A look back, many years ago... Charm City VW

Back in the stone ages of 56k modems, showroom fresh Mk3 GTIs and tiny, tiny pictures, Blaksquirrel and I had (or should I say he had) a little website called Charm City VW. We even had stickers made up and everything. (and still have some left! I'm gonna rock one on the Mk3 at H2O) Josh was the man behind all the work, and probably about 90% of the pics, but I did contribute slightly. It's pretty hilarious to look back on it now...not only to see the sort of cars and mods that everyone was rocking (Jamex, hahahahahaaa) I recall that we were pretty much all about Performance VW, and to a lesser extent, The Golf, and it certainly shows with the content and sort of "angle" of the whole deal. I am proud to say that we had a pretty good look going on in general though, especially with Sean's Cabrio, Josh's GTi and my Rabbit GTI...

It really brought back some memories of hanging out at Loch Raven resevoir before it became overrun with idiots doing burn outs, and bigger idiots on street bikes doing wheelies with tons of familes around. I always felt a little guilty that what started as Josh, myself, Paul, Arlo, Jaime, Sean, Todd, Jared, Joey, and a few others, turned into this big unruly mob of people doing stuff that made it hard for everyone else to enjoy the area there by the water. I think when it started getting really out of hand was when Nudespeed (ha) started posting about it, and with VW Vortex becoming more popular, it was becoming easier to find like-minded people for get togethers. I haven't been there on a Sunday afternoon since 2004....I wonder if people still go there? Probably not.

Luckily Josh archived the whole site, and when I was over at his place a couple weeks back I had him dust it off and upload it to his server, so look around and enjoy! Be sure to check out the archives as well as the Loch Raven pics...and the show coverage was pretty awesome too if I don't say myself. Check out all the 90s style! Heheh. I'm glad we still have all that stuff kicking around. Hard to believe it was only 12-13 years ago...it certainly seems like things have changed leaps and bounds since then. 60mm was a huge drop, coilovers were unheard of (I imported some H&R coils from the UK for Waterfest '99 and that seriously impressed the judges (like wow...Coilovers, on a Mk1??) and engine swaps were something to get worked up about. Ah yes, the good old days....

Charm City VW

_WRS