7’s Day NYC
7’s Day NYC is the brainchild of Edwin, Prav and Ted. If those names don’t ring a bell when you talk about the JDM scene in the New York area, you’re doing something wrong. What’s now been the 8th year of this unofficial holiday, this year was much larger than anything anyone could imagine.
Every year, rotary powered cars (typically the Mazda RX-7) band together in a NYC street meet to honor the motor that has developed a cult-like following. Over the years, these meets have grown and are now open to the wider community to celebrate a night out on the town.
There was and still is a form of secrecy with this event. You need to know somebody who knows somebody to get invited. Some people get turned off by this, call the organizers pretentious but that’s not the case. Can you imagine the fuckery that would occur if the addresses of the locations were posted publicly?
As an organizer I completely get the rationale here. You want everyone to attend, however, you want to keep the riff-raff out. So with a meet like this being held in public locations and no paywall, yeah, you need to keep the address as private as possible. End of the day we all want to have a good time.
Location #1
First stop, Jersey. Everyone comes and meets up at a parking lot. Not the most exciting of locations but this where people can look at cars in the daylight and start making plans as to what the next location is for them and their crew. While the location might not be scenic this is probably where you’ll see most of the rotary powered cars. A lot of these people put countless hours into their cars and don’t want to run the risk of something happening to it while in the city.
Location #2
About a 20 minute drive, including going through the dreaded GWB, we gathered in under a bridge. This location can be hit or miss. Some of those that skip out on Jersey will camp out here. Enough people know about this location and will sit there for hours. So what did we see upon arrival? A bunch of “meh at best” cars. There were some gems though. Peep the rollers on the way there. I don’t think these guys knew what they were about to see. Windows rolling down on a minivan and cameras poking right at them. I think they got a good laugh when they saw that.
Location #3A & 3B
Next we headed over to Midtown where it was utter chaos until we got off of 7th Ave. Understanding that our folks in blue want to do damage control but do you really think diverting everyone off of 7th Ave was the brightest idea? People that were turning off the street were turning back on it on the next. This would’ve been much easier if you just let people drive down the street.
On the bright side, this let us stand on the corners instead of the middle of the street to get some pictures. And we’re not even going to talk about cutting through a private parking lot to get over to the next spot in a 10th of the time the GPS was giving us.
Once we were at the next location I got to catch up with Edwin and talk about how the night was going and what’s next on the agenda for the night and months to come. Not as much time was spent here as word got out that people were heading over to the last location of the night.
Location #4
Onto our last location. This was more of a “everyone let’s just hang out” location more than anything. Not a whole lot of light but more than enough parking for those that wanted a nightcap. Being able to regroup with the larger crowd and recap on what took place was a good way to end the night. Best part was the guy coming down the street on a cherry picker yelling “this some need for speed shit”.
Summary
Overall, this was a good night. Being stuck in a minivan with friends the whole night going from location to location for a car event is something you don’t experience too often. Hopefully this annual tradition comes back for a 9th year and maybe we can get a Street Icons some time before then (IYKYK).
Photo Dump
