Community Over Club

Open Hoist feels like a place time forgot.

Walk in and it's another era. Prohibition. The Grease era. Slicked hair, khaki workwear, grease under the nails. Dickies and singlets. A mechanic's dream shop. If I ever built one, it would look like this. The kind of room you don't want to leave.

That's where Committed Lowriders marked ten years on Sunday. Open Hoist Automotive, Heidelberg Heights. Meant to run 9am to 12pm. It ran past 1:30pm. Nobody left.

The weather held. The turnout was real. Every walk of life came through the door. Kids. Parents. Old heads with classic cars. People who live this culture. Family-friendly, start to finish.

I ran entertainment. That's my job across these events this year. I pulled up and delivered.

Here's the thing about that job.

I don't sell a DJ set. I sell an experience.

Music and food going all day. Faces lit the whole time. Community activation at its finest.

That's the work. Not the tracklist. The room.

The highlight was the lowrider bike giveaway.

Isabella won it.

The most genuine person in the building. You could see it hit her. She got emotional. She cried. Then she made the whole room laugh, because the only thing she could get out was asking her dad how they were getting the bike home.

That moment is the reason I do this.

Put a club event next to a community event and I take community every time. Two different beasts. Same goal. Entertain. Create the moment people carry home. On Sunday that moment was a kid and a bike she will never forget.

Big shout to JBP Media for capturing the day. Young photographer out of Geelong, on the rise, already putting out serious work. He wasn't the only one shooting. Half the room was making content, pro side and hobby side.

That tells me where this is going.

Everyone documenting. Everyone capturing. The tools are in everyone's hands now. That is the future, and it was in the room on Sunday.

Special mention to the vendors and the ones I met for the first time. Set up, craft on the table, all bringing something real. Old Souls and Co. Labyrinth Apparel. Vicla Vida

Engraving. Heirloom Automobilia.

Newfound workers of imagination. Most of them are not building toward something small.

The food came from the west side. My hood. The Haus of Birria. Birria tacos done right. A skill turned into a business, and you can taste it.

Silently taking over the west. Give them a follow. Tell them Henry sent you.

A room full of people building toward something bigger than themselves. Bigger than the individual. Built for the culture and the ones coming up.

I have said it since COVID. Something woke up in people. Life is short. Nobody wants to spend it building someone else's dream anymore.

So they work the nine to five. Then they chase the dream from five to 2am. Same hunger, different hours.

This is a changing of the guards. The old way is dead. People want something new. They want to feel part of something.

The ones becoming parents feel it hardest. We want to pass it down. Show the next generation what shaped us. The old ways with a new-age twist.

Special mention to Danny. He pulled up in a 1930s classic. Straight out of the prohibition era. Straight out of Dick Tracy.

That car lit the inner child in me. Warren Beatty and that film stuck with me since I was a kid. I always wanted to live that moment.

Took it off the bucket list on the day.

Get in touch with your inner child. Look to the stars and keep dreaming.

I'm building with Committed Lowriders and Open Hoist from here. This was the start.

If you weren't there, you missed a good one. Be at the next.

Follow the ones building it. Committed Lowriders. Open Hoist. JBP Media. Danny Englezakis. Old Souls and Co. Labyrinth Apparel. Vicla Vida Engraving. Heirloom Automobilia. SOLOLive. The Haus of Birria.

More coming. Count on it.