Authorities have been putting the squeez on underground street racing. This is all a part of a crackdown by police on the illegal street racing subculture that is “suspected” in 13 deaths.
Street racing is not a recent culture formed by adrenaline seeking youth. Even though now a days it seems like those that did it in the past have some grudge against the racers of today. The muscle car era of the 60’s saw tons of cars coming off the showroom floor built solely for the intent of racing and plenty of them found their way onto the streets late at night “picking up groceries” at high rates of speed.
In fact long before the original Fast and Furious came out in 2001 there was a large and strong “street racing” subculture. I myself was a part of it. At the time we would have 400-500 cars together on a Saturday night, no fights, and no wild things going on. In fact, cops and other authorities would actually hang out with us in the parking lot, sometimes joking and popping their hoods on the squad cars. There was a level of respect between our world and authorities. They knew that it was easier keeping an eye on us in one or two spots than it was all over the city. We lived peaceably for quite some time. We were a sub-culture and liked it that way. Not a lot of people knew what we did and why we did it and we liked it like that. Fast and the Furious changed all of that, it glorified our lifestyle and made it bigger and louder than it was. At first we paid no mind to it and enjoyed the movie from the car and music side and laughed at the Hollywood twist on our lives. Unfortunately it turned our lifestyle into a popular trend. Everyone wanted a turbo charged import, to stay up late, blare their music, drink, do drugs, do burn outs and race anything and everything.
In the past we had an unwritten rule system in place. It kept people safe while satisfying our needs. The new kids came in with no intention of learning or respecting those rules. They knew what they saw in the movies and expected it to be that way. From that point on groups of cars hanging out in parking lots were broken up quickly spilling hundreds of people onto the streets going in different directions. Now instead of 2 policemen being able to patrol and control a group, it now requires an entire unit: cars, personnel, even helicopters at times (yes, just like the movie).
Thankfully over the years since the original F&F and with the second F&F sucking balls, the trediness of our sub-culture has died down some. Yes it’s still a lot larger than what it was but those who were not really a part of our group are filtering themselves out and moving on to the next trend Hollywood is telling them to follow. If the local government would just revert back to their old standings they may be presently surprised at how easy controlling the group really would be again.
Until next time, drive safe and keep the shiny side up and rubber side down.
