--Note; I know that I am not supposed to post lots of text in this forum, but I felt it necessary. Also sorry for the length, but hey it is a history of the Crazy Octopus!--
So here is the story about the making of the Crazy Octopus!
I cannot start to talk about the symbol that you know as the Crazy Octopus! Until I first talk about how the name and eventually the symbol came about.
About 4 years ago in my senior year in high school a group of friends and I finally had decent cars to call our own. Some of us had been met during high school and others known since preschool. All of us had followed motor sports for quite some time, and we followed the usual groups of the sport; WRC, F1, and Le Mans. We were the kind of kids that talked about suspension geometry, tyre choices, cages design, chassis design, tuning, and the like. Our group has been together under the same name for 4 years now and so far only 1 person has left and no one, by our choice, has joined (yet. Right now I am trying to get an amazing driver in our group). You may have seen our name in my signature on the forums or saw it on my hood when I wrote about retro rides. The group’s name is “PaperCar” and the ltd. is there to show that we are a selective bunch of kids.
The original team called PaperCar started in the Philippines in the year 1984. Rene was the founding member and, to the best of my knowledge the leader, of the original team. And when he moved to the states he told the original PaperCar that he would carry on the legacy of the team to the states. This legacy came about through his son, Jeggi. By this time in our senior year all of us had been going to autocross events as often as they would come up, so we weren’t just some group of silly chaps claiming to be good. But that was only the start. Drew and I were completely in love with the WRC, and since sophomore year (1999ish) in high school we were in love with the idea of sliding our cars. So we developed our craziness through the twisty roads of Fallbrook and the surrounding areas. Drew has had quite a list of cars that I was infatuated with. During his high school career he had 3 EFs (old boxy hatch Civic Si) all with B16a2s and some amazing work done to them, all of which he did himself. His EFs were the reason for my love of the flat color. All of his Civics were flat black and were just raw. Then in the last days of our senior year he bought himself a S13 hatch (240sx) and has been with them ever since. Jeggi and Ken were grippers from the get go. Ken started out with a 95ish accord, but was blazing fast. But when we were about to graduate he got himself a WRX (bug eye) and was even faster on the track. Jeggi started with a 95 accord that Rene was building up, but crashed it on the mountain pass and then stuck to the track. After Jeggi crashed his dad bought a DC5 Integra (RSX Type-s), and Jeggi was given an EP3 (Civic Si [the mini-mini van]). And our other teammate Jesse started life as a dragger with his 4-door EK civic, and eventually started going to autocrosses with us. Also during these times a good friend of Drew’s at the time, Ryan, has an amazingly built for the track DC2 (Integra) and was by far the person with the most money into his car at this time. But the awesomeness factor, in my opinion, was still dwarfed by Drew’s EF hatch.
So that was the background of how we all got together and our cars that we are associated with. Every now and then we would hold BBQs at my house to talk about our set-ups and our recent events that we had attended, and afterwards watch Speed Vision [Which has been replaced with Speed channel, aka NASCAR Channel] or possibly a new Option video. After one of these nights, or after a night of driving, Drew showed us this new sticker that he got, but it really wasn’t a sticker more like a magnet. And on this magnet [once he finds it I will take a picture and show you] had the words “Kin Tako” “Option” in the older style lettering, and had a picture of an octopus, an AE86 and a S13 tandeming around a turn. Neither of us had no idea what “Kin Tako” meant, but we were damned if we weren’t going to try to find out. I pulled up my Japanese-English dictionary and started to search for Octopus, because of the picture, and found its translation to be Tako. But we had no idea what the “Kin” meant. We were kicking around the idea of different words in front of Octopus. And I suggested Crazy Octopus, and with that Drew and I busted up laughing. And on that day Crazy Octopus! Was born.
The symbol is the closest representation, from memory, of the octopus that was on the magnet. Since I was the one to come about the name of Crazy Octopus! I decided to keep it for my own. But I never really sunk in until I got to college, and the reasons for why people call me that were really instated. We found out about a week after I came up with Crazy Octopus that the meaning of “Kin Tako” was Silver Octopus. In the early days of drifting Keiichi, Orido, and the other guy (we call his weasel) used to judge drifting by basis of sea animals; sea urchin, Jelly Fish, Squid, and Octopus [sea urchin the worst, octopus the best] or at least that is what I remember them to be… and the ranking of those would be bronze, silver, gold. There was a post about it on Club4ag somewhere, but it might be gone now.
-edited to fix pictures
So here is the story about the making of the Crazy Octopus!
I cannot start to talk about the symbol that you know as the Crazy Octopus! Until I first talk about how the name and eventually the symbol came about.
About 4 years ago in my senior year in high school a group of friends and I finally had decent cars to call our own. Some of us had been met during high school and others known since preschool. All of us had followed motor sports for quite some time, and we followed the usual groups of the sport; WRC, F1, and Le Mans. We were the kind of kids that talked about suspension geometry, tyre choices, cages design, chassis design, tuning, and the like. Our group has been together under the same name for 4 years now and so far only 1 person has left and no one, by our choice, has joined (yet. Right now I am trying to get an amazing driver in our group). You may have seen our name in my signature on the forums or saw it on my hood when I wrote about retro rides. The group’s name is “PaperCar” and the ltd. is there to show that we are a selective bunch of kids.
The original team called PaperCar started in the Philippines in the year 1984. Rene was the founding member and, to the best of my knowledge the leader, of the original team. And when he moved to the states he told the original PaperCar that he would carry on the legacy of the team to the states. This legacy came about through his son, Jeggi. By this time in our senior year all of us had been going to autocross events as often as they would come up, so we weren’t just some group of silly chaps claiming to be good. But that was only the start. Drew and I were completely in love with the WRC, and since sophomore year (1999ish) in high school we were in love with the idea of sliding our cars. So we developed our craziness through the twisty roads of Fallbrook and the surrounding areas. Drew has had quite a list of cars that I was infatuated with. During his high school career he had 3 EFs (old boxy hatch Civic Si) all with B16a2s and some amazing work done to them, all of which he did himself. His EFs were the reason for my love of the flat color. All of his Civics were flat black and were just raw. Then in the last days of our senior year he bought himself a S13 hatch (240sx) and has been with them ever since. Jeggi and Ken were grippers from the get go. Ken started out with a 95ish accord, but was blazing fast. But when we were about to graduate he got himself a WRX (bug eye) and was even faster on the track. Jeggi started with a 95 accord that Rene was building up, but crashed it on the mountain pass and then stuck to the track. After Jeggi crashed his dad bought a DC5 Integra (RSX Type-s), and Jeggi was given an EP3 (Civic Si [the mini-mini van]). And our other teammate Jesse started life as a dragger with his 4-door EK civic, and eventually started going to autocrosses with us. Also during these times a good friend of Drew’s at the time, Ryan, has an amazingly built for the track DC2 (Integra) and was by far the person with the most money into his car at this time. But the awesomeness factor, in my opinion, was still dwarfed by Drew’s EF hatch.
So that was the background of how we all got together and our cars that we are associated with. Every now and then we would hold BBQs at my house to talk about our set-ups and our recent events that we had attended, and afterwards watch Speed Vision [Which has been replaced with Speed channel, aka NASCAR Channel] or possibly a new Option video. After one of these nights, or after a night of driving, Drew showed us this new sticker that he got, but it really wasn’t a sticker more like a magnet. And on this magnet [once he finds it I will take a picture and show you] had the words “Kin Tako” “Option” in the older style lettering, and had a picture of an octopus, an AE86 and a S13 tandeming around a turn. Neither of us had no idea what “Kin Tako” meant, but we were damned if we weren’t going to try to find out. I pulled up my Japanese-English dictionary and started to search for Octopus, because of the picture, and found its translation to be Tako. But we had no idea what the “Kin” meant. We were kicking around the idea of different words in front of Octopus. And I suggested Crazy Octopus, and with that Drew and I busted up laughing. And on that day Crazy Octopus! Was born.
The symbol is the closest representation, from memory, of the octopus that was on the magnet. Since I was the one to come about the name of Crazy Octopus! I decided to keep it for my own. But I never really sunk in until I got to college, and the reasons for why people call me that were really instated. We found out about a week after I came up with Crazy Octopus that the meaning of “Kin Tako” was Silver Octopus. In the early days of drifting Keiichi, Orido, and the other guy (we call his weasel) used to judge drifting by basis of sea animals; sea urchin, Jelly Fish, Squid, and Octopus [sea urchin the worst, octopus the best] or at least that is what I remember them to be… and the ranking of those would be bronze, silver, gold. There was a post about it on Club4ag somewhere, but it might be gone now.
-edited to fix pictures