This is what Gridlife is all about. It’s not the cars, it’s not the competition, and it’s not the lap-times. Well, it is those things. But at the heart of it – it’s the people. Gridlife is nothing without its culture. Not matter how well it’s run or promoted, it’s nothing without that ‘tribe’ and/or camaraderie. The cars are just the machines. But it’s the people that give the cars life, breathe, character, style, and vibrance. The cars are a reflection of the people who poured into them. Ya’ll never forget that.

Photos by Rob Wilkinson

The photographer (Rob Wilkinson) is taking a photograph of a photographer (Sam Igel II)

Gridlife wrote-off Road Atlanta…

In 2019, the overbearing police presence at the Road Atlanta Gridlife festival was absolutely unjustifiable. For a little backstory – the Gridlife ‘festivals’ are round-the-clock events, so many spectators & drivers camp onsite. Rumor has it, that Road Atlanta management (at the time) gave Georgia police full authority over the festival, and it was abused. Without getting too deep into it, the police essentially enacted a lights-out curfew on paying/grown-adult drivers & spectators in 2019. And threatened to arrest people who were absolutely not being problematic… right goddam down to the Gridlife staff themselves. Needless to say – it was shockingly piss-poor policing. Gridlife left Road Atlanta pretty infuriated. And they didn’t come back… until now… alongside Formula Drift.

Welcome (back) to Atlanta…

Seeing Gridlife back at Road Atlanta just felt good. It put me back in touch with the energy of Gridlife. Beyond the spectrum of Gridlife itself… car culture is at a crossroads. Let’s get real for a second. Car culture lost its sweet spot. And I’m finding this same scenario in more & more of my passions/hobbies in 21st century adult life. Technology is killing the connection to our machines. And what’s killing car culture – is that it’s no longer about the experience… it’s about the specs/stats/flex. That opens the door for wieners, and it pushes the real ones out. It pushes out authenticity & the purity.

Car culture was never about buying a fast/cool car…

It was about building one. Putting in work to create something that could never be store-bought. I’m seeing the same disease/cancer play-out in the mountain bike world with E-bikes. The metaphor is: Mountain biking was cool, because the bike was nothing if you didn’t put in the work, sweat, & seat time. Then along came E-bikes, and it’s flipped the whole script. Now the bike compensates for the rider. It’s losing substance. Yet the industry tells people the lies they wanna hear in order to make the sale. And it hit me while I was climbing a hill sweating my face off the other day (watching the E-bikers pass me with their air conditioning lol)…. car culture has already fallen victim to this fate. It happened when the focus shifted from ‘man & machine’… to ‘man & convenience’. In many cases…

The true lifestyle began to fade away…

Car culture has been exploited by superficial influencers for likes, shares, subscriptions, & branding. They’re E-bikes. And it’s time we take it back to the roots of what car culture’s really all about. Let these photos be inspiration.