Five Years of Passion (vol.1)

It's been five years since my brother & I began Deadend Magazine!



Yup, seems like just yesterday I was uploading the first issue while my brother was working on my Lincoln to make the trek down to Paso Robles. We were so excited about launching deadendmagazine.com and to finally take a car to cruise down Spring St. We've come a long way in five years, unlike my Lincoln, we're way ahead of where I ever thought we'd be but way behind where we could be.

Here are some high-lights:
- Reached over 1 million hits a month (a few times)
- Been published internationally (France, Germany, United States)
- Made some amazing friends
- Shot some of our favorite cars
- Shot at some of our favorite events
- Mentioned in Rodder's Journal
- Mentioned on Jalopy Journal (a few times)

and some not-so-high-lights:
- Took a year to update (twice)
- Don't have an online store set up yet
- Haven't printed an issue of Deadend.... yet

I wouldn't trade the adventures I've had via Deadend Magazine for anything. My brother and I have put in a lot of effort and time and are very thankful that we have an amazing family that has been there for us. They've seen the good and the bad. It's not easy on them have us do what we do. They are very understanding, they are the best!

We're also thankful that we have some good friends (a lot of which we've made through Deadend) that understand when we don't make it to parties, birthdays or any kind of event because we're out shooting cars. They rule for putting up with us, you know who you are.

Here is how we first started...
Before we switched over to our current layout, we had a flash intro and an ugly looking site.. haha

This is the first write up of our first official event as Deadend, Paso!

Then..

We switched up the look just a little... How many of you remember the carchives?

And here's a little Deadend Trivia many of you didn't know about..
Our first choice was actually "Shifter Magazine" We had the logo, layout, fliers and everything ready to go when I went to buy the domain (days before going to Paso) and someone already owned it. We freaked out a little. We didn't know what to call the magazine.



We went to my friend Robert's house to try and come up with ideas.. nothing. I went to Cole Foster's place to look at old magazines to look for inspiration... nothing! Then on the way home I stopped at Kinko's to use their computer and internet and be away from everybody to see if I could clear my mind. It worked! I don't remember how or why I came up with "Deadend," but I did. I called my brother, "Deadend Magazine, what do you think?" He wasn't thrilled and was busy working on my Lincoln but said, "Let's go with it, if we don't like it we'll just change the name later." So I bought deadendmagazine.com...

and here we are today...
In the second volume I'll post more pics and cool stuff from our adventures!

-Juan