know, you get in there early, right?
You got to prep.
You got to like make sure that everybody's good.
All the cars are good, you know,
go through the run of show, make sure nothing's changed.
And then get all the shit organized.
And then everybody's asking you questions,
like, Oh, what, what do you hear?
You know, like there's little pivots and stuff that
have to be made.
And then, you know, you got to fire it up and then just turn
on the afterburners and let it rip.
Then kind of get a little bit of downtime in between the two
and then all back again.
Then by the second one, you're just like, it's exhausting
cause like, you know, it's like the adrenaline.
You ever jumped out of a plane?
Nope.
Okay.
Well, like if you ever skydive, it's really similar.
It's like, you get this huge adrenaline rush, right?
And it's like, hell yeah.
You know, and it's, when you're in it, it doesn't,
you know, you don't feel anything.
You're just like, hell yeah.
And then after it's done about 15 minutes later,
just like, oh, just get to bed, man.
This zaps you.
Yeah.
But you know, it's cool though.
It's fun.
It's cool to see people do stuff like shit.
I mean, where are you?
Go ahead.
No, I was going to say, like some of the,
one of the coolest things I saw at one of our events
is this dude named Ishmael.
It was his first time that he was going to be driving
a SEMA burn yard with us.
And he's like, yeah, I'm going to send it.
You know, and I'm like, all right, Bet.
You know, it's like he used to be like a sideshow guy, right?
And I'm like, look, stop doing the sideshow shit.
But it's like, if you put on a good show here,
I guarantee you can make yourself a live
in doing this, right?
Anyway, he comes out parties like real hard,
like parked on the limiter the whole time,
grenades his motor in his like truck, right?
And then I'm like, damn, yeah.
Cause it's scattered, like,
rod through the oil pan, you know?
And I was like, damn,
he actually put on a really good show.
And he's like, oh dude, no worries, man.
We're going to swap the motor tonight.
It was like, do you mind if we do it here?
And I was like, dude, if you do it here,
I'll keep a cameraman here.
And sure enough, these dudes ran
and got like a five, three out of a junkyard
and slammed it in overnight.
And then the next morning, indeed they were back
and they did every single show.
Hell, yeah.
The rest of the week.
And I was like, dude, hell yeah, that's sick.
And like, but every, and then like a bunch of other crews
like helping them out, you know, and like, it's cool.
It's like it builds a good comradery.
You know, it's a good crew of people, you know.
How does the interview process go to get into the show?
Cause I feel like everybody's going to be
pretty high intense, high energy.
They're telling you they're going to bring it.
They're going to party.
We're going to go hard.
I mean, now the beauty is like,
with a lot of like online media,
you can kind of see how somebody drives, right?
For the most part, there's a lot of people that do,
there's a wild card every now and then that just like,
I'm not even on sale for Brother Man.
I just like to send it.
But like, you know, we do like
the redneck accent.
Come on down.
He's sound like you do party.
I mean, there was a dude in a bitch in third gen
that was in one of our shows that I had no idea about.
And he indeed sent it.
But usually it's like, you know,
there's a submission process, you know.
So if you ever want to submit a car for burnout wars,
go to burnoutwars.com.
There's a whole like application thing.
And you know what, like, if you can clear that, right?
Like, so you got to make sure
that you include the photos of the car.
The submission process is probably hard.
It's interesting that, you know, it says like
a specific number of photos and like the specific angles.
And yet there's a lot of people that just neglect to read
or I don't know, they just like send some dumb ass.
Like it's like, come on, dude.
You're not helping your case here, right?
But like, or like information, right?
Like you can kind of tell somebody set up,
but it's like, you know, we're not bringing in cars
that are just basically like, I got a cat back
or you know, stuff like that.
You know, we want stuff that's
a more purpose built.
Yeah, that's like meant to party and meant, you know,
that's set up for it.
And then also doesn't look like shit.
Cause that's another thing.
It's like, yeah, I understand that like
you want to have fun and like,
but it's like the quality of the car
plays a huge part into it too.
Because like people don't want to see
a clapped out 2006, like cat eye Chevy
that just looks like it's been bashed in
on like every single panel.
They're like, you know, looks like a,
you know, just like a stolen Hyundai,
you know, in a sideshow, right?
Like we're really, we're trying to
seriously separate ourselves from the whole like,
the sideshow thing will kill the aftermarket.
It will like be the end of all automotive fun.
And like, I don't understand how people don't see that.
That a rabbit hole to go down and.
Yeah.
And so, you know.
I don't know why they can't break it up
any faster than they do.
Well, I mean, it's just, I think it's like overwhelming.
But the thing is like, you know, if,
so if somebody, you know, you have to submit
your, your social handles and stuff, right?
And there's a lot of people that do it
and then they like try to have their shit private,
but it's like, if it's private, it's like,
Hey man, can't see.
But like, if there's like, there's a bunch
of sideshow show on your page,
we just can't even have you in the show, right?
We can't promote that shit and we're not going to.
And like, we're very hard against it
because like that's going to fuck it up
for everybody and like that is everybody's business here.
Yeah.
And like, you know, we want to give people
like a fun space to, that's why we have the bro show
where it's like, yeah, you can, you know,
bring some like lower quality stuff in, right?
But like, you know, it's not just like a free for all,
especially if it's like the competition one.
There's some that we do where we like open it up
and just like run cars at the end, you know,
because we want to have, there's some space
for people with.
The weekend warriors.
Yeah.
And then also for some of the shows,
it's like, it helps them out
because it's less people like just absolutely
sending it on the streets.
And then like, you know,
now the show's got it got another system.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, that's, that's another thing.
We'll, we'll talk about that offline,
but we got some other processes for that to make it fun
for we're going to have our own show here very soon.
And there'll be some other fun things
for people to do to get it out of their system.
Parking a lot of party a little bit.
But you know, coordinated, coordinated.
But, but yeah, like, it's like that side show shit.
It's like, it ruins it so much.
And it's like, if I was going to,
if I wanted to end combustion engine vehicles
or like private ownership of vehicles,
all I would need to do is like,
build a catalog for in a case study,
just using sideshow shit and be like,
pretty good poster child.
Yeah.
And it's like, that's just like giving them
all the info they need and all the like,
all the ammo they need to just like end this stuff
and like kill all the fun.
I just, it's, I find it,
I mean, I know the world's changed.
Everything, like you said,
overwhelming has a lot to do with it.
There's so many, but I remember so many times.
I mean, dozens of tickets and warnings.
I mean, hundreds of times I didn't get
a ticket or warning, but the dozens of times
that I did get ticket or warning
in so small of things.
And Gatlinburg is one, you know,
you go up to Gatlinburg cruising and stuff like that,
just a little in the tire, like lit up.
Really?
Yeah, around the corner.
You're like, hey, I heard you revving up.
My goodness, man of time.
You guys like came three blocks over
and you know it was me that like chirped the tires
and you know, or did you just spun them a little bit
and then you've got an entire, you know,
city blocks shut down of just hours of burning them down
and people hanging out.
I mean, you've everybody seen this thing.
It's like nobody's even like given a little bit of a,
you know, a chirp on the siren or, you know, hey.
Well, I'm guessing it's kind of like fear from,
you know, like, look, if you're law enforcement
and you got to like, if it's only one or two of you
and there's like 300 of them,
that's not a good position to be in.
You know, nobody likes getting shot at, right?
But also here's the thing, like,
I like doing burnouts, right?
And I think people should do burnouts and have fun,
but like fucking doing a parking lot or something, man.
Don't like ruin traffic.
The middle of the road.
Dude, the middle of an intersection or a highway
is such a dumb, dumb ass thing to do.
It's like, don't fuck up everybody else's day.
Just go have some fun away from everybody.
We used to do it back in the day.
You know, if you live in a city,
you don't have a cornfield to go do it in
on something like Random Road.
Find an abandoned, like a shut down warehouse or something.
You know, like go do it away
where you're not gonna like run into people and stuff.
I just, it's wild, like you said, though.
They're shutting down the intersection.
They're so, it's getting so dangerous.
I mean, you see people,
I mean, some of the best videos, unfortunately,
they're watching the ones that just get smoked.
Oh, people getting just mangled.
Just smoked.
Shout out to 50 Slays every Friday
putting out bangers of just basically reposting
people getting absolutely wadded up.
The distance of like the cartwheels they get.
Oh, yeah.
We had a huge, huge street race scene
in Birmingham in the late 90s, early 2000s.
And late, late nights, you know,
Fridays and Saturday nights
and you'd go find abandoned, you know,
office park, not abandoned,
but shut down office parks and, you know,
you do some racing.
Obviously not super safe.
However, that's what was going on.
It's a big difference from being in a, you know,
public road where there's a lot of traffic.
A big difference.
And the thing that where I was going is
you'd be there, there'd be 100 and something cars there,
you know, some burnouts and some racing.
You'd be one cop pull through
and just turn his lights on, no siren,
and just slow roll through, right?
And everybody's gone.
You're like, oh man, okay, he's telling us
we got to leave, we got to leave.
And we'd maybe find another location, right?
And do it for another hour until another cop.
And there was hundreds of us there.
Oh yeah.
I think kids just don't give a shit anymore.
Like, I don't know, like, you know what it is?
I don't know about you, but like,
most everybody my age, I know, like,
you got an ass whipping when you did something wrong, right?
So there's a little bit of like,
I don't want to get an ass whipping.
It's like when you tie a baby elephant's
treat trunk to a little like stick, you know,
and then as an adult, you know,
you can still do it even though
they can like yank that thing out of the room.
They're like, maybe it'll stay here, you know?
But yeah, same thing with us.
We had a, dude, it was great.
In high school, there's a stretch of road,
Missouri bottom road,
and they were going to build an extension to a highway
and then they just kind of stopped,
but they built three miles of highway grade,
straight concrete road through the middle of a cornfield
out away from basically everything.
That went nowhere.
Went nowhere.
It actually ended and that was,
my buddy Ryan sent this girl's car off of it.
It was like a big drop too.
So it was like a launch
and she was an old eagle talon.
Oh.
It's like, yeah, that's fun.
Shout out.
Hey, Ryan.
But yeah, man, that was cool.
That's where everybody would go down.
But it's like, hey, if you're racing down there,
it's like, you know, nobody was driving down that road.
And then when a cop came, everybody's like, oh, you know,
scattered like roaches, you know?
But again, if you're doing it on a street
where there's like, I understand the feeling
when somebody pulls up next to you
and you're like, I need to show this guy what's up.
But like when it's busy out
and there's, you know, you could, you know,
probably screw some other people's lives up
should your skill set not be where it needs to be.
Or, you know, something else could happen,
but it's just like, you shouldn't be doing it.
I mean, there has to be,
there has to start being some consequences
or it's just gonna continue.
Yeah.
Because if you're not getting in trouble with it,
then it's like, okay, I'll just do it again.
Yeah.
Well, I think a lot, I don't know, man.
A lot of it's just like overwhelmed
police departments, you know,
that are super underfunded or don't have enough.
But I don't know, I've seen some actually changes here
recently, like in Long Beach, for instance, right?
I have been pulled over now,
like three times in the last couple of months
and where it was before it was like,
I could basically do whatever I want, right?
Now, luckily the police officers are very cool
and understanding that, you know,
hey, wasn't really paying attention.
You know, I got some breaks.
Yeah.
No, I did not.
But, you know, but still, like now I'm starting to see
like a greater police presence in some of these spots
that like really got their knees chopped out
with the whole defund the police thing.
And like you're actually seeing some crackdowns,
which is cool.
Now, I don't know if that's a lot of places,
but I do know for at least Long Beach,
which for like a long time it was like, let's go.
Yeah, dude.
It felt like I was like,
dude, we are slowly devolving into escape from LA,
like living that snake-pliskin lifestyle, you know?
Snake.
I need to take just a quick little break
and then I want to get into car build side of things
at Hoonigan and then we'll roll
into standard questions here in a bit.
Rock and roll.
But I need to use the potty.
I know you love that room.
I know you love that word.
It sounds so manly.
All right, car build side.
I want to talk about the car builds
in Hoonigan life first.
We talked about the brainstorming sessions
on content creation stuff.
I'd be interested to know what that's like
on the build side of things and, you know,
everybody's probably got their own personal agenda
of a build that they would like to do
and how do you prioritize that?
What's getting built and how do they actually get built?
Well, see at Hoonigan it was actually kind of cool
because like, all right,
one of the things was, like I said,
we were like, you know,
the Wu-Tang clan of car culture, right?
So we were all building our actual personal cars.
Like we own those.
Like the brand didn't own that stuff.
Unless the brand owned shit car,
Shark Cart, the Miata,
the Scumbug, which was rad.
I love the Scumbug.
It's my favorite brand build.
And then, you know, like, shit.
Later, you know, did the Rolls Royce build,
which was absolutely radical.
And then there was like the E46
or whatever that Danger Dan put together.
And there was a Cole Marrow
that Dan put together by force.
And hated because he's like,
I don't do diesel shit.
And then all the diesel people gave him shit.
He's like, I don't do this.
Like he's like, we're getting info from like these guys.
And we're just, you know,
Dan's just doing his best to put it together.
And you did a good job on it.
It was terrifying, literally.
And then, but like, you know,
and like, oh, that's 632 Camaro, right?
That was like a brand project thing.
But like for the most part, all this,
like so like my C10 boom hour,
Hertz Torx stallion, his, you know, GS 300,
the, you know, the slew of other cars that he built,
like Vinny's 240SX or his C10 or, you know,
Inder, I don't know, Vinny's had like 90 cars
since I've known him.
I'm not kidding, like 90, at least.
Like that fucking dude is a human car dealership.
And yeah, but those are all like our own personal things.
And so like the early years of Hoonigan,
like, you know, Brian says, and he's like,
listen, man, like we can't pay you what you're,
you know, you're truly worth, right?
And, but like we're, we're onto something here.
So like the fringe benefits, if you want to build a car
and you want to bring in your own partners and stuff,
you know, they can get exposure through Hoonigan.
That's valuable, you know.
But what's funny too, is like when I came on board,
like I don't think anybody took it as far as I did.
So like when he was like,
hey, you can build something like, oh yeah.
So then like in a week, all of a sudden I was like,
okay, I'm building this like, I got the C10
and then like within a week it was like,
I had a Texas speed motor, I had a gear star 4L80.
I had a, you know, full QA1 setup at a curry nine inch,
you know, like they were like, how'd you get all this shit?
And I was like, I don't know.
I called him and I was like, hey,
and I put together a plan,
but I was the only person that like thought to
put it on paper and be like,
hey, here's that episode structure looks.
This is another thing, like it's really important
for young creators, you know,
like if you want to like work with brands,
you can't just be like, hey dude,
I'll make some episodes and some posts, right?
Nobody fucking cares, right?
But if you're like, hey, here's the strategy,
here's how it's going to look when it rolls out.
It doesn't have to be like to the T,
but like they need a strategy of like,
I'm making this many episodes,
here's the themes of the episodes,
here's how your brand is integrated into those, right?
And then here's the social posts
that go to support those episodes
or like that go to support your brand, right?
And like, this is my thoughts on these.
If you do that, you're already doing 95% more
than most of the random fucking emails
and DMs and calls are getting, right?
But if you come in with a strategy,
they will be so much more willing to at least talk to you
and like hear it out, you know?
You mentioned that before of helping creators
and doing the business side of things.
How does that work?
Is it people you're just coming across
or they need to reach out to you or like how?
Yeah, a lot of them.
So I do a little bit of agency work, right?
But like, I did business development too.
Towards the end of the hoonigan,
Vinny and I were doing like all the business development
stuff, right?
And we just have a, we had a knack for it, right?
But we could think about like how it could all come together
and like how we could work a brand
into this thing that we were doing, right?
And do it organically and do it cool.
Instead of just being like a,
here's let's do a stupid ad read, you know?
That's just gonna interrupt our flow
and like the fans are gonna hate anyway, right?
So with that, like, you know, there's a few creators
that, you know, I try to help out and like, you know,
I always try to like, I find like,
I find myself working with a lot of bigger brands, you know?
Even though like my platform is relatively small
compared to some, I can work some pretty good deals out,
you know?
But from a, but what I like to do is like,
it's actually, I find it better for, you know,
there's a lot of creators that do really dope stuff
and sometimes like their stuff will work way better
for a brand than like mine.
So like, you know, if I can help create,
like help a creators or help a group of creators
or like a single person like get a brand deal
and like just like show them the format, you know?
And like that's cool
because it like helps put money in their pocket
and like, you know, it helps them through the strategies
where they're not like having to do
like the back and forth like calls, you know,
and basically convincing people of like,
why this is valuable for them, you know,
help them show, like see the light.
And then if you know, I take a, you know,
very small commission on it, but it's like,
hey, it's cool, I get to help some people out.
They get to keep doing what they're doing.
Like they get to build a relationship with that brand.
You know, after I'm, you know, done with that,
it's like, they get to go on and hopefully
they have some sort of like longterm partnership
that can, you know, like a relationship
that can bloom from it.
And that's cool to see.
And like there's been a lot of people
that helped me out along the way
and like it's cool to be able to help
other people out along the way too, you know?
Shit.
I remember like years ago, I saw Rob Dom,
like when he pulled out his like a crazy four rotor turbo RX-7,
you know, and like chained it up to do a,
that thing didn't have a floor in it.
And he had this like real, like,
I don't even think he had like a full fire suit, man,
but I was just like, yo, this dude
could very well die in fire.
And I was like, yeah, you can't be wrong like that, man.
So like, I just immediately like called up OMP
and I was like, listen, you got to work with this dude.
Right. Like he's doing cool shit.
Like this is somebody you want to like work with.
And they were like, oh, dude, that's fucking sick.
You know, I'm like, they're like, we're kidding them out.
You know, they give them like fire and safety stuff.
Like, I think they give them like a fire suppression system too.
I don't know.
Like I can't remember everything that was done,
but it was like, that's cool.
You know, and like now it's like,
that's a relationship that they, you know, continued,
you know?
That's a pressure ship you'll have too
that you've got a network of creators
that you can work with in the future.
And yeah, it's all building.
Yeah.
It's cool to see people thrive, you know?
And because like this creator shit is not easy.
Like a lot of, it's crazy when you like see kids
be like, I want to be a YouTuber.
Like I feel like a Vietnam vet that just came back
from like Laos behind enemy lines of like,
you don't know what you're getting into brother.
You know, because it's a lot of work.
It's nonstop.
And like the business side of it is also
an entire, another job.
You know what I mean?
Like if you're really keeping up with it,
if you're only like, you know,
like there's some people that find great success
and like, you know, obviously the people
that merge and stuff and like helps fund all that stuff.
But like YouTube ain't paying you shit.
You know, like it's not like it used to be.
It's like, shit, you're lucky if you get a couple thousand.
It's the golden years, man.
Yeah.
I mean like, I think my spend on my YouTube channel
is over 10 X what the YouTube ad revenue generates.
You know?
And so if it weren't for like, you know,
these partnerships, these relationships that I built
that where I can like, you know, create stuff
for these brands and whether it's on my channel
or for theirs, you know, like, and just, you know,
be able to offer my services and stuff.
Like I wouldn't be able to do this,
but I like doing it.
So I want to keep doing it, you know?
Besides being able to have a, you know,
well thought together plan,
providing the potential sponsor or partner, their ROI.
What's some of the biggest misconceptions
that you see with a new creator?
On the brand side of stuff?
Or just trying to be successful creating?
Yeah.
Well, if you don't think, like, if you can't,
if you can't keep up with the output
that YouTube requires now, right?
Like it's going to be real hard.
So it's like either you got to make some shit that bangs
like that is just so wild and so dope
that everybody wants to share it,
or you got to be able to like pump out videos.
What kind of volume are you saying when you paint?
Like, honestly, in a perfect world, you're doing four weeks.
Like shorts, long format.
No, so that's the other thing.
Like I've talked to a lot of people
and they found that like, you know, doing the shorts,
like so when YouTube was pumping shorts, right?
Like they were giving people, like there was a lot
of subscriber growth
because they were just like jamming these shorts down,
right?
Well, like there's some guys that like are in my,
where my shop is,
like they're basically right across the parking lot
and made it back speed boys, right?
And they were cranking out like a short a day
and they had this like crazy growth,
but then like their YouTube videos
were like doing bad numbers
and they're like, what's going on?
But it's like, it's shorts.
It's people that watch it on cell phones
that watch in short format,
like weren't watching the long format, right?
And so there wasn't a crossover.
Then they're really good with like, you know,
analyzing stuff.
They made a second channel.
All they did was they took their same builds.
They were like, let's say it was like three
or six episodes of like one car.
They condensed them all into one
and then they put it on that.
And like there was like two different builds
that did really shitty on their main channel
that had like 300,000 or whatever the subscriber base was.
It's pretty big, right?
And like it crushed on this other channel
and it was people that had no idea who they even were.
Like it was not, it was like YouTube's feedings.
Yeah, completely new audience, right?
So they were finding success from doing that,
which I think that's a good idea.
If you can like keep up with the bandwidth,
like I'm not somebody that can keep up with that.
Like, you know, I do too many things
where I can't just be like, all right, here we can,
like let's remake all this.
And you know, like I have a big catalog of stuff
to be able to do that with.
Just out of the time, right?
But like it's an interesting thing to see
that there's actually, there's a lot of YouTubers
that'll have like a second channel
and they'll do this like longer stuff,
whether it's like less edited, you know,
more just like whatever, but like it's kind of different,
but like they'll see completely different success from that
and like a different audience, you know?
And it'll be like, oh, I didn't even know
these guys had a second channel.
And it's like, well, that was the first channel, you know?
And they're spending more time on the first channel,
but it's like, you know, I don't know.
It's like, it's the way this thing feeds, right?
It's like, it's so weird and random.
Is there any other platform besides YouTube
that is any type of significant monetization?
No.
You know what?
Yeah, yeah, fan seems to be pretty good.
You know, you hear a lot of great success stories there.
I don't know.
I mean, like some people have like really good success
on the Patreon and stuff like that,
like the paywall stuff.
Subscription stuff.
I noticed that those people like take really good care
to keep up, like you gotta keep up with it, right?
Because if somebody's paying a subscription, right?
No matter how...
You're expecting?
Yeah, like, you know, they want to get fed.
So like, if you're doing kind of like
half ass afterthought content on that,
they're like, well, why am I paying this dude?
You know, that could put a bad taste in somebody's mouth.
But if they're like getting something kind of special,
like there's people that do entire builds
on their Patreon that's like, you couldn't see.
And it's like, they're doing the dope stuff over there
because they have paywall and it's being supported
by, you know, this income stream.
So that's cool, right?
So I don't think you can't really half ass it, in my opinion.
Do you think that you have to pick a direction
or can somebody come out and be like, you know what?
I'm gonna be a content creator in the automotive space.
I'm gonna build cool shit and do cool shit with it.
And I'm gonna just put it across all channels
in the ecosystem.
I think you can.
I mean, honestly, like, this is the Wild West still.
I mean, it is, it's not the Wild West it used to be,
but it's still pretty like, I don't know.
Slightly more tamed.
Yeah, it's like, you gotta try stuff, you know?
You gotta see what works for you.
Cause like some stuff works really good for some people,
right?
And their personalities and their style,
whereas that same thing will work terribly
for like somebody like me or like, you know, you
or whatever, right?
So it's all, it's kind of dependent on like,
what do you find joy in doing
that you can put the painstaking hours into
that where it doesn't like suck your soul away.
You know, like, do you like doing spreadsheets?
It's like, maybe you should be an accountant or something.
You know what I mean?
Right.
Can you do, with the algorithm changing
and also so many different platforms,
can you do A and B testing
and actually get some clear data of like,
okay, this thumbnail is, style is always gonna work.
And I'm gonna keep doing that.
There's definitely, I mean, look,
there's definitely like a flow to it.
And yeah, I think that's,
but like different platforms operate differently too.
So like, let's say if you're making something for Instagram,
doesn't necessarily work for TikTok audience.
I don't know why, but you know,
it's just like the way people consume things
on different platforms is slightly different that like,
and also too, the rules on different platforms.
Like I can't put a shit to TikTok
because like my stuff gets immediately banned.
Really?
Yeah, it gets pulled like straight up pulled down
for what is it?
Like, I don't know.
It's like, they don't like burnouts.
They don't like, you know, even if it's like,
yeah, so like we have burnout wars, right?
Like it's in a controlled environment.
It is a motor sport activity.
Like realistically, there's fire and safety.
You know, people who run fire suits and helmets,
you know what I mean?
It's like an actual-
You can eat a Tidepot on there, no problem.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, you can, yeah.
You can-
It's probably a dated reference, but.
You can show parts of your body
that you can definitely not show in public
in those places, and you know, that's totally fine,
but you know, I watch plenty of videos
where people are getting executed on platforms
and that seems to be okay, but yet.
Burnout, not so much.
Yeah, so.
Have you found that the, I don't know,
the type of content or the quality of the content
or the quality of the filming and production
changes the response?
I've heard both sides like-
Dude, there's some of this shit
that I basically just did on a whim and didn't give a.
Like, I just was like, ah, whatever.
I got a cell phone.
Like, I came here because like, you know,
I had a cell phone, but like,
I needed to keep my travel light
because of how much like, weird, you know,
I'm like jumping plane to plane to plane, you know,
and like, I couldn't bring like,
I didn't want to just risk having to carry on
and like getting stuck somewhere, right?
Well like, you know, some of this stuff
where I just like just winged it, crushed.
Like I did a video with my landlord, Paige, right?
Paige Radd, Radd dude.
And he has this, this Ford LTD
called it's a drinking step dad.
It's like bagged, it's got a big block in it.
Great name.
He also got a billet badge that actually says that, you know?
And it's just like a crusty old LTD
that's like real creepy and he's got like
an old hustler in the seat, you know what I mean?
It's a, it's proper, you know?
And that video did like over a quarter million views
after Leslie, you know?
I went to Tony Angelo's shop
when I had my Atlantic City show
and Tony's up in PA.
And so I was like, I'll just like, I'll cruise up, man.
I wanna, you know, wanna see what was going on over there.
And he's like, yeah, I just got this,
my NASCAR 55, like, you know, it's running.
And I was like, oh, let's do it.
Well, I didn't have a bunch of cameras.
I had a phone, I had like two GoPros on me, right?
And I kind of put together like a, you know,
like we just walk through, you know, did whatever,
kind of like what we did here, right?
But like less production, right?
And like that video did like 580,000 views and counting.
He was actually, he was like, dude,
your video did better than the video
that I put out on like getting this thing released.
It's like, I don't know, brother.
But like, it's weird.
It's like some stuff works really good.
And then like, it seems like the stuff
that I try the hardest on that I'm like,
I put so much effort into, you know,
like trying to like come up with like good,
like cool creative concept and stuff.
Like it just like doesn't splash.
So like maybe I think the goal is a try less
and do more just whatever, you know what I mean?
Just send it, whatever.
Maybe I shouldn't even edit anymore.
I'll just like put together like a string out
that's like two and a half hours long.
Just a vlog.
What's the, what's the secret sauce right now
on thumbnails?
Fuck man, couldn't even tell you it
because like some of the stuff I'm like,
I think honestly like if you can,
if you can have, you know who does a good job of it
and it's like, it looks pretty simple,
but like Garrett, Cletus, right?
If you notice, usually a thumbnail,
it's got a picture of him in it.
A lot of times the same picture, right?
And it's picture of the vehicle they're focusing on.
Usually front three quarter
or it's doing something crazy like busting a wheelie
or maybe it's wadded up.
So you don't have to read if you don't want to
because it's Cletus.
Yeah.
And it's that car.
And it's like, it's like, oh my God.
Or like, you know, like some thumbnail text.
Like you're not gonna believe it.
Yeah, I'm in this predicament right now.
I was supposed to have a video go live today,
but like I was like, I can't nail,
I didn't feel like I had the best thumbnail for it.
And I have some like great photos.
Basically it's like I took this million dollar
expedition vehicle up to Wyoming.
It went with a bunch of like, you know,
special operators and we'd like, you know,
mode through belt fed machine guns and stuff.
It was a good time.
Sounds horrible.
Yeah.
It was a terrible time.
You know, but, but like, yeah, I was like,
dude, this thumbnail needs at least bang, you know?
But I was like, can I put this shot of, you know,
Drake from Magpul this with the 243 just looking, you know,
like, you know, like him and then, you know,
just trying to like figure out what works within the frame.
You know, that's like actually clickable, you know?
And like, yeah, I don't know.
Just trying to, you know, it's a, it's a lot of trial and error.
And like a lot of times like, you know,
I'll make like 30 versions of a thumbnail before I find
something that like works with Hoonigan.
We were like, dude, we would make,
I felt like during the Hoonigan era, I was like really on it.
And like when I would be making thumbnails,
it wouldn't even be until like version 25.
I'm like, okay, we're getting somewhere.
And then, you know, you'd have like six options
for a thumbnail, but then to do a B testing,
you actually had to do like a Google ad
and like do an AB test that you would like put
some money behind to see what people would click on.
Now you can do it within YouTube
and like you can just like run three options.
And like it does like a test for you for like a few days,
you know?
So I don't know, there's, I've not nailed it.
There's some stuff that it's like,
hey, that's gonna bang and it does.
And then there's some stuff where I'm like,
yeah, this is definitely gonna crush.
And it's like, well, it didn't like it.
YouTube's really good at kicking you in the nuts
when you're down, you know?
It's like, oh, you think you're tight ground?
Watch this, gonna humbly a little bit.
Oh yeah, big time.
But you know, hey, I think at the end of the day,
like the most important thing is like,
are you proud of what you're putting out?
Right?
If you think it's cool, then like that's good.
Inevitably, some people are gonna find it
and probably think it's cool too.
Now, is it gonna be like widespread,
like a wildfire, maybe, maybe not.
But like, you should be proud of what you're making, you know?
It might not be for everybody.
Like, you know, I'm not a 2JZ guy,
but like, I can respect it.
Yeah.
Right?
Especially if I see one that's like done really good,
I'm like, damn, all right.
I see what you did, you know?
Clean wiring, clean wiring,
routing on all your lines and stuff, you know?
Makes good power, okay?
I can respect it.
So I don't know.
I think it's like at the end of the day,
what do you wanna do?
And like, are you willing to, you know,
keep pushing forward when the stuff doesn't work out
that you think it does?
So.
Yeah.
It's just, it's wild that the problem is is
once the goal post and the scoring system
and the rules continue to change every single day,
there's no way to like, it's very,
not saying no way, there's very difficult
to move fast enough or to blame it on any one thing
because you're like, oh, that thumbnail's always hit,
you know, and it's, oh, I'll blame it on this
or you know this and then you change something else
and that didn't hit.
Yeah, it's a.
There ain't a formula to it.
I mean, there is.
I'm sure that there's a formula.
I haven't found it.
Somewhere as it figured out.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure Mr. Bees has got it on lock,
but you know.
Mr. Bees has to have some type of insider information.
There's gotta be.
Yeah, I do.
That's where I was gonna go,
is where's the net, where,
you're telling me that out of all the hustlers out there,
there's not one.
The magazines are though.
Just guys like hustler and people.
I mean, human beings that hustle.
There's none of the former YouTube employees
that have been like, you know what,
I could make a lot of money doing.
Yeah, that would be great.
Hey, if you're out there, hollow your boy,
let's get this paper, all right?
I mean, should a consulting firm of.
You know what I mean?
It's probably like any other form of business.
Like nobody asks like, what's the secret
to success to do something.
It's always like the social media,
there should be a path that everybody can just jump on.
Yeah.
I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a back door.
Now, get your tinfoil hats ready again.
Yeah, you gotta pay for it to open.
I believe, because I've seen with a lot of the people
that wind up signing on to big agencies,
like Endeavor, CAA, you know, stuff like that.
They seem to have really good waves, you know what I mean?
And it's like, oh, the tap doesn't,
it's not getting turned off, right?
There's gotta be, there's always a back door.
There's always a way to work around something.
And I know that people that have a huge investment
into certain things, they're gonna make sure
that that back door is open for the right people, right?
So, I mean, I don't know this for certain,
but I pay attention to some things.
I see some, what were we calling it earlier?
Some pattern recognition, you know?
So, I don't know, I mean, there's gotta be,
but hey, if you got that key, you know what I mean?
A hundred boy.
I mean, if anybody's would have the key
or could buy the key, it would be Mr. Beast,
that's for sure.
I mean, he's, could figure out the, I mean,
that's probably a hundred million dollar a year business
at least.
I would think so, yeah.
I mean, I mean, he's spending money.
Oh, he's spending money to make money for it.
I mean, come on now.
It's wild.
Don't know the guy.
It's wild to see what seems like just a genuine,
fun time and really seemingly,
like they do in a lot of things for the right reasons.
They do have an actual like strategy,
especially like down to the minute by minute,
like how episodes roll out, I actually have it.
Really?
Yeah, it's in on my desktop.
It's a good guidebook.
Somebody leaked it, but it's for like Mr. Beast employees.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, so, yeah, if you want to get that,
I can always share it, you know.
It'd be really interesting to read.
It's super analytical and it's like,
it's everything from thumbnails to like,
like what happens in episodes by like,
you know, the thought process behind like,
how it needs to roll out.
It's pretty cool.
It's like, it's dope.
And it's funny because as I was reading through it
the first time, I'm like, shit,
this is like, we did this at Hoon again.
Like we, but we never wrote it down,
but we kind of like, we'd done it so much
and like we had taken so many people
were like painstakingly like looking at stuff
like how do we get this better, right?
That like, there was this inevitable flow.
Now he definitely took it to a way higher level
because it's like, like minute by minute,
but it's really good.
I'll share it to you after that.
That's interesting.
Wild.
I mean, Amazon paid $100 million from to do a show, so.
Yeah, really?
That's what that show was.
That's what it costs.
That's what Amazon paid for it.
The game show on Prime or whatever.
Damn.
You know, hey.
Good for him.
Yeah.
Good for you, Mr. Beast.
Get that money, baby.
I think he still went over budget with it.
Nice.
Have you watched it?
Yeah.
It's so far out of my wheelhouse of anything
that I would even be kind of interested in
and I was hooked.
Really?
Well, it's really, it's from a psychological
standpoint, it's really one that you'd like,
I watch it with my wife and it's when you actually
start getting, you start talking because you're like,
oh wow, he's really fucking with their heads.
And then you start predicting, you're like,
there's no way somebody's gonna.
It's not real.
It's hooking real, man.
It's really, really, really interesting that how
he can hook you by the psychological games
that you're playing with, with other people.
And not in an evil way.
It's just like, it's wild.
Damn.
It's a good watch.
I will watch that now.
Standard questions.
Okay.
Brought to you by, you know who else is the standard?
In wheels, H-R-E.
Got a text from Tito today.
Got some.
Got something going.
Got something going.
Some little teasers.
You know what?
I would, I've always said like, you know,
like a set of classic 300s on a Corvette.
It would look right.
It would look right.
Tito.
I don't know what that is.
Classic 300.
The whole classic series is just.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a really hard thing, man.
And they're right down the road, man.
They're in, they're like just north of San Diego.
Right.
Yeah.
I'd like to see that facility, man.
It's cool to see folks actually building stuff
in America still.
Go check it out.
Shop tour video recently.
It was pretty awesome to see
everything they're doing and how they're doing it.
Nice.
We had Alan on the, he was on the show
maybe a few months ago, whatever.
Really, really great methodology
behind everything that they do
with the company and stuff.
It's really, it's obvious when you've been
in this business for so long
and you see how everybody in that organization
kind of interacts in the way they do things
from the actual product that they're creating.
And then the, just the way they carry themselves
and the media they put out,
it's an obvious like cut above, right?
It's just, it's a little like, oh.
Okay.
It's a little bit nice.
It's a little bit nicer.
All right.
First question.
We got the easy ones out of the way first.
Favorite car movie?
Oh man.
You know what?
Forever it was smoking the bandit, right?
But I love Hooper.
It's not technically a car movie,
but it's a whole lot of car action.
Funny story.
It's about actually a dude's dad.
Kainan Hooker.
Kainan and his twin brother, Houston Hooker
like they worked at Hoonigan.
Actually Kainan worked there.
And then one day like he needed to like take a vacation.
So his twin brother came and worked for a week
and nobody noticed.
That's a solid dude.
That's so awesome.
Their dad is like the most iconic stunt,
one of the most iconic stuntman
really with yeah, Buddy Joe Hooker.
And they all need him or like the dudes.
Okay.
Yeah.
So that movie.
Houston Hooker is a pretty solid name,
but Buddy Joe Hooker.
Bad motherfucker, right?
Well, that movie Hooper is like a lot of life stories
about Buddy Joe.
And he's actually, he's in the movie
as like a guy helping out with stunts.
But if you like, when you look at some of the road cases
behind Burt Reynolds, like different when he's like on set,
you know, it's also Buddy Joe, right?
That's cool.
Yeah.
It's kind of tight, but like some of those stories
about them like getting in bar fights and stuff.
And you know, then like getting in bar fights
with like an NFL team and then becoming like
just going out drinking afterwards with them and stuff.
You know, like, yeah.
And then like apparently driving backwards on a PCH,
passing beers to one another.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like from car to car, but one of them's doing 60 backwards.
Well, that brings me to my next question
that I can predict the answer to.
It's a new one that we've just brought to the table.
And this is, you can only pick one, right?
This is one side of the other.
Stallone or Burt.
What?
Just life.
Damn.
Burt Reynolds or Sylvester Stallone.
Damn.
That's too hard, man, because like kind of in different facets,
right?
It's just like.
That's why it's a good question.
Damn.
Like Stallone's story is incredible.
Yeah.
Right.
It's just like being the ultimate underdog and being like,
something to do it myself.
But also, you think about Burt Reynolds and how need him had to
kind of do the same thing, right?
Nobody believed in smoking the bandit.
And then they were like, we're going to make this movie.
All of a sudden that is the number one movie in America.
Box office smash.
Yep.
Same thing with Rocky, though.
Significantly larger with Rocky.
Yeah.
Throw that out there.
Yeah.
It was larger by dollars.
Look, I'm by like 10 X is 12 years in between the two,
but that's fine.
I'm going to have to say I'm going to have to stay Stallone on
this.
Oh, my God.
Because but hold on because of the because you have really good
taste because the impact that Rambo had on my life as a
kid.
So like my favorite movies is like a, you know,
five to basically now.
First, but Rambo three.
Yeah.
Predator.
Oh, Predator was what Predator had everybody in it.
Yeah.
Like a lot.
Just everybody was just jacked.
Yes.
You know, fighting alien onslaught and, you know,
and then you went to Gold Jam.
Like that's exactly.
It's the formidable years that I mean.
Yeah.
Predator is an underrated movie.
It is.
It is arguably one of the best action movies of all time and
one of the best science fiction movies.
Great movie.
I haven't seen that in 20 years.
Oh, shit.
I think you need a refresher.
Yeah.
But that was vintage Arnold too.
Yeah.
But when it comes to it, when it comes to swagger,
bird had it.
You know what I mean?
Smooth.
I know.
It takes the hat off of two things.
They have like.
As of right now, that is officially we are tied between
that that ties it right there.
But we're going to keep going.
This is like one in one.
I think it's two.
It's one in one.
We didn't do it last week.
This is new.
All right.
Phil and Jeremy are huge Stallone fans.
And rightfully so.
I get it.
Cause we're great.
Bird's just better.
I mean, look, that's it's a really hard question because
it's a great respect for both.
But yeah, when it just, you know, also too.
So Buddy Joe was the stunt coordinator on first blood.
Right.
Oh.
And Stallone was like, there's, you know, that part where
he jumps off the big cliff into the tree and he was
like, no, that has to be me.
And he's like, dude, you don't want to do this.
And he's like, no, it has to basically they got a big
argument and it's like, let them try.
But like, they'll do it from like a lower, you know,
level.
Yeah.
Lower because he's only five, six.
So it didn't have to be lower.
So he did.
So he did it and then broke his arm and that put
production back like three months.
And Buddy was like, see, told you don't want to do this
shit.
That's cool.
Yeah.
So he was like Stallone stunt double for like a
lot of movies.
Apparently.
Okay.
And has the Nova from deaf proof.
That was the actual picture car.
Yeah.
Really?
Tarantino sold it to him and his brother for 500 bucks
when they were like 15.
That's really cool.
Yeah.
He pulled up to Hoonigan really.
Oh, dude, you got like a, you got like a, you know,
depth proof clone clone.
He's like, no, that's the car from the movie.
Like put some respect.
This is the actual picture car.
And there was like, what?
He's like, yeah, my dad's like, you know, stuntman.
He does all this coordination for Tarantino's
movies.
And he sold to me and my brother like 500 bucks.
And there was like, you didn't, you didn't think to
like talk about this?
But like you're sweeping floors, dude.
Like, like for when Kenan started, he was like a PA.
Like he was just, you know, but he was busting ass.
Like just, you know, good dude, you know, willing to
work that didn't say shit about nothing.
And then all of a sudden you're just like, oh dude,
you know how to do like, you know, you know how
to be on fire and be cool with it.
You know how to do falls and shit.
Yeah.
That's cool.
Uh, next up, stuntman shit is so far.
That's why I left Fall Guy.
Oh yeah.
Fall Guy was fucking best.
Movie, not so much.
Show?
Yes.
Amazing.
Movie, sucked.
You were usually broken on that movie.
I was, I was, I've probably never been more upset
about a movie.
I didn't go in with high expectations.
I knew that it was gonna be bad.
It's not like I was hyped up and be like, oh wow,
they're gonna do the fucking original show Justice.
Yeah.
It was so much worse than I prepared myself for.
You know, the one interesting thing I found about that
movie is that they kept using Shuggy Otis' song.
Like the only song used in that movie is one song.
Yeah.
It's Shuggy Otis' tune.
I can't remember the name of it, but it's like,
but it's, it's like redone and different.
Like so there's like an orchestra that does it.
There's like, but it's the same fucking song.
It was so bad.
Yeah.
Roadhouse remake was better.
And that was not a great movie, but it was better.
It was better.
You can't, you can't top Roadhouse.
Oh man.
You can't redo Roadhouse.
You just expected it to be Roadhouse.
That was a...
Duke's The Hazard movie?
Duke's The Hazard movie was a watchable movie.
It was just...
Was that because...
It was funny.
Stake Jessica's Empson Out.
Then it wouldn't have been that good of a movie.
But it was, it was not, it was,
they poked enough fun at themselves
and didn't take themselves serious
that it was a watchable like,
oh, this is fun.
You talk about how Rambo was
like a big time on your...
Dude, Roadhouse, for me, is a...
Oh yeah.
Man.
He was...
Now we watch it.
It's still a great movie, but
he's not as like badass as
what I made him in my,
you know, when you're watching it.
He's like...
Kind of small.
Yeah, he's a little...
He's just whipping ass, you know?
He's not near as fucking hardcore
as I wanted him to be.
That's all right.
But it's a great...
It's so perfect of like...
They made it for like our age kids.
Also Sam Elliott.
Oh yeah, there's nobody better.
When you're like making that movie,
you're like, you know what would be cool?
Can we get Bigfoot?
Let's get Bigfoot and run over
the dealership that's clearly...
Midwest 4x4 was up the road
from my house growing up.
And so you'd always see it...
You could see it from Highway 70, I think.
But yeah, like you'd drive down,
you could see the original.
They had the old, you know, the OG one
with the big white like...
What do you call it?
Combine tires?
Yeah.
It's cool, man.
Like, monster trucks were a big part
of my childhood.
Yeah, they were.
Everybody's childhood.
Oh yeah.
It's just so wild.
Like...
Dude, the biggest fan roar
I've ever heard in my life
while on a microphone
was doing Monster Jam in Angel Stadium.
And I was just like,
yo, 60,000 people like
roaring is a wild experience.
You know, I just did the little...
Like, we did some like interviews and stuff
and like me and Brian Anderson
did some stuff on, you know, like the broadcast.
And then, you know, I did like the...
Start your engine, shit.
You know what I mean?
But like, it was just like...
Fuck, like 60...
Like a completely packed house
in Angel Stadium.
Like every seat.
Like...
Wow.
Crazy experience.
That kind of...
I can't imagine being like a band
playing like some crazy, huge festival.
Like, or playing at big stadiums
somewhere like that.
Shit.
It's a lot of people.
I miss old monster trucks though
when they had, you know, like
late 90s, early 2000s,
when they had like suspension,
you know, when they would like...
They didn't have suspension.
They just bounced.
They would have...
Now they just straight up bounced.
But in like,
maximum destruction.
Like the thing...
That one earlier.
The thing, yeah,
moved around and, you know,
you could have, not articulation,
but they moved independent of each other
and they could go over stuff.
Pretty sure they run...
They run coilovers on Max D now.
Really?
I think it's one of the only trucks
that actually runs coilovers.
All the rest of them have like this big,
hydraulic, you know,
it's like, you got one setting.
You want to jump big,
well, you got to set it for that.
Or if you want to be fast,
you got to tune it for that.
But it's like, there's no real in between.
But it's like, how high are you sending it today, bud?
Yeah.
We'll send.
And it's just...
Yeah, those dudes, man,
they don't get enough respect
for how violent it is inside of a monster truck.
Oh, it's got to be nasty.
Dude, it is like CTE city.
You are just getting
blasted, man.
It's like, it's rough.
It's rugged.
And like, those dudes are getting
these shit kicked out of them
inside those trucks every night.
And like, you know,
they're doing it for the love of the sport.
Because like, most of them,
like most of those drivers,
they don't get to just,
they don't drive those trucks
outside of like, practice day before
and then the race.
Right.
Or the event, right?
Like...
There's not a lot of test and tune events.
Like, the Andersons have a cool setup.
You know, they got some shit.
Yeah.
You know, and there's a couple of people
that have like, some of the privateers,
they own their trucks
and so they can like, go and run them and stuff.
But like, most of those fell drivers,
like, they just, they get to,
they don't get to drive anything.
Or don't get to practice.
Yeah, they just like, show up.
They're like, okay, I got this one day,
which is like, one day is like,
I get like two runs to like,
figure out how the track set up,
like how, like how tacky the dirt is,
like how fast I need to stop
before blasting into something, you know.
And like, some of them...
First 12 rows.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Those arena shows are like,
really tiny too.
So small.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The truck's big.
Yeah.
And now they have like,
it kind of sucks with like the,
they have like limitations on stuff.
Like they can't do like,
access donuts and stuff at some point.
Really?
Yeah, I heard it.
Size of the...
No, it's like some, you know,
it's always comes down to like,
stupid lawsuit stuff, right?
Like, oh, somebody got, you know,
a speck of dirt in their eye up in like,
row 55, you know,
and they're going to like,
sue for a few million bucks.
And how Feld has to like,
basically, you know,
kill all the fun.
Always something.
Yeah.
Anyway, what was it?
We got off track here.
Yeah, another question.
Yeah, we got more.
Okay.
We got more questions.
Hit me with it, brother.
All right.
Next up.
Let's see where we're going to go.
We already talked about first car.
Yep.
So we're not going to go down that road.
I want to hear your most memorable
law enforcement interaction story.
Okay.
I got pulled over some friends
when I was younger, right?
And we had just gone on a B,
double E, double R,
you in shoulder tapping,
of course, you know,
because we were under the age of
allowed to do that.
And yeah, I was in that cobra.
And, you know,
it was basically, you know,
long tubes off road,
ex pipe and dumps.
I know what it sounds like.
Right now.
So, you know,
it sounded like a boat
and it was slow as shit, right?
Four valve,
early four valve motor.
But anyway,
thought it was cool in high school.
Was cool.
Then I get,
I get pulled over,
you know,
and they'd like,
oh, you know,
there's,
I was hanging out with some kids
that probably shouldn't have been
hanging out with one of which
they definitely like recognized
and they're like,
these kids are up to no good.
Well, anyway,
I was,
they were up to no good.
Well, anyway,
they go and they're like,
searching the car
and you know,
pop the trunk.
Obviously,
there's a 24 pack of natural light
back there.
You know,
the natural light.
Yeah.
And,
but it was like,
I remember the cops like,
hey man,
like,
I know who you're with.
You don't have a record.
Like,
you need to stop hanging out
with these shit heads
because they're going to fuck
your life up, right?
So he's like,
it's like,
do yourself a favor
and do me a favor.
So I don't have to do this.
Do anything to you.
You know,
it basically gave me like a,
like,
you know,
it was straight with me,
but it was cool, right?
And then he proceeded
to make me open every beer
and pour it down a
sewer drain,
one by one.
And,
you know,
he's like,
I go home
and I believe he made me leave
the one degenerate kid there
to,
you know,
whatever.
Good advice.
Yeah.
It's like, all right,
because I was like,
I don't need to be
doing dumb stuff, right?
But he gave me like,
you know,
he gave me a little break.
You know,
I could have like threw the
book at me,
you know,
did whatever,
but it was cool, right?
Did that degenerate kid
go on to do great things?
No,
he definitely went to jail
later in life.
And,
See?
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is great advice.
Exactly.
We didn't,
we didn't hang out much more
after that.
Yeah.
It's fun.
Yeah.
The cool kids,
they,
they get to go to all the
parties and stuff,
but it's like,
really it's like,
those people are going to
work at a gas station later,
you know,
and you don't want to be
doing that when you're 30 plus.
Yeah.
Unless you love it,
you know,
that's cool.
Unless you own the gas
station.
Do it hard and work hard
enough and do it,
but yeah,
there's,
you got a son that's 18
and I remember going through
those,
those talks of like,
dude,
I know I sound old
talking about,
and my dad told me the same
thing and I thought he had no
idea what he was talking
about.
I'm telling you,
like,
look around
and see the differences
in the decisions they're
making and the type of
people they are and what
they're starting to look
like and the constant
trouble that follows,
you know,
it's,
it adds up.
Oh yeah, man.
It's like,
it's one of the craziest
things.
You know,
it's funny that's like,
I remember that exact
same thing of being like
thinking that my parents
didn't,
you know,
they did the ones too.
They did all this stuff.
It's so,
it's such a mind fuck
to think about.
We were talking about cars
but now on kids wise,
like,
I remember that,
that talk at,
you know, 16, 17 years old
and it seemingly,
like,
you might have known
what you were talking about
but that was also like
in black and white,
like in the 20s.
Like,
that had to be 75 years ago.
Like,
what do you know?
I'm thinking that
when my dad's telling me
that, right?
It seemed like it was
such a long time
before.
And I'm sure he's thinking that
but I'm looking at it as like,
dude, it wasn't that long ago.
Like it was,
it was 25 years ago
and I was making some
really bad decisions, right?
Right along with,
before you came on,
I was making some bad decisions.
So,
it's wasn't,
it doesn't seem like
that long ago to me.
So I know what I'm talking about
but to him,
he's like,
yeah, that was like
100 years ago.
Oh yeah.
It's really weird to think back
and be like,
oh, I graduated high school
20 something years ago.
Like,
oh God,
what happened all that time?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I saw one of the,
going to a liquor store
and like the,
you can't purchase liquor
before this date.
Like fuck,
I graduated college
before that date.
Yeah.
Damn,
I'm old as shit.
I know how you feel.
How old are you guys?
44.
Okay.
46.
Okay, cool.
I'm coming up behind you.
All right.
I'll be 40 this year.
You still got,
you still got a lot of runway.
Yeah, you know,
I feel like it.
A lot of rubber left
tires.
I feel like I still got a little energy,
but like,
you know,
it's funny like,
you know,
we busted Acid Hoonigan,
right?
Like there was weeks.
I remember,
because we started having to track our hours.
And I remember telling the financial guy was like,
Hey,
dog,
I don't think this is a good idea because we're probably
breaking a lot of laws
and kind of.
But,
you know,
I had access to the back end and I could see,
because at that time I was like our director of
original content.
So like all the editors and stuff were,
technically I was managing,
right?
And like,
looking at my,
I was like,
dude,
I've worked so many weeks.
I've never worked a week less than 80 hours.
And then like,
half these dudes are all like,
you know,
everybody's banging it.
Minimum 60,
like bare minimum.
Like,
but some of,
like we were getting into the hundreds of times where
we're just like,
you know,
there's like,
you know,
we'd sleep on the couches there,
like,
you know,
just so much shit that had to get done.
And there was only like,
at the beginning,
there's only like six,
eight of us,
you know,
in the company.
So,
you know,
everybody's wearing a bunch of hats.
But you know,
but now as I'm getting older,
I'm like,
going back into it.
And I'm like,
man,
I'm working a lot of hours again.
I don't have all that.
I was like,
I don't know how much longer I can do this with like
this kind of intensity and pace.
Cause it's like,
it's a way harder now.
I mean,
I started doing this film stuff when I was basically
my 30th birthday,
right?
And then now we're 10 years into this,
and it's like 40s coming up and like,
way harder to pull a lot of weeks like that,
you know,
like just drag yourself out of bed,
you know,
we've talked about it before.
It sounds,
we sound like such old men now talking old men,
but,
you know,
20,
20 years ago,
we were driving
most of the trucks,
you know,
to the shows,
setting everything up.
It was just the way it was,
you know,
so you'd work on cars all week long,
especially if you're getting ready for a show,
then it was a, you know,
all night thrash for,
you know,
sometimes just the night before,
sometimes a week and a half to two weeks before,
every single night to get one done,
depending on how,
then you,
then you load it up,
you try to give it a little quick clean up,
you load it up,
you strap everything down,
you get other stuff,
then you hop in the truck,
you do a little quick whore bath at the shop,
you know,
a wipe down,
you jump in the,
all night,
jump in the truck,
and you're driving across country,
and you're driving,
when the sun's down,
you see the sun come up,
you see the sun go down,
you see it come back up,
you get to the show,
then you start riding on adrenaline,
cause you're like,
oh wow, this is awesome,
you know,
when you set everything up,
and then you run the show the whole time,
then you also can't make good decisions
while you're there,
because then it's,
you know, a client dinner that night,
and they were so,
hey, do this,
then you stay out too late,
too late drinking,
and that was just the thing,
right?
Now,
like the thought of doing it,
like getting an airplane,
there's,
there's,
it was the other night,
there was the other night,
I was driving home,
and,
it was like,
8.30,
and I'm like,
oh man,
my eyes are getting heavy,
right?
And it's not even dark out,
we went to,
I took place of the UFC fight,
uh,
last weekend,
here in,
in Chicago,
and it didn't get over too late,
we didn't get home until like 2.30 in the morning,
and I'm in there,
there's like,
main event,
crazy,
wild experience,
you know,
thanks to Joe for the amazing tickets,
and
I'm starting to doze off there,
and I'm like,
holy crap,
I gotta drive,
like my son,
back an hour and a half,
like it through the city,
I don't know if I can make it.
And he called in sick on Monday.
He didn't do the,
you take the wheel kid.
Yeah,
I was going to,
um,
he would have gladly,
um,
he's pretty trustworthy.
Uh,
when I was,
when I was like 8,
9,
my grandpa used to do that to me,
in the plane,
like,
so my grandpa had a little,
like two-seater prop plane,
you know,
and he'd be like,
if I doze off,
keep to this heading,
and then he would inevitably doze off,
and he'd be just drinking all morning.
And like,
I flew that dude's plane so many times,
where I'm like,
uh,
wait a minute,
like,
hey grandpa,
I've been flying for like three hours,
and you're like,
oh,
shit,
uh,
uh,
look around.
We're in Nebraska.
Yeah.
Like,
oh,
we ain't got enough gas to get back.
He's like,
well,
he's like,
looking at the river,
you know,
because we'd like,
you know,
nuts.
Nuts.
I've never even heard anything kind of close to that.
I'd like to be like,
oh yeah,
I can relate.
Not even.
My grandpa was an animal, man.
He's good, dude.
Uh,
he's mean son of a bitch,
but you know,
like,
he meant well.
Yeah.
And uh,
it was fun, man,
because he's like,
as a,
as a toddler,
and like,
you know,
he's like,
take me on his motorcycle and stuff,
you know,
and like,
jam me around,
like,
there was one time we went to my aunt Ida's house in,
um,
she lived in California because she married this dude who
invented the pacemaker.
Wow.
Uh, you know,
but uh,
not afterwards,
but you know,
so she was well off,
right?
And uh,
we all went out there to visit and uh,
she had this,
like,
she had a couple like
perfectly restored cars.
Like it was like a 57 Thunderburn.
She had like an old packer that was like immaculate,
right?
And so like my grandpa,
one morning he's like,
Zachary, wake up.
I'm going to take you,
look at taking the Thunderburn, right?
And he like,
he's like,
all right, cool.
So we're going to go for a ride, right?
And like,
he drives me up to this coffee spot and like,
parks out front.
And he's like,
yeah,
and he's like using me as bait for chicks.
Like a puppy.
Oh man.
Say what you will use puppy.
The dude was a
perpetual coxman
for his entire life.
And uh,
but you know,
he did well.
Like,
you know,
yeah,
you know,
picking up chicks.
Good for him.
Yeah.
RIP.
He wound up,
like he passed away in that plane.
He was doing stunts over
my uncle's house on Mother's Day.
And the crankshaft broke.
No way.
Yeah.
It'll like roll it over to dodge
another house.
It was kind of like up on this hill.
So like,
basically fully inverted,
went through a patch of trees
and ripped the wings off.
But the fuselage made it.
And it slid across a gravel road
into an open field.
And there's one tree in the field.
And it just hit the tree.
No way.
Yeah.
It's kind of wild.
But like,
it's,
it's like real sad,
you know,
because it was like in front
of the whole family, right?
But like,
you know,
when I would always hang out
with my grandpa,
you would inevitably tell me
almost every time,
like,
Zachary,
if I die on my harler
and my plane,
don't you be upset?
That's the way I want to go.
You know,
like,
wow.
Yeah.
He'd had a bunch of plane crashes
and stuff,
you know,
from like running out of fuel.
He'd landed on the highway
so many times.
Like,
or just like landed
in like random
not professionally.
He's dabbled in it.
Didn't get paid for it.
Just, you know,
pro bono, you know,
just for the love of the game,
you know,
that's awesome.
He's these hard,
hard dude.
And you grew up in like the
depression and shit.
You know,
kids are like eating out
of dumpsters and stuff.
So he didn't have
a whole lot of trust
for banks
and didn't have time
for bullshit.
And you really like fist fights.
Like really,
really like.
And you're telling me
you didn't pick Burt Reynolds.
You picked Stallone.
I'm saying like
you gave me a
that's a loaded deck, man.
Like it's not
like it's not the same thing.
Like if it was
if I was picking like a cool,
you're just
you're just describing
old Burt Reynolds.
Yeah, basically,
that's that's what your
granddad was.
To me, in my mind,
that's what I see.
If Burt Reynolds had
actual confirmed kills,
that'd be my grandpa.
Yes.
So,
yeah, man,
it's funny like how
like I was watching
you ever watch 1883?
Yes.
OK.
So it's like Sam Elliott's
character in that show.
Like I was watching
with my girl
and like,
I had watched this
shit before.
I was like, Holy shit.
It's like,
it's just like reminds me
of my grandpa Ray.
That's exactly
like just real
way too hardened.
You know what I mean?
Like just grizzled human,
you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good dude.
Also great painter.
Like, man,
he loved metal flake.
Like, all his shit was like,
immaculate metal flake.
Sadly, when he passed,
his friend was with him, you know?
So there was like a wrongful
death lawsuit.
Oh.
And he had
the two things in the will,
they were supposed to be
a man with a plane
and he had a
59 Cadillac El Dorado,
or not a Coup de Ville.
OK.
Convertible.
Oh.
That he had like,
you know,
he bought it originally
from like a junkyard
like way back
and like in the late 60s.
And then,
you know,
he had two of them that he'd
like,
he was real meticulous
about his like,
restorations and painting.
She had like,
really good painter.
And so they said,
he had a black and white one.
And they were like,
the only two garages he had
were like taken up
by these like,
absolute land barges of
like two door cars.
Like, I can't believe,
not only I think about it
this day, it was like,
how the,
who thought it was a great idea
to like, you know what,
we're going to make this
Coup 28 feet long.
Yeah.
Long two door.
Bigger than everybody else's.
I almost,
I almost bought a later Coupe
Deville from this dude
because I was like,
I'd be sick to just have to have one.
This is like a,
like a boxy one.
So 80s.
Yeah.
But it had like,
it didn't have like the,
the crap motor in it.
But I went and measured my,
I live in a condo.
Right.
And so I went and measured
my parking spot.
And I was like,
this thing is five feet
longer than my parking.
Like,
I have a first gen Raptor
and I could only get
a super cab.
You know, I couldn't,
I couldn't even do a four door.
Like there's just like no way
to fit it in that spot
where it wasn't just like
way hanging out.
And it's like back against
a wall too.
So I got to like,
when I pull in,
I got to go down one alley
and then I got to back it down
all the way down
like the other aisle
and like,
like wedge it into my spot.
What was the year?
What year blue
wind did you have?
It was a 65.
It was a hard top.
Yeah.
The badass car.
We did a 60 convertible
and I drove it home one night
and pulled it into my garage
and then got out
and there was like three and a half feet
sticking out past the garage door.
This ain't gonna work.
And the front bumper was like
almost on the,
the drywall in the front.
Uh-huh.
I'm like,
it wipes SUV fits,
but this two door
is three and a half feet too long.
It's stranger.
How does this bigger
than an expedition?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's wild, man.
But man,
it's like,
timelessly cool about Cadillacs
like early Cadillacs
and like,
by the way,
what did they use for leather?
Because like,
when I,
I see so many old Caddies
that like,
seem to have like original leather
that's just barely even cracked.
Just old cows.
I think they're,
I just think that
they were taken care of a little better
than other stuff.
Yeah.
Oh, have you ever stripped one down to bare metal?
They're fucking braised together
in five million pieces.
The car itself,
once somebody owned it,
they were taken care of.
Yeah.
Everyone has been in 10 accidents
and there's like 16 different
quarter-packs.
They were built that way from the factory.
But also,
it seems like,
you know,
like the thickness,
like the,
I don't know if you,
the gauge of the leather,
I don't know what you'd call that,
but like,
it seems like it's like,
like this thick.
Like it is like a actual,
like,
I don't know how it even is,
but it's like,
it just seems like way more dense
than whatever leather is used,
kind of like,
to modern day.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
We have to find that one out.
Somebody do some research on that.
Comment below.
Yeah.
So what do we have for other questions, man?
We keep sidebar.
That's the,
no, that's it.
That's the last question.
That was it.
What was it?
What was the last question?
The last question was,
law enforcement interaction.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I got snowballed.
I got some,
I got some good one.
I got a bad law enforcement
interaction.
That's actually what we were hoping for.
Yeah.
I was hoping for a battle.
Well,
that was the,
that was a rest that allowed me
to not be in the
Naval Academy,
or not Academy,
but OCS, right?
So we're having this bitch and kegger,
right?
And, you know,
fun party,
having a good time.
You know,
they think this is,
this is like the first summer after college,
I think, right?
So like all the friends are back,
you know,
or, you know,
we've got a couple kegs
like keystone light or something, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then,
the good shit.
Yeah.
I remember it was after,
my dad showed up,
and then he
made everybody play flip cup with
Yeagermeister.
And,
well,
after that,
it seemed like it was a really good idea to like,
you know,
light off all these cars in the driveway, right?
And like the house,
it was,
you know,
it's kind of back far away
from a lot of the other houses, right?
So,
he had to,
he had to get to because he had to like snake through this
subdivision.
And this was like an old property that my dad had built this
house on,
and they had the property forever.
But he built it.
And then like,
kind of like,
suburbia kind of developed around it,
but it was like,
you know,
it was kind of like remote and removed,
but,
you know,
a bitch to get to.
Hence why the cops were also so mad when they got there.
So,
we start lighting cars off and everybody's got,
you know,
like I had like a,
like a 91 Bronco with a 351 with no cats
or muffler.
I think I had like a Dino Max race bullet on it,
maybe, you know,
and then like,
you know,
all my buddies like trans and Camaro's,
you know,
a lot of fourth gen stuff,
because this is,
you know,
this is early 2000s.
They can,
you're late.
I love a good fourth gen.
Yeah.
And,
you know,
a couple other cars,
you know,
so we're,
and there's a,
the driveway is also freshly black topped.
Sorry,
Rhonda.
But,
real long and there's a grade to it.
So,
right.
And,
so we start lighting all these cars off and have a good time
and then,
you know,
my buddy Ryan,
is in his black trans and fourth gen.
And,
he finishes his burnout and he's rolling out.
And then as like,
there's a big cloud of smoke and I see his tail lights
like disappeared off.
And then I see him like,
just go way further.
I'm like,
why is he turning around?
And then all of a sudden I see the police lights
coming through the smoke.
And I was like,
oh shit.
So I was like,
this party's probably over.
You know,
so they came in and I was like,
guys,
sorry.
Yeah,
I apologize about everything.
You know what?
I'm glad you're here though,
because we got to get all these people out.
You know,
it's getting a little rowdy.
So,
you know,
I'm trying to be like,
cordial about the thing.
And,
these police officers are pissed, right?
I don't know what was going on,
but like,
I think also at the time,
I used to say,
dude and man.
Like,
that was how I started every sentence
and ended every sentence.
I was like,
dude,
I'm so sorry.
You will address me as sir or officer.
And I was like, dude, nope.
I'm sorry, sir.
You know,
he's like,
what the fuck did I just tell you?
That happened like three times.
On the third time,
they just did kick me in the back of the knee
and like,
just dropped me to the,
the asphalt,
you know,
like just knee to the back handcuffing me.
And like everybody's like running and like,
by the way,
there's,
there's the driveway.
And then there's all the grass,
right?
And a bunch of people were parked in the grass.
So there's people just burning out,
trying to get out and just leaving ruts in the grass.
I was like, oh no,
this is not going to be good for tomorrow.
You know,
I didn't,
I didn't anticipate this part of the cleanup, right?
But also I was like,
why am I getting arrested here?
You know,
cause I had thrown parties before and when the cops came,
they were like,
well,
you guys just keep it down.
You know,
cause like typically,
you know,
we weren't like the music we were playing was like Skinner.
You know what I mean?
They're like,
Hey, you guys are all right.
Just,
you know,
like the first time I ever,
they ever had the cops come there like,
Hey,
we know you guys are probably all of age.
You just got to turn it down a little bit.
We were like,
I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Um,
so like,
yeah,
anyway,
I wound up getting like taken in,
you know,
thrown in the drunk tank or whatever,
you know,
like the holding area.
So there's going to be.
Was it public intox or disorderly?
No,
it was,
saying dude,
man,
dude,
man.
Yeah.
It's a misdemeanor.
It's fine.
Basically my,
my dad's friend picked me up
and,
he had a laugh about it,
you know,
and he's like,
man,
he's like,
this is kind of funny,
right?
But,
realistically,
like there was this crazy ass police report
written up.
It was like,
super fictional.
Like there was a lot of stuff in it that was like,
there,
there's no way that happened,
right?
And,
I don't know what was going on with these dudes,
right?
Cause I've never,
up until that point,
I'd never had like a,
like a legitimately bad interaction with police.
You know,
I feel like my grandpa was the chief of police of our town,
like that I originally grew up in,
you know,
so like,
I'm not,
I don't fuck around with cops.
You know,
I know they got a hard ass job.
And,
so yeah,
like basically,
it wound up getting like completely tossed out
because they're like,
this is,
like it was almost like they went really out of their way
to draft up this,
like almost like comical police report,
you know,
but yeah,
it was,
I don't think I'm telling it funny enough,
because like this dude was so mad that I kept saying,
dude,
man on accident,
but I,
you know,
kept saying it.
I had done a couple keg stands and,
you know,
I think that,
you know,
I didn't notice that I was saying dude and man,
you know,
it's also hard once he draws attention to it.
I mean,
it's like,
moley,
moley,
row ass.
Yeah.
So,
yeah,
that was,
that was not cool,
but also,
you know,
clean up if I had to like reseal the driveway too.
And like,
I'm trying to do this in like a panic rush because
my stepmom was out of town.
You know,
yeah,
it's hard to cover up the burnout marks.
Oh wait.
Well,
my Bronco dug into the freshly done.
So it actually left like a rut.
And so I had to like,
figure that one out.
But then like,
quick patch and a couple of weeks later,
my little sister at the time was like,
well,
like three or four years old and she had like a,
I kept the party downstairs.
Like in the basement,
you know,
and then the walkout where it was like the yard and stuff.
So I didn't let anybody like go inside the house because,
you know,
you know what happens when that happens.
Yeah.
So like,
all of a sudden my little sister finds like a six pack of beer in
her like play school kitchen set.
Like it's in the oven that somebody like stashed there to like bail.
And,
but she like,
he's like,
mom,
like,
you know,
good times.
But yeah,
that's probably like the,
I guess one of the,
it's not,
I've never really had like some bad ones.
You know,
I try not,
you know,
I do dumb stuff,
but I don't try to like,
get myself in trouble.
Right.
You know,
it's the best way to be.
Yeah,
it should be.
Gotta be respectful too.
You have fun.
And then once you get caught,
you're like,
yeah,
I'm caught.
Yeah.
You know,
you can probably do without the knee kick and the,
no taken to the ground.
No,
that doesn't feel very great.
I've told it before.
I've told it many times though.
I've hit a lot of them in my family,
growing up.
I've unfortunately had some,
some altercations.
I will say this
over and over and over.
A pissed off cop is the worst,
and there's no changing his mind.
No,
once he's pissed off for whatever reason,
right or wrong,
they generally never be like,
you know what,
I'm having a bad day.
Yeah.
Let's start this one over.
It's one safe piss,
once they're pissed off
and they decide that they're pissed off.
No,
you're just the best thing to do
go along for the ride, because you're going wrong for a ride.
How would you learn that?
Yeah, let's talk about that.
I've told the story before.
Well, I haven't heard so.
Yeah.
Josh just likes trying to prove them wrong and prove his point right.
Oh, yeah.
That one, I started out extremely respectful.
And then it kept going and it kept going.
And once I realized that there was no changing his mind
or calming the situation down, then I got a little agitated at that point.
I hit the fucking button.
Yeah, I hit the fucking button.
And yeah, so that's what I'm saying.
I pissed off one too, and it's like, I wish we've had, I mean,
Justin from Dakota Digital, he was a former police officer,
and we've had a lot of discussions with him.
And again, we've got family members that are,
I still just don't understand, like,
if you're pissed off and you've made the decision to arrest,
just the act of arresting and taking me in and having to do all that,
honestly, that is enough.
If I'm not, you know, I get it if somebody is, like, disorderly
and they're trying to fight you and you're doing something like that,
yeah, take them to the fucking ground facing the concrete, right?
They deserve it.
I would deserve it if I did that.
If you're just mouthing, right, and you're going back and forth
and you're having a disagreement, if you're pissed off,
like, the hogtide, have you ever been hogtide?
No, thank God, but I've hogtide somebody before.
I technically wasn't actually hogtide, but handcuffed, right,
and then from the ground, you know, handcuffed on your face,
from the ground, arms and legs picked up
and tossed stomach first into the back.
Dude, it is, in the movies, you're like,
look at that dude, in real life, that is uncomfortable.
I would imagine.
Was it the plastic backseat?
Yeah, it was the hard plastic backseat.
So it was like a slip, it was like slip and slide all the way
to the other side.
Yeah, un...
Oh, I would pay to see that again.
I hated it.
I hated it.
Tell you what we should do.
He ended up getting his by the way.
Finish this episode by doing that to him again.
No, that's...
Come on, I got you.
I vowed to that will never happen again.
John still have the old cop car, we can borrow that.
I don't know if he still has the old cop taco.
Years ago, but it happened.
Again, too, another one of those like police report things,
you're like, I was doing, that's physically impossible.
Like in the report, one thing I'll never forget,
he wrote in there, which pits me off more
and why I decided like, I'll spend every dollar I have,
I'm fighting this just because this is stupid.
This is sitting on the window ledge of the door
of this Camaro doing donuts in the street
at approximately 100 miles an hour.
I'm like, all right, we got a first of all...
I'm good, brother, but...
This was a six speed 1969 Camaro convertible
that we were delivering to a customer.
You don't understand, first of all,
that can't happen for all these reasons.
Actually, I pulled the ECU data, pulled up,
like, hey, look, this is exactly what was happening
at this point in time.
This is the RPMs that it hit.
This is the speed that it hit.
This is all this kind of stuff from time to time.
Oh man, did you pull up a data log?
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
That didn't work.
And I got convicted.
And so then we had to go to Appeals Court after that.
Damn.
Yeah.
I was going to say, that's really impressive.
If you could do a rodeo donut at 100.
And then like, dude, think about like,
now you're saying 100.
Was it wheel speed 100 or was the vehicle moving 100?
Because that's two different things.
And also impossible by me sitting on the window.
Like, why would you go through everything?
Like, physically sitting on there, taking pictures,
taking measurements, showing like all this.
Oh, it was wild.
It's went on for like two years.
Jesus.
Yeah.
You'd be legendary if you could pull that off.
I don't think anybody's been able to.
I've seen some close coming back to the side shows.
I've seen some close.
Getting the passenger side doing it
when someone else is driving.
Exactly.
But yeah, not.
I'm like, dude, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Yeah.
He got his though.
It was like, after everything was done,
got everything handled.
I had a pistol on me too.
So that got yanked.
Right.
So I had to go through all that, finally get it back.
He got, he got drunk.
Got into a fight with his girlfriend.
She calls the police.
He's still a police officer.
Yeah.
Calls the police.
He freaks out, hauls ass and leaves.
High speed chase.
Two counties.
He freaks out.
Catching.
Everything done.
Damn.
Man, that sucks to be you.
You know, some hard, hard lessons sometimes have to get learned.
Yeah, man.
They're boys.
It's been fucking amazing.
This has been fun.
I hope you guys enjoyed this as much as I did.
I hope you enjoyed it because this was a really, really good time.
Yeah, man.
We got to do some more.
You know what?
I want to take you guys out in my Hooptie K5 so you can see what it's like when
something's super unhinged and doesn't work well, because I feel like, you know what,
that'll just put a real good stamp of approval on all this great work you're doing.
We have got to do it.
We're going to be, we're doing a SoCal trip and some recording in either late September
or early October.
Okay.
So we're going to be out there.
We've got to do some stuff out there so that we need to, we need to set it up.
Oh man, you know what?
The blower truck might be done by that.
Well, depends on how fast wiring gets done.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If not, we'll have to do, we'll have to hang at SEMA, but to figure out how to put something
together.
I know you can be busy all day long.
Well, you know, we'll make it happen.
We'll make something happen.
That's not a big deal.
Zach, it's been awesome.
So, Mr. Zachary on Instagram, like, like anybody doesn't already know that.
Mr. spelled out, M-I-S-T-E-R, underscore Zachary.
And then on YouTube, Mr. Zachary, no underscore.
All spelled out.
Yeah.
If you guys want to check it out, I built some cool stuff.
It's mostly V8.
Mostly way overpowered.
Mostly way undersecured.
So, you know, if you like it.
Sounds like fun.
It's a fun shit.
Yeah.
And then, you know what?
We got a, you know, we're finishing up a couple here.
The, once I get back with Turbo Escalade, the K5, had some sensors go bad on the
Dyno, which that episode will come out next week here.
But, yeah, we got a new.
It's got a 572 in the K5.
Yeah.
Just refreshed it.
It's got some really big heads.
Hit your headphones down.
Probably it's going to.
You pull the front wheels yet?
Tires.
No, no, it's got a, you know what?
The suspension frame soaks up a lot of the initial hit, you know, which is kind of
nice.
That's the only thing that's saving that 12 bolt from exploding.
And, yeah, that was just, that's something that paged my, you know, my landlord threw
together for, what the hell is that quail?
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's the fresh big block.
You know, you can hear it chopping in that other one, but yeah.
Then we got to get my two door Tahoe.
We're finally getting that back together.
Good grief.
Just a little street motor, you know, like it's not, I mean, it's not crazy.
It's like 10 to one.
It, you know, it made 861 on the water break.
So pretty good for a stock square body chassis on leaf springs.
So yeah, man.
And then we got some fresh stuff coming up for the escalator.
It's going to be real fun to show everybody.
Oh, I stupid.
You gave us teasers.
I can't wait for the rest of the world to see that.
Oh yeah.
So it's going to be fun.
I'd like to get, I'm trying to get together like a day where I ran out of
track and I can bring out a bunch of creators and like, you know, let
everybody go racing, you know, maybe put some fun stuff up against one
another, but you know, see, we just got to work out all the time
and stuff.
So dude.
Absolutely amazing time.
Nothing but the best of luck.
Anything you ever need.
We're here.
We got to do this again.
Matter of fact, you need an arm.
It's more drastic.
Is that thing going to go on?
You're just going to still work, keep working on it?
Yeah, man.
You know, I can't get rid of that truck because it's, I sold
Boom Howard to Hoon again when we, we got in a pickle with COVID
and, you know, all of, we lost all retail sales and we were
like, we need to bump up online sales.
So Brian was like, I think we should do, try to do one of
these giveaways when we should do it with something that people
have been able to follow.
So we used my truck as a test bed.
And I was at the same, the same week that Canada asked me to
move up to Utah and then I found out I was like, well, I
can't rent anywhere up here because all the vacation rentals
are gone.
So I had to buy a house, but then it was the exact same
dollar amount that I needed to put for a down payment on a
house was what Brian, you know, could basically give me
for my C 10.
I was like, this is divine intervention here.
Yep.
How better they planned it?
Kind of strong arm.
Do you know Brian didn't want me to like his, you know,
it's like we had so many people.
We only had like a few people.
So it's like losing somebody.
Yeah.
Like shit, we're losing, you know, again, it's hard to
replace that.
We only got like a very small crew.
So, but, you know, Ken needed a team built up there
and he needed the support and we were doing it from
LA, but it's like really hard because the dude moved
like shit.
When I moved up there, we did 300 plus days.
A year on the road, like traveling, plus like doing
a video every week, plus racing, plus doing like launches,
doing new, like, you know, merchandise lines, doing
all this other crap.
So it was like, it, there needed to be support up
there too.
You know, so they just kind of, you know, it worked
out.
But yeah, but that's the, I was, I was kind of, I
missed that truck and I always wanted a K five
when I was a kid.
So this is like, it's really like tough for me to,
it would be very tough for me to let that thing go.
So I want to keep it.
I want to evolve it and, you know, eventually get
it to where it's like not come, you know, doesn't
have like the hooptiness part of it.
I want to keep the body looking right.
Yeah.
But like, it would be cool to be able to rely on
it a little bit, you know, for stopping and
turning.
I mean, you know some people now.
I'm sure there's something to, you know,
fix up my car.
Right on.
Well guys, I appreciate it.
Thank you.
You're having me.
We've got four hours here.
Something Bay.
It's a long one.
We did.
We did it.
325.
All right.
Let's go.
We cranked it.
Dude, it's been awesome.
Hey, I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Hell yeah.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Let's go do some burnouts now.
Go to oil and whiskey.com.
Get your merch and make sure you check out
weathertech.com for all of your needs.
We talked about your cut phone guy.
I actually got some new mats, some new
mats on order to be coming.
You're a weathertech guy?
I buy it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't, I'm not like sponsored or anything
by them, but that shit is nice.
And it's made in America.
Right down the road from us.
Oh really?
Yeah.
Insane facility.
Right on man.
A child's weathertech.
Also, you know what?
They're keeping it real with like, you
know, the weathertech girls and
the stuff they do for racing, you
know.
He knows what he's doing.
I'm proud.
He would, he would fit right in.
He would fit right in.
Love that.
I will see you again next week.
Bye.
Bye.
About this episode
Zac Mertens, known as Mister Zachary, shares his journey from working at Hoonigan to becoming a YouTube automotive creator. He discusses his early influences, including his grandfather's adventurous spirit and the impact of iconic car movies. Zac reflects on the challenges of content creation, the importance of community in automotive culture, and the evolution of his projects, including his beloved K5 Blazer. The episode also touches on the dynamics of the automotive industry, the role of social media, and the thrill of motorsports, all delivered with humor and insight.
From wild days at Hoonigan to building his own YouTube brand, Zac Mertens (aka Mister Zachary) has seen it all. In this episode, he shares untold Hoonigan stories, the lessons he took from that environment, and how he’s making his own mark in car culture online.We get into his career, the projects that shaped him, and what it really takes to balance creativity, chaos, and cars.Grab official Oil & Whiskey gear at oilandwhiskey.com. Good time, bad advice, great shirts.