I meant to write this a while ago, but never did because I never knew whether this should be seen by the public. As you all know, I drive the VR3 which carries various amounts and types of street cred. In the VR3 I can dress like a rock star and be confident that the VR3 fits the rock star image.

So then the other day my mom comes round and says I should take her car for a drive, because I always complain how bad it is. It is a Fiat Palio 1200, which means it is the slowest car on the planet. I don’t particularly like it and don’t like the fact that my mom drives it. Anyway, I can’t change her mind, and she digs the car.

So she kind of double, or even triple dared me to drive it the other day. I did not go far, just to the Shell petrol station, and it turned out to be the worst decision of my life. I was naturally dressed like a rock star, as always, with a Levi’s T shirt with some sort of skull on it and a cowboy hat on the skull. Paired with my Levi jeans( 507’s, from my school days, legendary, serious street cred) and Lee Cooper biker jacket, I could have fitted in anywhere with a rock vibe.

So forgetting that I was dressed like a rock star, I got into the purple Palio. What I should have done was picked up a hand knitted jersey from my gran, put on a straw Greg Norman hat, thrown on some tweed trousers and arrived in the Palio. Nobody would have noticed a thing. But my dress was so far from the cars persona, I stood out like a mathlete at a frat party.

Grown men were seen crying.

Anyway, I won’t even go into details on the looks I got at the petrol station. People thought I had lost my mind, and I even thought I heard a child scream. Until I realised it was my own mind screaming at me, telling me that my style points were dropping at a frantic pace.

I mean, just have a look at that photo and tell me you are not embarrassed for me? Not to mention that the Palio is the WORST handling car I have driven…ever. The understeer nearly had me wrecking the car coming out the first bend after leaving the house. Then there is the body roll, the odd design that leaves you leaning forward to see over the dash and all the pillars(Are they called C-pillars or something) to see whether there are any cars coming from your left hand side at stop streets. And the rattling noise when you turn. The car is horrendous, and definitely not recommended by me at all.

My mom is convinced the Palio is blue. I’m convinced it’s purple. It’s like a kid eating liquorice, then drinking Fanta grape and having a little vomit in the flowerbeds. That’s the colour I am thinking of.

Talking of cars though, apparently word on the street is that Jerry is retiring The Bomber. Not sure if it’s true, but if it is we will show you the new one on these pages.

Enjoy the weekend, I know I am loving it! Layo and Bushwacka were insane last night and we have a couple of stories to tell and pictures to post.

Wicked cool.

Sean Lloyd

Editor

And as we all know, some of you will be going out to get phuza drunk. I however, am staying home tonight, so enjoy Cape Town everyone, but I have been invited to a “Madhatters Tea Party” in Hout Bay on Saturday, however I doubt there will be any tea on this occasion. I need to save my strength. How crazy is that? A Madhatters Tea Party, at 11am on a Saturday morning! It should be excess at the highest level! I hope the weather is nice, and I wish you could all be there.

On the topic of going out and drinking, it’s obvious that we don’t want you to drink and drive. Which is why my friends always organise lifts way before we go out. However, if you cannot do this, help will soon be on it’s way.

The Bang Bang Club in town, and Wadda in Claremont, have teamed up with transport service provider( I suppose we could say ‘lift club’ here. Or something to that effect) Rikki’s to make sure their customers get home safe. From the newsletter I received, I have learnt that at the entrance to these clubs, there will be a phone booth installed and it will be supervised by managers, staff and bouncers to assist you in any way possible. This booth will obviously call Rikki’s, so you can arrive home debauched, but safe.

I think this is the greatest idea since the invention of the nightclub! I must be honest, of late I have heard of way too many accidents involving drunk drivers and it’s just not worth going out and driving. Rather have a few drinks, and then chill in the back of a cab while you get driven home! Rikki’s will also offer a service where they will fetch you at home and drop you at the club.

Does life get any better? I don’t think so. These services are not yet available, but they will soon be. I think it’s great that nightclubs are taking an active approach to making sure their clientèle get home safely, and I’m sure these services will see other clubs taking the same approach in Cape Town. Well at least I hope so.

Other than that, party wise, Tiger Tiger was awesome on Tuesday, thanks to Marcell and JJ for the drinks, I had an AWESOME time. I think the whole town knows I had an awesome time. Then next weekend, the 15th September, we are going to see Layo & Bushwacka(Fresh from Ibiza, London and Berlin) so that could be a good party. The details of the venue and times are still under cover, but we will let you know how the party goes with photos and all the usual stuff. Actually come to think of it I hope I crack the invite! Maybe getting a little ahead of myself here…

Tomorrows Friday, the weekend will hit hard, so enjoy the rest of the day.

Oh and Wadda are hosting a Playboy Mansion party on Saturday night. I can’t make it as the Tea Party apparently extends into the night. But girls if you are going, dress like bunnies. And guys…you know what to do. Silk robes just like Hef himself.

You stay classy planet earth.

Sean Lloyd

Editor

I don’t know anything about this, but apparently word is that The Bomber is back. Got sent this photo today via my electronic mail. If you see Jerry D in The Bomber, take a photo and throw it our way.

And then it was gone…

Sean Lloyd

Editor

You might recall a while back we took a helichopper trip with our pilot Terry Redman to go check on the progress of the new stadium for the 2010 World Cup. Obviously we did not just check on that, and we took a little fly around the coast of Cape Town as well. I promised over the next few weeks I would post those photos, and that’s what I’m doing!

On a bit of a side note here I nearly had a heart attack today until I realised what I heard must have been a joke. I was chatting to someone in between trying to make inroads into a new article I’m writing, and they said:

“So have you been watching Idols at all?”

Excuse me? Did that just happen? Surely you are Ricky Gervais? Because that is hilarious!

What do I look like, a complete neanderthal? You must surely be joking when you ask me this?!

I must say that is funny. Hilarious even. Just NEVER ask it again if you actually want to live in Cape Town because I will have you deported.

I would sooner be lighting a candle, and pouring the molten wax into my ear than be subjected to that ear shattering noise M-Net like to refer to as “Idols”

Give me a break.

So to take your mind off that, here are the photos of the SLXS day at the airstrip:

Just chilling.

The University of Cape Town. Now kids why don’t you just hit those books while we fly over Clifton. Fantastic.

Clifton 4th beach. How we here at SLXS cannot wait for summer!

More photos to come still!

Sean Lloyd

Editor

You would never think that driving could actually help the planet out a little bit. But it seems to a certain degree your driving habits can help reduce the pollution your car throws out into the atmosphere. There are the obvious tricks of not revving your car at traffic lights and not racing from traffic light to traffic light. Now there is a new trick, so says Sean Lloyd, editor of SLXS, a Cape Town based web magazine.

Sean goes on to explain ” So I was chilling the other day in the VR3 on my way through the suburb of Claremont. I was driving behind this Mercedes SLK and I was about to go through a set of traffic lights when they the lights went orange. I thought there was plenty of time still to get through and so did not even consider touching the brakes. The Mercedes in front of me however decided to stick to the rules, by the book, and stopped in a rather dramatic fashion. I was then forced to cut into the left hand lane in order to get a clear passage through the traffic lights. I went through safely, and the Mercedes sat idling at the robots”

Sean now pauses, in a moment of great reflection, realising that what he is about to say might help save the planet in a small way.

“So I began to think. It hurt a little at first but I broke through the pain barrier. If at every single traffic light, when it went orange, two cars snuck through, this would mean that they would not waste petrol sitting at that traffic light idling. If this happened at every traffic light in the world, millions of litres of petrol would be saved. So we should all drive with a little more edge and flair. It’s the least we can do for this beautiful planet of ours.”

Sean now takes a moment again to reflect, on a life of excess.

“We really can do better for our planet. We just need a little common sense”

And this is so true. We don’t have to drive by the rules all the time. It’s not even breaking the rules. It’s twisting them ever so lightly.

Let’s save the planet. Let’s not be boring, slow, painful drivers.

As Sean says “There is nothing more frustrating than when someone stops on a dime at the slightest flicker of orange on the traffic lights. It’s so annoying having to wait for another light change, when you could have just gone right through it without any hassle”

Wise words.

Wise words indeed.

Sean Lloyd

Editor 

The VR3 will NOT accept regular fuel. JET-A-1 is an acquired taste.

Just a little note to tell you what is currently happening. I took this photo today of the VR3’s preferred choice of fuel.

But wait…

Where would I get a photo like this?

At the airport perhaps? What does this mean? It can only mean one thing!

Cape Town International were graced with our presence today.

Personally, I would keep an eye out on this site over the next week as the story evolves right before your eyes.

For today we were Top Gun. Iceman. Maverick. Wingman.

Alpha Bravo Charlie V check it

Sean Lloyd

Editor

DEFINITELY a rental

Yes I have been gone a while, but great work takes time my loved ones. While magazines have editors, sub editors, fashion police, writers and all that jazz, I run this joint by myself. I am a busy man, believe it or not. I have just finished a little piece on Claremont Main Road, and am just waiting for permission to use some photos from various websites dedicated to these apartments. So here is my newest piece…enjoy. While I suppose I should not recommend this to my readers, I think it is still worth a mention. It’s the art of gently abusing what is not yours.

The whole trend started a couple of years back when I knew some people working for a production company and I used to see them driving around in rental cars like Mercedes Sprinters and the like. Then one day I decided to go for a drive around in the car and realised that it was in pretty bad shape. Pieces of panelling were falling off and the cars gearbox was sounding a little rough. I also heard stories of abuse happening with these cars such as driving on dirt roads not meant for these cars abilities.

I always wondered why people treated rental stuff so badly. And that’s when one of the drivers introduced me to the phrase:

“Don’t be gentle, it’s a rental!”

And at other times these drivers were also heard to say “What’s the difference between a rental and a four by four?”

“What?” Is what you should naturally ask.

“A rental is a REAL four by four!”

And ever since then I have had this urge to rent stuff and just abuse it. I’m still quite keen on hiring a car, then taking out the maximum insurance and then taking it on a destruction derby trip up to Hermanus and literally hitting every single street pole on the way up there. Maybe even on the way back ramp it off Sir Lowrys pass. You know…just go completely crazy! Take it for a bit of Colin McRae rally action through some vineyards on the way.

But due to the fact that SLXS is the home of excess, you also want to give the car back to the rental company in style. I have devised a plan in my head that is so outrageous that it tends to have amusing results. What I would do is go past the rental place early on the morning that I need to deliver the car. I mean really early. Like 5am. You will find out why now. You then drive around the corner and walk back to the front of the agency, with a couple of 5 litre bottles of cooking oil and spill oil in the road to make it nice and slippery. Get it slippery like an ice rink, to prepare for the delivery of the rental. You need to take this abuse to the absolute limit.

You want to spill the oil at 5am, to allow it to seep into the tar, and also no one is going to actually clean it up at this time. Especially not if it’s a Monday morning!

Then say the car has to be back by 10am. You must take it back at 7am so that no one will have cleaned the road yet. Just before delivering the car you would want to make a test run past, to make sure some of the guys are at work, preparing for the day. This is the best time for this trick because they will not officially be open yet, and won’t have customers to attend to. So they can focus their full attention on the terror that is about to be unleashed outside.

For the delivery, you should be at the end of the road waiting in the beast of a rental car, revving it to the redline, making sure the engine is properly spent. Because it is no use having wrecked the body, but not the engine. You want to make sure that you have got the most from the money you paid for the insurance.

So here is what you do:

Start revving the car, to the redline and beyond. At this point, the bodywork will be looking completely debauched from hitting lamp posts and ramping the car off various sidewalks etc on your Hermanus trip.

Let the clutch out quickly, so you wheelspin off the line, leaving a trail of smoke and absolutely trashed tyres. You literally want chunks of rubber to be flying off the tyres and hitting pedestrians on the side of the road. You want complete mayhem and carnage. You want it to look like a war zone, only worse.

Then get the car up to about 80km/hr before you get to the oil that you have conveniently smeared outside the rental agency in the morning.

What you want to do as you hit the oil is to steer to the left or the right, while pulling the handbrake up. This way, your car will be sideways, sliding through the oil and you will have a massive smile on your face. Next up you want the car to be drifting backwards so that when you pass the rental agency, you can give the manager a thumbs up, while he sees his car meeting a tragic death. The look of absolute shock on his face right now will be priceless! Maybe even set a friend up with a camera, to get a shot of his face, for the next Mastercard “Priceless” campaign. Now the car will be backwards and you will want to steer a little bit to the left or right, in order to make sure that the car once again is sideways.

You will soon find yourself running out of oil on the road, and as the car is sideways, this will make for magnificent results! The car will come off the oil, onto the dry road, it will gain traction and you will find the car flipping over several times! The sound of metal crunching into hard tar will make for a mind blowing experience, like a Quentin Tarantino gore-fest of metal.

The problem here is that, just because the car has crashed, this does not mean that the engine is going to be wrecked! So as you feel the car gaining traction on the dry road, you want to put the clutch in and put your foot on the accelerator HARD! This way,when you begin to go into the fourth or fifth flip, you should hear a loud bang, as the pistons shear off in dramatic fashion. The manager of the the rental company will see a spectacular sight, as white smoke shoots out of the exhaust and he sees his car meet an untimely end. The car will now look like a piece of tin foil as it has been completely obliterated.

At this point, the car should be slowing down, to a gentle roar of broken metal and pain. Hopefully the car will land on it’s roof and you will exit, wearing your tweed suit, with the papers of the rental contract in your hand.

As you walk into the rental agency you will hear the manager shouting

“Holy mother of $&^*! Are you insane child? Do you realise what you have fu#^%&* done? F%$#!”

That’s when you pull out the papers of the contract you signed, and say:

“Sorry sir we signed the full insurance, sorry for you!”

The manager will shout:

“F%$^ child you’re pathetic!”

You reply:

“No, you’re pathetic!”

You then calmly reach into your pocket, take the keys out, and toss them to the manager, and finish off with the classic line:

“See you later, alligator”

You also want to do this to a car like a BMW, because wrecking a Datsun does not have the same effect. You want to TOTAL something that you know is going to cost the company lots of money. But you want to completely wreck it. You know when you delete a file off your computer, that it goes into the recycle bin? Well this car will not be going to the recycle bin. You want to send it to the HELL BIN! You want to smash it into a million pieces. It’s literally the most fun you can have with a small amount of money. I checked the local Avis website, and for one day I can rent an Audi A4 for R720. Sometimes you will spend that on a night out, and that is not nearly as fun as taking a car to the wrecking crew! Obviously it will be more with full insurance, but it still comes in at a bargain.

Well done! You have now been introduced to the SLXS art of renting a car. If the manager asks anymore questions just say:

“But Sean always tells me ‘Don’t be gentle, it’s a rental!”

And walk off, knowing that you are the coolest person on the planet.

You win

That is how you rent a car!

Don’t even get me started on what to do with a rental house…

Please note: I take no responsibility for damage to people or cars from actions undertaken after reading this article and in no way do I endorse the actions I have written about. It is merely an idea. An idea in my head.My crazy head.

Be careful out there

Sean Lloyd

Editor

As you will all know, The Bomber is one of Cape Towns most feared vehicles.

So it was with a slight chuckle that it’s pilot, Jerry D, let me know about 30 minutes ago that he had received another speeding fine. Not that we would say you must speed, it’s dangerous and all…but with The Bomber you hardly notice you are speeding. It feels like you are doing 40km/hr and you are actually doing 300km/hr.

Anyway, the photo above is what most people fear. You will regularly see The Bomber coming down a road and suddenly all other cars in that road will park, or take a turn off into a side road. This is also the photo that all speeding cameras and traffic cops fear the most…

You will no doubt come to see this sight in Cape Town. You can stare, it’s cool. Just give it some space and a bit of respect and you should get by just fine.

The Bomber commands respect in this city, and that’s what I always give it

Respect!

Sean Lloyd

Editor

Cape Town’s most feared vehicle

The Bomber holds a special place in our hearts as it replaced one of the lands most notorious vehicles, The G-Ride. The G-Ride was on old Volkswagen Beetle and it had made many trips up to Namibia in it’s day and was truly spectacular. It was as relaxed driving slowly past Cape Town’s pristine beaches as it was clocking 120km/hr on the freeways. It was also known to kick through the sand dunes in Namibia and had quite a reputation. Unfortunately it became too old and we were tired of getting stuck on the side of the road on our way out to various excursions. So it was retired, sold for R5000. However, it was a priceless car and we had many good times in it. I was personally sad to see it go but when the replacement came, it was soon forgotten. It was probably best known for it’s paint job, that was done by hand, with spray cans, up in the sandy abyss that is Namibia.

A few upgrades were done to The Bomber. Jerry added a tint to the windows to give it an air of mystery. A huge sub was added and it’s actually too excessive for the size of the car, but that’s how you roll when you write on the life of excess. The final addition was to add some Yokohama S-Drive tyres and these have definitely given the car the edge it needed. It is impossible to wheel spin the car, you can’t lose control, and they just look fast. The Bomber is known to roll between Durbanville (The Ville), Namibia and the suburbs of Rondebosch, Claremont and generally anywhere in Cape Town. It is a noteworthy addition to the roads of Cape Town and if you blink you might miss it. No…if you blink you will miss it.

You will see us using this car when we need a turn of speed, some savvy style, or just need to cruise to the shop like rock stars.

The Bomber is a proud addition to our current fleet of vehicles.

The Bomber and it’s enigmatic pilot- Jerry D

Sean Lloyd

Editor

Oh look, one extra seat! No space for The Editor then, Charlie V? Please also note Charlie V in the back left, laughing arrogantly as he knows that he has once again left me land bound.

Being of quite a pedigree, myself and the SLXS team don’t only resign ourselves to one form of transport. We obviously make loads of use of the now infamous VR3 and you will soon be hearing of The Bomber and The Benz. I also like to cycle my Kona mountain bike around Tokai forest, and not too long ago I found myself taking a train trip to The Brass Bell in Kalk Bay.

However, we would not be the home of excess if we were to resign oursleves to just travelling by land. We also find ourselves up high, with the birds, in the skies of Cape Town. We literally have Cape Town covered, and you can’t go anywhere without us not being there or not having been there. So it was with some nostalgia that Charlie V was scrolling through some old photos on his laptop while we sat in my lounge watching Top Gun. The lounge doubles as the office/bar/entertainment section. So while we sat there watching Iceman, Goose and Maverick battling in the skies and saying various alarming things such as “I’m too close for missiles, I’m switching to guns!” and the captain shouting “Son, your ego is writing cheques your body cant cash!” we found some old photos of Charlie V’s day at the airstrip.

I was stunned though when I saw a photo of The Green Point Stadium from up in a helicopter. As you know, the stadium has now been knocked down so that a bigger, better one can replace it for the 2010 World Cup, which is going to make Cape Town even better than it already is. It’s unbelievable that this place is going to go up another notch, I can’t quite get my head around that yet. It’s the city of dreams, the place I call home and the place I roam.

So anyway, I saw this photo of the stadium and asked Charlie V when it was taken. Charlie casually said “Don’t you remember, that was when we watched the Coca Cola Colab concert last year? Metallica and all those bands played”

Um…right…ok…let me get around this.

So while Charlie V was messing about in the sky, I was sitting down in the stadium, panting like a tired dog, sweating like I was stuck in the Sahara, and Charlie V was just having a merry go round Cape Town in the helicopter. Right, what is wrong in this equation?

I was not in the helicopter!

“Yeah you should have told me about that hey, I thought you were part of my entourage. You know, the four of us do everything together” I said, with the look of a sad little deer.

“Yeah but there was no space, it was also a last minute plan”

Well I tell you what, next time if you can’t fit the whole SLXS entourage in the helicopter, then don’t go! Or get another two or three helicopters. We can’t run the home of excess like this. We cannot go on like this, we are losing sight of the whole dream if we don’t take the whole entourage with!

Anyway, I forgave Charlie V and let him off. This time. Next time he will not get off lightly at all.

So basically what we see in these photos is a photo of Charlie V in the Robertson R44(Think this is correct, Charlie V has a habit of mixing things up) helicopter. Please also note that I am missing from this photo. Yes, while he was having the time of his life, I was waiting in the Green Point stadium waiting for bands like Seether and Metallica to play.So he went for a lovely ride, and then later on came to watch the concert. Tough life.

I must stress that the whole time he was flying, I was sweating profusely, like I was coming off some sort of insane drug addiction. Like Hunter S Thompson sweated while going through Las Vegas.

The other photo is of Charlie in front of a Harvard, quite an intense looking plane. I’m thinking of calling Charlie V a naval aviator, in tribute to our men from Top Gun.

Charlie V with the Harvard-Please note the arrogant smile as if to say “Where are you Mr Editor?!”

Obviously the photo from the sky is of the stadium. You will see me down there somewhere. Sweating. Swearing. Wondering why I, as the editor of this whole thing, as the captain of the ship, as the pilot of this plane, as the master of disaster, as the king of bling, was stuck down there by myself, alone and wondering “Where is Charlie V? He is late for the concert.”

The Green Point stadium from up in the chopper. This stadium no longer exists, making way for a 2010 World Cup Stadium

I also wanted to be doing flips in the sky. Did no one even consider me? I wanted to be like Tom Cruise. I wanted to be in the sky. I wanted to feel like a bird. I wanted to be wearing Ray Ban aviators, a leather jacket, a crisp white Dockers T-shirt, a nice pair of indigo Ernest Sewn jeans and an arrogant look on my face.

I wanted to, after the flight, get on my motorbike like Tom Cruise. At this point, an absolute stunner of a girl, who had ignored me all these previous years, would run up to my bike, wanting to chat. Wanting to rekindle the romance(That was never there). Wanting to just love me. I would be way too arrogant for this.

She would be shouting in my ear “Sean. Sean! SEAN!”

I would just continue revving my bike to the red line, and I would then cup my hand to my ear, shout “I CAN”T HEAR YOU!” and take off into the sunset, leaving her dream shattered.

That’s what I wanted. And that’s not what I got. I suppose you win some and you lose some.

Thats the respect I get for being the leader of this rat pack.

Sean Lloyd

Editor