Cadillacs & Coffee
Cadillacs and Coffee has been one of the many car meetups that Houston has for the general public to come out and enjoy the many beautiful cars on display. One of the items that I want to highlight is the founder of it, Drastiko. Drastiko was a person I had the pleasure of meeting during my second visit to his Cadillacs and Coffee, the first meeting I heard about and attended was at the legendary Taqueria Del Sol. The second, happened at Bad Astronaut, which has a view of Downtown Houston to die for and is a bar with a large warehouse style interior with pool tables and many booth setup for events that occurs from time to time.
This is a huge reason why I want to talk about him in this blog write up. Many times we, both as photographers and non-photographers, don’t know who is the person behind the scenes at times. I want to make sure that I point out the key players in making this types of events happen because I actually have conversations with them and they are always open and honest about their intent, which is to bring the community together, support vendors and have the friends and family enjoy their time together.
Photography by Jairo Chacón
We all appreciate the car culture as the next major city does and sometimes we take them for granted considering that we have a large population of car owners as well as organizations, businesses, and car clubs that hosts countless events. I mean, we have, Coffee & Cars, Trucks & Coffee, Divine Shine, NeoMeets, various lowrider car clubs (separate upcoming blog write up) and etc. By the way, if you know any other, write it down in the comment section!
Sometimes the hard work they do behind the scenes, putting in hours of communicating with vendors, car owners, while at the same time, sacrificing family time, to make these events happen is something that can be easily overlooked and at times, under appreciated. So this blog is to show appreciation to not only Drastiko and his crew over at Cadillacs and Coffee, but as well as other cars and coffee meetups.
Dickies Work Shirt style shirt that Cadillacs & Coffees sells at their meetups.
Back to Drastiko, he has been organizing his events since 2022, took a bit of a hiatus and is now back on making Cadillacs and Coffee a family & charity filled event. The beautiful thing is that he does this with his family. I saw his children help out in a booth selling T-Shirts, an important aspect of teaching young ones about entrepreneurship and independency. To me, this is the crucial element of why I appreciate these meetups as I am a proud father of a 2 month old baby. It shows me that there are events in which I can take my family and enjoy a beautiful Saturday or Sunday morning and evening at such events.
The other reason why I appreciate these events as well is how it supports many small businesses that are often side hustles of young and old generation. The cars attracts the crowd and the vendors benefits from the foot traffic at such events. On top of that, you have models willing to take pictures with fans and photographers. It all happens organically.
Some of the major attractions are of course the Cadillacs, both classic and modern iterations. I have a proclivity of taking more pictures of the classics but I do appreciate the modern take as well. Expect to see many classics models such as Fleetwood, Brougham, Coupé De Ville, as well as modern models, CTS, Escalades and STS. I strive my best to capture the finer details that I am drawn to and sometimes they are imperfect but nonetheless, they show the characters of these Cadillacs that houses many private conversations, tears, and laughter.
This year I have been able to attend quite a few meetups with Lowrider, Cadillacs, and Tuners. I want to attend trucks and coffee as well as cars and coffee which are some of the larger crowd attraction events. I am blessed to see communities pop up here and there for all to enjoy, snap a few photos, maybe drink some coffees and conches then top it off with tacos for lunch. I have way too much fun at these events for my own pleasure as well as I enjoy talking to new faces every time I attend, either because they see what camera I shoot with, or because they recognize me from other places. Either way, Cadillacs and Coffee is starting off hot and I can’t wait to see more from them.
