Category Archives: Zen Garage

Monday Fundays

Posted on 26 May, 2014 by Justin Fox

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Skinnie Minnie and Fatty Boomsticks

Posted on 17 May, 2014 by Justin Fox

f4fat

porsches_zengarage

gt2

911shorty

200000

Skinnie Minnie and Fatty Boomsticks! A couple of 911’s rocked up to Zen today. A fat GT2 replica and a gorgeous 912 shorty.

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On Mondays the Zen shop in Leichhardt is shut, on our day off we like to go on adventures. All plans when out the window when Robbie (Zen’s shop manager) rocked up at my place, from there we got a call from a mate who needed help with registering his car. Off we were to Chatswood. Adventure Time!

Miserable weather, but hey, Robbie’s E30 is a lovely place to be.

Spotted a Porters across the road from the RTA. Ducked in looking for a vintage bottle of my fave red. Scored big time!

We spotted these re-release Ninja Turltes at Toys R Us.

Robbie made a bee line right for the Hotwheels section and boom, what a deal!

Nice choices huh? Dave chose a good time to start his first collection.

A small donation got me a balloon (which I forced Dave to carry around for the rest of the day haha).

Gundam poster outside this shop (Hobby Z) said it all.

Rad!

Very cool.

We were super tempted to buy a rocket (and everything else in the store pretty much!).

Spotted up high on top of some shelves.

Z-Tune!

Mini-z track which you can hire.

Tabi! Traditional Japanese socks! Next door was Daiso Japan, a store where everything on sale is $2.80.

Strange and wonderful.

Ear muffs?

Robbie cleaning up.

Dat Purple Drank!

Feeding the birds at Nick’s place.

Nike.

Those God rays.

Cruising.

Back at the Bra.

Dave stole my lighter at some point, he swore it was his, turns out we both had brown bic lighters haha.

They tell you never to open them, but we pretty much pushed Dave to crack open his Bozo car.

And ooooh daym! These little cars just come to life when you take them out of the box!

SO AWESOME!

YEW!

We took the EF out too, such a fat little thing!

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The Death of Facebook

Posted on 3 April, 2014 by Justin Fox

11 Million reach/week.

Facebook have killed the reach on commercial pages, and are now forcing page owners to pay to get their posts out in front of their fans.

About a month ago the Zen Garage Facebook Page saw massive spikes in reach. We were reaching 10 million people a week (!), and our likes were going up 1000 a day. A lot of others were experiencing something similar. I even witnessed people who had no interest in Facebook at all, all of a sudden become Facebook addicts (who else doesn’t find getting a billion likes and shares on a post you make a lot of fun?).

Then, even quicker than the reach came, it died and we literally went from millions of reach a week back to 100,000 reach a week. This happened over a week. Our likes though, for reason started to ramp up and went from 1k a day to 2k a day then just a few days ago that too died in dramatic fashion. Someone at Facebook turned something off as we went from 2k likes in one day to no likes at all on one day, then 3 likes the next day and only around 80 likes a day right now.

To put things into perspective: Zen’s Facebook Page was getting 2k likes a day organically, and now it’s getting none, and if I pay Facebook for more likes it costs $50 a day for an estimated 200 likes a day. Get fucked.

I’ve been somewhat proud of the social media marketing skills I’ve developed over the past few years. Building communities is what I’m best at and Facebook has been one of the largest “new” tools I’ve invested a lot of time and work into, but I just can’t help but feel absolutely ripped off. This is phishing at it’s worst. I understand that Facebook has to make money, but it’s how they’ve gone about it that’s wrong.

Honest truth is I’ve been dreading the thought of looking back over the past few years of my life and realising that I spent all of it on Facebook. That’s been a very real fear of mine for the past couple of years, perhaps I should feel lucky I’ve only really lost 2 years to Facebook, and not a whole lot more.

I know what I have to do moving forward. It involves a whole lot of work fucking harder, just like I did in the old days. Am I bitter? A bit, but I’ve got no one to blame but myself really.

Posted in Design, Zen Garage | 5 Comments

Shoot with Christine Joy Somera

Posted on 31 March, 2014 by Justin Fox

Spent my Monday funday with gamer and Star Wars fanatic Christine Joy yesterday. Had initially planned to maybe shoot her out at Cockatoo Island, but decided to stay in my comfort zone, literally, by having a lazy day shooting her at home.

Really happy with the results. Just the right amount of light (it was on and off all day) and little Christine (she’s tiny!) was such a pleasure to hang with.

Posted in House, Pets, Zen Garage | 1 Comment

19th Biennale of Sydney

Posted on 26 March, 2014 by Justin Fox

Braved the rain and checked out the 19th Biennale of Sydney at Cockatoo Island today with Mimi. Full feature on Zen Garage: http://zengarage.com.au/2014/03/19th-biennale-of-sydney

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Geedup x Zen Garage

Posted on 21 March, 2014 by Justin Fox

It’s here! The result of our collab with Geepdup. A long sleeve T that’s just as home at a track day as it is on the street.

Model: Bettina Banks
Stylist: Melanie Fernandez
Photographer: Selectnine

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Red Lantern On Riley

Posted on 19 March, 2014 by Justin Fox

Last night the Zen Crew checked out Red Lantern on Riley. Celebrity Master Chef and Restaurateur Luke Nguyen’s second Red Lantern restaurant (the original still running on Crown St in Surry Hills).

More specifically we spent the entire night in the Red Lily Cocktail Bar out the back of the restaurant. A small but racy space with wooden stools and a marble bar. Our bartender Ken was an amazing man and had us exchanging pot shots all night. We pretty much tried every cocktail on the menu, all of which were amazing discoveries, we also had most of the ‘bar food’ menu which was next level and had some of us saying that it was the best bar food we’ve ever had.

We got to briefly meet Head Chef Mark Jensen who’s the co-owner and brother-in-law, and his wife Pauline (Luke’s sister) ran us through every dish that came out. Amazingly Luke was also in the house as he was serving dinner to 2 lucky winners of a competition he ran where the winners were flown first class from anywhere in the world to have dinner with Luke at Red Lantern on Riley! In between keeping the winners entertained Luke came back to the bar to hang out with us more than a few times during the night (he’s a champ, as down to earth as they come, we’re all converted!).

Ved took a lot of shots. I’ll be writing up a full feature for Zen Garage soon!

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Jamboree Sydney

Posted on 15 March, 2014 by Justin Fox

Serg and Rob.

The view from our Zen Stand. Amazing! The grand stand on the right and the strip on the left.

The Zen Stand.

Wouldn’t be Jamboree without a Bikini Comp!

Schembri!

Zen Sponsored drivers Schembri and Jabbit of Blaze Unit going off as usual.

Attended my first Jamboree yesterday. We were given the primo position for our Zen Stand, right at the top, overlooking the drag strip. Was a fast paced event, the action on the drag strip was amazing, so many 6 second passes! The drift shows really broke up the day too, probably the closest the crowd has gotten to drift action in some time.

Unfortunately it rained at around 4pm and that sent everyone packing, we packed up and bailed, but found out afterwards that the rain stopped and racing re-commenced at 7pm! Shame to miss the finals, there’s always next year though!

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LOST: Leichhardt Open Studio Trail 2014

Posted on 8 March, 2014 by Justin Fox

LOST (Leichhardt Open Studio Trail) is an event held in conjunction with Art Month each year in March. During this time artists studios throughout the local area open their doors to the public and Zen Garage was on the map!

Lost Maps showing all the open studios in Leichhardt.