Words by Loli Azuelo | Featured images by Rox Guzman: Phonix Photography
Preparation started for our Street Ignition Queens' marquee weeks before Showoff Saturday's Automotive Halloween Show at The Bazaar Event Space, Horningsea Park and it all came together on Saturday 2nd November.
Being Santa photography season at Azuelo Designs, my van was already stuffed with an ornamental 3 seater lounge prop that I cbf removing. As the saying goes "If you can't beat 'em..", so I filled the remaining spaces of my ride with the marquee, flags, spider-themed paraphernalia and lollies (that I promise I did not eat on the way there) and off I went.
Arriving at the gates, I was greeted by the Blacklist tent. After a short wait and a confirmation by the organiser Tori, I made my way into the event and noticed that one of our SiQueens Anna Gleeson, her partner James and her 'SKOOBY' Subie had already parked.
After a few moments of catching up, I realised we actually had a lot of work to do! Luckily not long after, SiQ NSW Representative Allison Quinn along with her friend Sam arrived in Allison's Subaru Forester GT and put us back on the job, giving insight as to where best to place the marquee and our ladies' rides - she's good like that, especially when the 2 hours sleep I had over the past few days from working the bar shift started creeping up on me.
Allison and Sam got to work with their Halloween boot masterpiece, when I began the task of removing all the things that I dragged into my boot earlier.
One by one, the ladies started arriving, Rox Guzman and Indy Parsons in hawkeye 'EZRA', Denver Nichols in her baby girl WRX and to mix up the Subie gang, Erin Avery and Maddy Anne in her Mitsu.
The girls helped out with setup and decorating our marquee while tending to their own vehicles and stepping back, looking at our fine work, I can say I was very impressed.
You can check out our complete setup in our video below.
The vintage lounge fit in just nicely amongst the webs and our 'spider chandelier' I'm pretty sure was the envy of all new home chandeliers. The intention of a Halloween photo booth came along very nicely.
Checking on the other ladies imaginative designs, I wish there was an award for 'Best dressed automotive community' as we would have ahem - killed it.
Speaking of killing 'IT' (see what I did there?), turning to Anna & James' ride, I nearly vomited a mix of fear and amazement with poor George being consumed by their Skooby clown.
With the simple touches of blood (aka water paint, that Anna doesn't actually recommend after discovering it's harder to take off than they first thought) running along the length of the car, red balloon drifting in the air, strategically placed body parts surrounding a single yellow raincoat devoured by the grill, the red Subaru badge and headlights made the final embodiment of what is IT. I was impressed. Anna is a lovely, quietly spoken girl. However, it's always the quiet one's we have to watch out for.
On the other side of our marquee, Allison and Sam were still on the grind with their Halloween boot spectacular, so I moved onto Erin's Pokemon inspired Mitsu.
In our SiQ Ladies Automotive Community days earlier, Erin had posted asking about the best way to turn her boot into a Pokeball. There were amazing responses from the ladies of the community (no wonder I love being a part of it!) trying to help Erin's idea come to life.
Unfortunately, time was not on her side and the Pokeball idea became a distant memory. The totally adorable Pokemon were still caught though and were happy to chill in the red Mitsubishi Ralliart boot (which actually worked well with the shape and colour of the tail-lights as the Pokeball still came to mind) for the remainder of the event.
On either end of our Street Ignition Queens marquee, Rox, Indy and Denver put extra effort into their own Halloween attire.
Arriving to the Halloween automotive show in unassuming every day wear, fixing the marquee I hear Rox calling me, asking if I needed help with the marquee. Turning around to respond, I'm faced with a complete transformation that still haunts me to this day.
Dressed in white scrubs and a Joker mask, Rox emulated a protestor in the recently released film The Joker. With only her eyes peering at me through the mask, it was hard to have a normal flowing conversation without me shuddering and telling her to "stop looking at me like that".
Little did we know, Rox's outfit coupled with her nonchalant way she slips in and out of the clown character, will cause havoc with unsuspected patrons throughout the evening (check out Denver's evidence video below).
Indy had a few ideas on what she was wearing for the Halloween event and opted on the day to don on a life-like full werewolf mask complete with green eyes and dipped her fingers in blood, running it all over her white tee to get that friendly "I literally just killed a guy and ate him for lunch, but you can still shake my hand because I'm approachable" kinda vibe.
With these two together constantly appearing in our peripheral vision, and then somehow just popping up out of nowhere and chatting away even though it looked like we had just stepped into a crime scene, made that day even more romantic.
When Denver pulled up to our display a little late, we forgave her since she drove nearly two hours away from Newcastle just to be with us ladies. She was worried in the upcoming days to her event as she wasn't too sure what she was going to wear but in the spirit of Halloween, managed to find the sexiest Snow White outfit and cover it with blood.
Her high heeled boots and white knee high stockings set it off just right and she was now known as Snow Red.
While the light breeze at the start of the event didn't to her short dress justice, she managed to keep it PG rated for the rest of the evening, strutting gorgeously around the event unbeknownst to the patrons the blood so innocently sprayed across her dress was that of all the 7 dwarfs. Note to self: Watch out for Snow Red aka Denver's smiling charm, or we might just be a victim too.
Heading back to check on Allison and her friend Sam, I wondered if she had completed her Halloween boot or did the clown, werewolf or Snow Red have their way with them.
Running to her Foz in panick (which was literally next to Denver's so I didn't have to run that far), I was in awe.
It was everything you could ask for in your worst nightmare if it involved a Subaru Forester boot: grave stones, skulls, spider webs.. However the contrast of the 'Keep Out' and 'Caution' tapes actually made it more enticing to reach in and grab the trick or treat lollies inside the crime scene / cemetery / voodoo extractor on wheels.
The effort they went to was an absolute amazement which might have something to do with Allison taking the official title as Best Dressed Ride, winning a $300 AutoCraze gift voucher to take home.
When the sun went down and the spider lanterns turned on, the night was definitely a scream of an event to die for, thanks to Blacklist Events.
There was a lot of laughter, scared children and candy comas between Maccas runs, and I would do it all over again with my truly dedicated #SiQueens.
More Halloween happy snaps & vids thanks to Rox, Allison, Denver and truly yours.