A little bit of DK history

[Brian]

Ever wonder how the whole DoriKaze thing started? I did, so I did a bit of research. If you can fill in the blanks, pipe up. If I got some details wrong, let's fix them up. This all happened before I joined up.

The Origins of DoriKaze as told to Brian

Back in the late 1990's, a young guy (Keishin) bought a corolla GTS and started a car club in Vancouver. This car club was just a local car club at the time, and had young people who drove all sorts of cars, Hondas, Toyota, Mazda, GM, etc. They would all meet weekly, and hang out. Just a bunch of car-guys.

The president of the club spent many waking hours coming up with a cool name for the club, and decided to have a japanese theme. DoriKaze was the result of a long walk on the beach, and seeing all the driftwood piled up. Drift. Wood. Wind-blown driftwood. Drift Wind. Dori Kaze.

As with any car club, the many members who contribute ask nothing in return, but put in effort for the good of the club. One such member took the hand-drawn logo, and put together the font for the logo. Stickers were made, and each one of the Dori Kaze club members had one on their car. Or mom's car for that matter.

The club members used high-tech communications back in the day: the telephone. And an email list. With a relatively small membership (by today's standards) it was simple and effective.

As the club grew, there were a few members from across the country who also had similar interests. One such member, a guy named Chris, had an idea for communications, and started the bulletin board/forum. As a contributing member to the club, Chris took a good idea, and expanded it to the original Dori Kaze bulletin board.

/more later.

[Migs]

it gets vague depending on which angle you look at. Keishin with his group of friends that he called "Dori-Kaze", or the "Dori-Kaze" that we know right here

Back in 1999-2000 there was a small group of guys across the country that owned AE86's. To name a few, they were Mac (ae86boy), Jover (Hachiroku), Yasin (slownrusty), Keishin (kshin), and a few others... I'm not sure exactly how they met over the internet, but I'm pretty sure it had to do with Club4AG and Mac's website which has been up since the dawn of time itself

Around that time, they decided to get an email list going. Whenever someone wanted to talk to the group, an email would be sent to everyone that was part of the list. When someone wanted to reply, everyone would get an additional email. So on and so forth.

Soon, we had the likes of Quentin, Randy and his brother Ian, Dennis, and a few others join the list. Soon thereafter, we had a discussion about naming the group. Keishin came up with Dori-Kaze (meaning Drift-Wind in bad japanese or so I'm told )....aaaaand we all liked it, so it stuck.

Time went on and personally, I started to go insane getting upwards of 25+ emails per day, many of which being nothing but replies to other messages which contained no more words than "hahaha" or something of the like. I spoke to a couple other members about this, and one particular talk with Mac really got me thinking... I had spent a lot of time on Club4AG by this time (which was still an EZboard back then) and really LOVED the whole message board thing (it was the first time I had ever been on one), so I decided to take the initiative to register an EZboard just for Dori-Kaze.

The funny thing is that the group was torn between those who thought it was a good idea, and those who thought it was pointless. I remember both Ian and myself actually having to write multiple emails explaining to everyone the benefits of using a message board! hahaha

It only took a couple weeks before the majority of the email list's users had registered with the EZboard and were visiting regularly.

Time went on, and we had something like 20-30 regular visitors. It was great! Everyone knew everyone else by name, and for the first time we had started to have small car meets usually in AB or BC. As a group we decided on a logo to go for, and the current Dori-Kaze logo was born. We still use the same decal to this day.

With the increased bandwidth usage to the board, it came time that we had to pay for EZboard's services otherwise deal with constant pop-ups. I opened the 'ol "community chest" (I'm sure you senior members remember that!) and the contributions came in. Everyone was more than happy to keep DK online and spam free!

The board grew, and grew, and grew, and finally with Steve's help, we established www.dorikaze.com for the first time, and created this new message board, hosted privately with all the features most would expect for a large club.

Aaaaaand here we are today. Almost 6 years later. Still 100% spam and sponsor free, kept online and supported by all those who live eat and breathe DORI-KAZE!

Although Keishin came up with the name, his involvement with our online community declined pretty quickly and he seemed to keep his own "Dori-Kaze" group among his friends in Vancouver. Neither group has ever really known the other...but that's where the confusion lies. When you ask about Dori-Kaze you have to specify if it's either the handful of friends that live in Vancouver and drive random cars, or the larger online counterpart that spans the country yada yada yada.

I don't mean to offend anyone by leaving their names out of my little story! If I got into it, I could probably right a 20-page essay!

Migsy

[Brian]

Ahh, so it sounds like two car clubs with the same name! One vancouver local club, and one online/forum club...

[tronAE86]

Thanks again for all the hard work keeping the board up guys!! Im really stoked to hear some of the history of thee 'ol DoriKaze that I love so much. I had NO idea that there was a local Vancouver club that had the name before we did.
Im very appreciative to be apart of such a great, and very informative community!

[do-boy]

ezboard was teh ghey

btw: how can i get my hands on the font? i want to make a "DK" decal with the stripes....or if someone else can get it done...i tried to do it in Paint but i suxorz

[Sketch]

You know what would be cool? If we could fish the old registration dates from EZboard, and plug them into vBulletin because we sure have a lot of 'March 2004' members.

I just checked up on mine;

Member Since :: November 6, 2002 (Local User) :cool:

[DJ Ambiguous]

ahh yess.. i remember the good ol ezboard days lol... also remember the geocities.com/dorikaze website too lol.. i joined a while back lurking the board when i purchased my first ae86 SR5.. then i finally starting posting when i got my third ae86... the green one .. then I met Mac, Migs and the rest of the alberta people and have been one big happy family since .. oh and can't forget the man DPR either :P

[AccentAE86]

Hey never thought of that.

I was curious so I looked mine up too, since I totally don't remember when I actually joined.

Member Since :: July 19, 2001 (Global User)

IT's a cool board. I was mainly a lurker for a long time.
Thanks for the update up till today migs. neato.

Hahaha, phil, I remember meeting you way back in like 2001. Man, that was quite a while ago huh?

[GTS Jeff]

Heh here I am too: December 28, 2002

I lurked on the old EZ board until this new vBulletin forum came up. I didn't post much cuz EZboard was a pain!

[DJ Ambiguous]

Total Posts :: 5300
Member Since :: July 9, 2001 (Global User)

[Migs]

I had NO idea that there was a local Vancouver club that had the name before we did.

They didn't have the name before us

Keishin had it in his mind that we were all part of the same group simply because "he" knew both sides. The name he came up with, but it was us, the online community here, that chose to go with it.

Migs

[The VidKid]

Wow. This is all very interesting to find out. I've been registered here for just over a year. I'm still a DK n00b. LoL.

[Brian]

They didn't have the name before us

Keishin had it in his mind that we were all part of the same group simply because "he" knew both sides. The name he came up with, but it was us, the online community here, that chose to go with it.

Migs

I was hoping to find out more, and I have, but I hope I didn't re-open some old wounds :o

Ah, bon, c'est la vie.

[DJ Ambiguous]

no wounds opened here.. just happy memories.. i remember when i was a n00b... didnt even know what hachi-roku or ae86 meant lol... didn't even know that there was a difference between trueno and levin or kouki and zenki lol

[ae86boy]

You know...if you wanted the history, the sources are still here.

The concept behind the online car club known as Dori Kaze started in November 1999 at the west-end Chilli's Restaurant, in Edmonton. Jover (aka Mr. Driftstar.ca) presented over dinner that it would be really, really cool if we started a club4ag.canada type of place with a local, tightly knit group of people from all across the country. I would like to go on record as honestly being against the whole thing from the get-go.

Either way, we decided to proceed, and emailed all the ae86/4ag guys we knew in Canada who were pioneering types...which were also pretty well all the 4ag/ae86 guys we knew in the whole damn country. Soon, we had a foundation for DK consisting of myself, Jover, Yasin Ali, Pascal Lavarene, Jamey Firth and George Ciordas. Contrary to belief that we met on Club4ag or via my old site, I actually met Yasin, Jamey and Pascal off the Toyota Mods List. Yasin knew George and Jover from local happenings in Toronto(?). Jamey...well...would you believe one of the founding members of DK is English from all the way across the pond? Some of you may know George Ciordas from Tuner Television...and funny enough, I often see a red 86 in the background parked outside the bay doors.

We wanted to stay with the email-server system because it kept everything tightly knit. The Toyota Mods List still operates that way to this day with great results. It also leaves no trail for anyone to find us unless they were invited. Unfortunately, we quickly outgrew this and wound up here. Originally we tried to keep things exclusive. There were fears among some of the members (no I'm not the only one) that having an online presence would create a venue for the trendies to come in, strut their testosterone laden stuff and then leave the place a disaster. We really didn't want to deal with the combat winged, LED wiper-nozzled crowd.

The name came from a vote. Everyone emailed me with the names they wanted, and we posted them up on my website. I tallied the votes, and we chose...well, we chose nothing because NOBODY freakin' voted! Nobody really cared what we were called. We knew who we were and what we were doing and that was good enough for us at the time, I think...so apathy was really rampant. We had a revote and we wound up with a tie. I forced another revote with a time limit, and Keishin's name basically won due to lack of interest. The same held true for the logo. Pictures were posted, and 1/4 of the members on the list voted...tie breaker ensued etc. Funny how things can really turn around...almost destiny unwinding.

As Migs said, he pushed for the EZBoard. Unfortunately, this manuever seems to have indirectly cost us all our original members. I know Pascal never followed, Jamey disappeared, Yasin went to club4ag.com, George...well...he's George. Jover's still here and so am I. Fortunately, many other people came along and picked up the torch, through creativity, moderation, drive or whatever else you want to call it, and here we are today, almost 6 whole years later, 1500+ strong.

While I know Jover and I don't get out posting much, I do try to hit every event/meet in northern Alberta. I think I've only missed one that was north of Calgary. I have little involvement in anything that goes on here anymore...its just nice to lurk and see the good being had by all.

Happy trails.

[Migs]

Love it!

Thanks Mac!

Migs

[micro214_kp61]

i remember meeting Yasin and George through Jover and we had this small meet of KP61s, AE92s and AE86s back in late 1999. it was a small lunch meet at Richmond Hill. and Jover metioned something about an online group. i didn't have time to use a computer back then but it was very interesting. i still e-mail Yasin once in a while and often hang out with Jover and recently met up with George at the last DK meet. that was kewl seeing old faces. i haven't gotten a chance to personally meet Mac but Jo would always mention your name so it seems like i know you, hehehe weird!

[emag_dnim13]

So am i the only one who hangs out with keishin and posts on here

[narfy]

So am i the only one who hangs out with keishin and posts on here

actually, my other brother went to high skool with keishin... strangely enough... this world is just too small...

[ae86boy]

i remember meeting Yasin and George through Jover and we had this small meet of KP61s, AE92s and AE86s back in late 1999. it was a small lunch meet at Richmond Hill. and Jover metioned something about an online group. i didn't have time to use a computer back then but it was very interesting. i still e-mail Yasin once in a while and often hang out with Jover and recently met up with George at the last DK meet. that was kewl seeing old faces. i haven't gotten a chance to personally meet Mac but Jo would always mention your name so it seems like i know you, hehehe weird!

(Shrug)

Experience tells me I'm highly over-rated.

The next time you see George, kick him in the ass for me too. He never sent back my OEM 1987 Corolla Broshure he scanned for me. The pictures were all stolen off my site and are now all over the internet...and I don't have the original. Kidding...just say hi for me. ;-)