It was back in 2007, back when I was sort of shooting photographs of cars on the side as something out of curiosity, myself and a few friends were chatting about maybe doing some kind of a website to show what was going on in around the south east of Ireland. This got the wheels in motion and we started sort of brainstorming for ideas. The original idea was to do a website solely based on what was happening down in our area as it was quite a hot area for the Irish car scene with many builds, lots of illegal street racing and night time action on a regular.
Armed with the camera I was out shooting most night regardless just for something to do, looking back I wish I shot much more as right around this time is when MR recession hit and that sort of changed everything. Its crazy just how fast the way we view stuff on the internet has changed, when I first started this, I realised there was a massive gap in the Irish scene, no one was covering what was happening and showcasing it to the world. There was no website in Ireland that anyone could go to and look at a good cross section of Irish car culture.
Ireland was heavily dominated by forums, and each brand or scene sort of had its own little forum so the Irish car scene as a whole was sort of a mystery and it was quite frustrating pointing someone to a place where they could readily look at interesting stuff, because in fairness to Ireland at that time for such a small place the country was saturated with Interesting cars. Not a night goes by without something interesting driving past and I really just wanted to capture all this and build a website for it so it would all have a home.
So the original idea was scrapped and we started Juicebox, the site would be Irelands version of all the other sites that were going on else where in the world at the time, a place where if someone wanted to show someone what was happening on our Emerald isle, this would be the place. A clean crisp platform with somewhat decent imagery, no nonsense and maybe a few funny articles and a little information on rare choice bits written in a very simple extremely casual manner.
In the last few years people have really figured a lot of shit out. There was days when many people had no idea what was on their cars. This was another use for the site, naming parts in features and other various articles and hopefully trying to point out what works on cars and why a certain style wins over others, people started to know what was what and it was both good and bad, good for the scene as a whole but bad for people who used to snatch up amazing deals!! It seems those days are long gone…
The site started a trend too with many other sites popping up over the last few years with the same ideas, along with this Paddy was always plugging away over at Speedhunters when he had to chance to bring the Irish scene to a massive larger audience and it was always received quite well and still is…It was nice to finally see the Irish scene get the exposure it deserved.
These days the site may not be as relevant as we are all obsessed with getting the information much faster, one picture one like type situations on Facebook and Instagram for instant gratification, these days every Joe can set up a Facebook page and snap images of whatever, whether it be good or bad and it has happened and will keep happening. This is good too, its nice that anyone from around the world can check out what’s going on in Ireland, because whether we like to say it or not, it has a pretty intense and very interesting little car scene for such a small country, and most of it went uncovered for a long long time. I love this little country and even though people may not really care too much about articles and features anymore, or the rambles we put on here, we will keep doing it for the love…
I hope you have enjoyed the site over the years, its been a blast meeting people and shooting pics and Ill try to keep it going as long as it stays relevant, it has expanded to a few people who share the same vision and idea and has always been an organic growth, a little more emphasis on style as at the end of the day its what really sets a car apart from the others, to us aesthetics will always be the icing on the cake, the choice rare bits, a tweaked formula, a nod to the culture we borrow and purchase from that has been around much much longer than many of us who are into this.
So much has changed but our mission has always been the same…
To show case Irelands finest… Quality over quantity….
– Neil
