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Hot Rods and Boba

Late-model imports & domestics @ Fuzion Café

Thing about a good cruise is the regulars—when they're not so regular.

Consider the cruise at Fuzion Café on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, west off the 163 in San Diego. Street racer country. You get a primarily import audience, a mix of styles and theories of motoring, and there's so much "other." These "others" are what help the usual suspects enjoy the evening that much more, and keeps them returning week after week to a scene that would otherwise grow stale.

The Weird and The Other

Here is a dollop of what we're getting at on Tuesday nights: A few weeks ago, by 9:00 p.m., there were 50-plus return customers. Parked amongst them was The Others. Two blown Mustangs, one a black SN-95, one a clapped-out Fox-body ex-landspeed proto-drift project. A turbo'd Ford Ranger pre-runner jerked and boinged its way into the lot, limping along on a bad computer map the passenger was fighting with his laptop. An M3 sat here and there. Five minutes later folks tried not to notice an orange Lamborghini Murcielago sneaking into the lot. Someone's Lotus Elise was parked next to an old AMG Mercedes, and The Others kept rolling in. Another Fox-body, this one a silver notchback 5.0, also spec'd for the strip. A black Z06 'Vette. Then two old RX-2s, one with a late-model twin-turbo FD-2 motor. A few F-Bodies lurked. There was a blown Tundra, also pre-run style, and a brand new Screaming Yellow Mustang GT we'd already seen at the track. Damned zoo. Entertaining, though.

These weirdos and exotics wouldn't roll to a no-name cruise if it were a no-name cruise. This little restaurant, good for boba (rice balls in your tea—it's a West Coast thing—folks fish with these things in the Midwest), popcorn chicken and Korean barbecue, has evolved into one of San Diego's go-to late-night roll-up targets. Better yet, the folks who've made a home of it behave themselves, and the cops leave things alone, so it's no trouble to park and hang. Let your guard down a little.

Usual Suspects

It's the regular regulars who have driven the Fuzion's stock up in the eyes of the late-model car-building community. Amongst them are the SD-centric AW Junkies (allwheeljunkies.com), a band of all-wheel drive guys running Subaru WRXs, Mitsu Evolutions and Eclipses, a few R32s, some Audis and whatnot. SoCalEvo (socalevo.net) functions as a splinter group of the Junkies. You see some of the super-slick R-cars with JDM-frenzied Club RX7 guys (clubrx7.com), and a few RSXs (it's just a Civic-Integra crossbreed, people) with clubrsx.com. Ever seen a 330-wheel-horse RSX? There's always a few S2000s (s2ki.com), including Prozac's nitrous-assisted 'vert from Modern Image. A large contingent of the drifter types is always there, with at least a dozen S13, S14 and S15s, eight or 10 Corolla GTSs and their bald-tired associates. Those guys visit zilvia.net and driftfactory.com for their weekly Fuzion update.

Rice in your Straw

Step away from the all the firepower and you can slip through the door of the café, not in itself an exceptional place, but a cozy one. Brightly lit, equipped with couches, nice tables and a big flat-screen. Comfortable. The flat-screen is something of a self-serve item, and if you've got good drifting video or a JDM road race test DVD, bring it with. There's lots of good food (much of it fried) to go with the rice-ball enhanced (boba) coffee and tea drinks. Locals cruise Fuzion at least three nights a week (Wednesday evening is a Euro-spec event), and on Sundays people camp out there for hours because they're lazy.

The list of car titles at one night's cruise reads like a slew of schizophrenic phone buttons—2.5RS, MR2, R32, DSM, JDM, USDM, EDM, SRT4, Z06, 300Z, 350Z, G35, M3, RSX, 240SX (S13, S14 and S15), SE-R, GT (GT-everything), RX-2, RX-7 (FD-1, FD-2 and FD-3), S2000, WRX, STi and whatever else the marketing machinery at Automotive Corporate International coughed up. You can add the typical word-based car names like Civic, Hatchi-Roku, Ranger, Supra, Mustang, Accord, Murcielago, Integra, Evolution, Eclipse, Talon and Laser if you're sick of alphanumerics.

When you take the time and find a Tuesday night unused, try this cruise yourself—and bring your weird.