Built Not Bought: How Stan Yeung and Daikoku NYC Drive Car Culture and Community Forward

On a crisp Sunday morning in early March, at the interregnum of winter and spring, Elizabeth Street in New York City’s Chinatown was popping off. As is characteristic of this part of Manhattan, the streets are cramped, but that didn’t stop an import tuner’s dream lineup from assembling.

There, posing on the corner, was a white R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R with a license plate cover hinting at GReddy influence under the hood. Further up, an incredibly modified cerulean TA22 Toyota Celica with a ducktail spoiler preened for the crowds. Across the street, a purple 997-Series Porsche 911 Turbo was sitting pretty on three-piece wheels. Weaving between the cars were owners, admirers, tourists, and elderly aunties and uncles doing their weekly food shopping, armed with grocery carts in one hand and smartphone cameras in the other.

This part of the city especially is one of the last places where you’d expect to find a group of cars that you’re more likely to see parked on a street lamp-lit nighttime parking lot in Tokyo. But as it turned out, the cars were there to participate in the official New York City Lunar New Year Parade and Festival. Getting them to that spot was the work of a relatively new urban car community known as Daikoku NYC. Emerging from the heart of what is perhaps the most difficult place in America to own and keep a car, it’s a homespun movement that’s become a testament to the strength and resilience of automotive culture in the Big Apple.

Consistency Is Key

Daikoku NYC was founded in 2022 by Stan Karr Yeung, who now serves as its executive director. Its aim? “To create a platform where automotive culture can become a catalyst for community building, storytelling, and a foundation for cultural exchange in the city,” Yeung told MotorTrend in an interview. Throughout the year, the organization puts together meets, vehicle showcases, and the recurring Chinatown Night Out events.

Born on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Yeung grew up in Queens and was always around cars. His godfather was involved in grassroots motorsports and part of the comms team for Watkins Glen back when Formula 1 still raced there. He’d regale Yeung with his stories from the paddock back in the day.

But as an impressionable teen, Yeung ended up gravitating toward the Japanese import tuning culture. “In the early 2000s where you would still go to newsstands to grab Import Tuner, that was what I grew up on,” he said. “That had a really big influence on what I liked.”

As an adult, Yeung sought out a car community that reflected his own values: inclusion, accessibility, respectfulness, and diversity. Something where a group of people could come together around their shared passion for cars and the import tuning hobby, using them as a launch pad for deeper conversations and building relationships. Nothing really stood out to him at the time, so he decided to start his own thing. Naming it Daikoku NYC was Yeung paying homage to the legendary Daikoku Parking Area meets in Tokyo.

Daikoku’s earliest days consisted of Yeung posting on a Facebook group to see if anyone would show up for his new events. The first ever meet was supposed to be at Astoria Park in Queens, but it turned out to be a bust because Yeung hadn’t realized the parking lot was closed. The sole attendee who did show up, Sebally Queylin, had a five-minute conversation with Yeung, and just like that, the “meet” ended.

No one showed up to the second meet at all. “It was me and a bunch of pigeons underneath the [Brooklyn-Queens Expressway],” Yeung said.

The third meet saw a handful of people arrive. By then, despite the initial setbacks, Yeung was firmly committed. He knew consistency was going to be the key to making meaningful growth. As word spread and the meets slowly grew, Yeung realized they couldn’t simply keep occupying parking lots. For a while they used public parking garages, but then people started asking for food. Another problem to solve.

Yeung sought out small businesses in the city with their own private parking lots, which were few and far between. That quickly ran its course, so Yeung, Queylin, and friends went back to the drawing board to figure out their next move. Where Daikoku NYC ended up is what has ultimately made the organization special.

Scene from a Daikoku NYC Chinatown Night Out event. Photo by Jeffrey Liu.

Chinatown Night Out

Like a lot of first-generation Asian immigrants in New York City, Yeung has strong familial ties with Manhattan’s Chinatown. From child to adulthood, Yeung remembers the breakfasts and dim sum, dinners, and karaoke bars. While it’s true that Chinatown has been resistant to the city’s relentless waves of gentrification, it’s a hard battle to win. Years of high rents and shifting businesses have changed the neighborhood, and not for the better.

“Seeing it deteriorate over the last I don’t know how many years, it’s heartbreaking,” Yeung said. “Chinatown was the late-night place to be after you went out for the night. It’s horrible to see it not be the place to go anymore.”

Photo by Jeffrey Liu.

After a couple of years of steady growth, Yeung was looking to expand and provide food for event attendees. It led him to search for a new place to host Daikoku’s meets—not an easy feat in a city where every square foot is precious. But what might have been a challenge Yeung took as an opportunity.

“It was me going out to different neighborhoods and my own community—which was Chinatown—seeing what the issues were and if we could help businesses,” Yeung said. “Then that expanded into learning about all the pain points of the neighborhood. We talked to the community board, Chinatown Business Improvement District, and the NYPD and found out that over by Forsyth Plaza and East Broadway, there’s rising crime growth and businesses are suffering. That’s the area tourism doesn’t go to because it doesn’t have the pretty lanterns and the glitz and glam that Mott Street has. Businesses are closing early because they or their employees are afraid to walk to the train stations at night because people are getting mugged, robbed, or hurt.”

Yeung and the other Daikoku NYC members wondered, was there anything they could do about it? Was there a way to turn their car meets into active community participation that’s accessible and inclusive for everyone? Yes, in fact: They could be the destination.

Photo by Jeffrey Liu.

“That’s why we specifically occupy that area,” Yeung said. “Let’s have a presence there. Let’s bring foot traffic there. Let’s bring commerce back in and help revitalize these businesses. [They] don’t want to stay open at night because no one’s there? Let’s bring people there. Their employees don’t want to stay late because it’s scary at night to walk to these trains if no one’s around? Well, let’s be there late night, then.”

The team convinced some of the businesses to stay open later for Daikoku’s Night Out meets, so the attendees had somewhere to patronize. Yeung called the setup “win-win” and said the overall response has been positive from all sides. Certainly, the extra money has something to do with it, but there’s another praiseworthy intangible: The movement is rooted in an authentic motivation to uplift an underrepresented neighborhood, maintaining its dignity rather than just using it as an aesthetic but disposable cultural prop.

Photo by Jeffrey Liu.

“We don’t take a cut from any of the businesses,” Yeung said. “That’s definitely not the plan. I don’t want to eat off the mom-and-pop shops. That’s not how I see it. There’s got to be another way we can get funding to run the different programs we’re trying to put in place that doesn’t take away from the people we’re trying to help.”

Daikoku NYC events are all free to attend, as well. Finding out about them is as simple as following the Instagram account or visiting the website. “We don’t charge people to participate in any of our events,” Yeung said. “I don’t believe in that. If you’re going to put all your money into building this [automotive] art piece, why do you have to pay to show your art piece if other people are paying to see your art piece? It doesn’t make sense.”

It’s all laudable, but it begs the question: How does Daikoku NYC make any money?

Photo by Jeffrey Liu.

“We don’t know yet,” Yeung said. “We’re still trying to figure that out. But I know how I don’t want to make money. We’re not taking money from small businesses. We’re not taking money from participants. If people want to give us money, yeah, we’re open to that. Like, very much so.”

Daikoku NYC officially became a 501(c)(3) non-profit in 2025 for this reason, and Yeung credits the people on his team who share his belief that helped make it happen. “We grew from a quick call out to people to come meet us at a parking lot to now having to actually navigate government offices,” he said. “We talk to people that are way above our pay grade to figure out how to do events with the city.”

Photo taken with a Kodak Charmera for maximum vibes.

Officially Recognized. What’s Next?

After Yeung and Daikoku NYC contacted the organization that officially puts on the city’s annual Lunar New Year parade, they supplied five or six cars in 2023. In 2024, that number grew to around 20 cars. This year saw more than 120 from all over the Northeast. Someone even came down from Montreal.

“We slowly built the trust up with [the parade organizers],” Yeung said. “They understood we’re organized, we can manage ourselves, and they just give us the space.”

When you think of a car meet, you tend to think about lots of revving, burnouts, and donuts. We observed none of that at the March 1 Lunar New Year parade. The cars were parked in an orderly fashion, were shut off, and their owners chatted amiably with each other and anyone else who struck up a conversation. This was not only because the streets are tiny and swarmed with pedestrians and NYPD, but also because Yeung’s philosophy of respect and accessibility has clearly rolled down from the top.

Stan Karr Yeung, left, at the March 1 Lunar New Year Parade. Photo by Jeffrey Liu.

Yeung himself paced up and down the street, giving directions and murmuring into a walkie-talkie. For a seemingly self-taught events coordinator, he’s obviously very good at this.

The attending cars bore the battle scars of their daily urban lives. Most aren’t what you’d call pristine garage queens, with the bumper scuffs and paint swirl marks to prove it. Wheels wise with curb rash. Keeping a car in New York City is hard; daily commuting in one is another beast altogether. “The cars in New York have all this character because they’re forced to,” Yeung said. “And having cars in New York, it’s dedication.”

Looking beyond the meets and parades, Yeung and Daikoku NYC dream of something more permanent. The moonshot goal is to open a community center for members to come together and learn from each other.

“Just a physical space where people can actually go and feel safe at,” Yeung said. “We could have classes for creative people or hold workshops for people that want to learn basic maintenance for cars.”

Yeung hit on a persistent problem with being a car enthusiast in New York: There’s nowhere to work on your car. “Everyone’s a street mechanic,” he said. “Basically, you put out a couple of cones, you pull out your tools from your third-floor walk-up or whatever. And then you set up, do your work, and pray someone doesn’t run your ass over. It’s why a community center is so necessary.”

Photo by Jeffrey Liu.

Photo by Jeffrey Liu.

Yeung also wants to foster the creative members of the organization—the photographers and videographers. They range from amateur- to professional-level, according to Yeung. “The creators in our community are as important as the cars themselves,” he said. “They go hand in hand with one another. Culture gets lost without someone there to document it.”

Despite a city that’s ill-suited for and often hostile to automobiles, car culture in New York has deep and defiant roots and remains very much alive and well. The dogged efforts of Daikoku NYC and its irrepressible founder are the embodiment of that determined spirit, a group that’s beaten long odds to become a movement that not only benefits car owners and fans, but entire neighborhoods, as well.

Photo by Jeffrey Liu.

Photo by Jeffrey Liu.

Additional photography courtesy of Jeffrey Liu