In the 2017 review I mentioned that I was now writing for the magazine and how it came to be, but I’ll recap that here for you all as well.
Alberta Rides is a quarterly publication that covers the automotive scene in our province. Traditionally its content was more geared towards the classic and antique crowds, leaving out much of the ‘new generation’ of car enthusiasts and as such, it wasn’t really read by us. My mother (regular readers of officialTHREETWENTY will know she’s quite active in the community as well with her ’67 Thunderbird and ’93 240SX) had begun writing for them a bit earlier and found out that they wished to diversify the magazine by starting to feature more of the ‘tuner’ side of things. She naturally asked me if I’d be interested in taking on the job and I immediately took it!
Last year I had a handful of articles published in the magazine and also provided photos for others, and of course will be continuing to provide content for them this year. In submitting articles to the magazine there are usually photos left over (the layout artist chooses from the selections I send in based on available space and how he wishes to arrange everything) so in anticipation of having extra pictures from upcoming articles, I have started a new category here on officialTHREETWENTY, simply titled ‘Alberta Rides Magazine’. Along with the extra photos I’ll include any other comments or notes I wish to share, similar to what I do already with the Project ST/RS posts.
As for what I have already sent in, in terms of events Driven Calgary had a feature in an earlier issue and I also made sure to submit one on Show Your Ride for Brandon as I felt it was an important one to share. I’ll be sending in stories and photos from events in 2018 as well, so if your car is not seen in the coverage of an event here, it may be in print instead!
Along with shows I’ll naturally also be looking for cars to feature, and I decided to kick things off with Alex Markovic’s ITR. All kinds of builds will be making their way onto the pages to best represent what we do with our cars, but rather than immediately feature something GT-winged and Rocket-Bunnied, I figured it’d be better to start off with a vehicle that would be ‘understood’ by a wider audience and then work up to the crazier, more in-your-face builds. Given that Alex’s ITR was a restoration, I knew immediately that it’d be the perfect one to highlight first.
As for where you can get copies of Alberta Rides or read these articles, print copies are distributed to car clubs across the province (some can usually be found at the Glendeer Circle A&W, hint hint) and given to us writers, while digital copies are available at svaalberta.com. I look forward to being able to provide more content for the magazine over the coming seasons, and hope that all together it will help the magazine continue to grow and represent the entire spectrum of automotive enthusiasts here in Alberta.
And with that, I should get back to working on my next article for the magazine – a feature on LOWCALS. Watch for that!
-Bill