It’s been many many many years…

More photos HERE by @abolishcollective and @warrencito_lopez

Simply Clean was never supposed to become what it became. It wasn’t a business plan or some master vision — it was just me trying to find my place again. I’ve always been into cars, but it didn’t truly hit me until I moved to Las Vegas alone in 2007 and had to rebuild my life from scratch. I was offered an opportunity to work for my uncle’s new medical company, so I sold everything I owned in Orlando — including my 1988 Honda Civic with a JDM SOHC VTEC swap — and flew to Vegas. With no friends and just work, life felt empty. So when it was time to look for a car, I had to be strategic and find something cheap and fun to mod. A 2005 Scion xB caught my attention, and that’s when I found forums with threads about different modifications and people’s journeys building their xB’s.

After purchasing the car, I started going to local Scion meets at Sonic on Flamingo Rd across from the Palms Casino. That’s where I slowly started making friends for the first time in Vegas. I also found out that Scion, as a brand, hosted car shows just for Scion owners in different states. It blew me away because I had never heard of something like that before. Over the course of about a year and a half, we attended multiple events between California and Vegas. I even got to participate in a Scion commercial with other friends from Club xB and bB Squad. When it was time to move back to Orlando because of the 2008 market crash, I attended a few more Scion shows here in Florida, but eventually they faded out and never came back.

By 2009, the car scene was changing, and I started to get the itch to organize a meet for clean, OEM-plus style cars. I called it Simply Clean. Coming from the West Coast car scene and seeing how it operated, I knew Orlando didn’t have anything like it. A buddy of mine at the time and I bounced ideas around and decided to reach out to James from Deep Vision to see if he wanted to collaborate. The idea was simple: we’d bring the cars, and we’d host the event at his store, Reign. Deep Vision in the early 2000s was known for doing events geared toward the Asian community and car culture. Reign was their streetwear boutique with a parking lot that could hold about 60 cars. I spent a few weeks reaching out to people on forums, and on a freezing Sunday, January 10, 2010, over 110 cars from all over Florida showed up.

It was the first of its kind in Orlando, and I knew before it even happened that it was going to be special, so I dedicated all my time to it. I felt like my buddy at the time wasn’t as serious about Simply Clean as I was, so we eventually parted ways. The next Simply Clean was in November 2010 at Route 46 in Sanford, and that’s where SC really blew up. Social media wasn’t big yet, so Facebook and YouTube were how people found out once photos and videos started surfacing. From there, it began taking on a life of its own, and I was learning every step of the way. 11 events and thousands of people later, it turned into something I never imagined. I believed it could become a reputable meet for the local stance scene, but I had no clue people from all over the world would eventually fly into Florida every November just to experience what I built.

After Simply Clean 11 wrapped up in 2019, I was burnt out. I needed a break from organizing a major car event. I had done it for 10 straight years, and each one takes about six months of planning. I tell people it felt like giving birth every year, and the baby was Simply Clean. With the event being in Ormond Beach — a destination town — cars would take over the city at night with their own meets up and down the strip. It’s cool as long as everyone is respectful of properties, but once I started seeing videos of burnouts in the streets and hotels and Airbnbs getting trashed, I knew it was time to reevaluate. Simply Clean had grown bigger than me. It had grown bigger than what the venue could handle. I used to drop the flyer six months in advance, which gave people plenty of time to turn it into a vacation. It also didn’t help that the venue was open 24/7. We would stay awake for over 40 hours managing cars driving around the venue at all hours of the night just to keep things under control. It was exhausting, and it wasn’t fun anymore.

Then Covid-19 officially hit in March 2020, and everything shut down. I let it play out for about a month before deciding to cancel Simply Clean 2020. Honestly, it felt good. It felt good to slow down and not have to organize an event with so much uncertainty. And truthfully, even if Covid hadn’t happened, I was already planning to cancel. I needed a break. I was done with the venue and tired of social media. When you run a brand, you’re expected to always stay connected, but that can be draining. For years, I posted two to three times a day just to stay engaged, but eventually I didn’t care anymore. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to be home, spend quality time with my partner, and not feel tied to my phone. It was liberating. I did that for four years, and it was the best decision I made since starting Simply Clean in 2009. Money is cool, but at what cost if you’re not mentally happy?

After four years away from the car scene, the itch came back — but not in the same way as before. The scene is getting younger, and the new generation, constantly online, gravitates toward takeovers and clout. It feels like chasing attention sometimes matters more than the actual love of cars and community. That’s why I did Simply Clean Invitational in 2025 and made it invite-only. It was for car people who genuinely love their builds — not for clout or social media. It was amazing. It was refreshing. Everything was done behind the scenes. Car owners invited other car owners. Nothing was posted publicly. Two weeks before the event, we announced that Simply Clean was back — this time in Apopka — and by then all the cars and vendors were already locked in. It felt like a reunion of OG car people from the past 15 years. I knew going in that we wouldn’t pack the venue with spectators, but that wasn’t the point. It was about staying true to our roots and creating a space where car people could come together and celebrate the culture without the noise.

I don’t know what the future holds for Simply Clean as the world once knew it. I’m not even sure I want to host a 10,000-person show again. What I do know is this: I will always be a car guy, and I will always create spaces for car people — whether that’s 10,000 people or 100. Right now, smaller and more intentional feels right. It brings me back to how Simply Clean started — just a group of car people getting together to be around cars. No pressure. No noise. No clout. Just culture.