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California Police Raid Gathering of Enthusiasts

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Steve_S said:
Anthony, $500K will buy you a small piece of land in So Cal. There is no chance whatsoever of building and operating a racing facility for such a small amount of cash. It would take $20M at least! For $500K in the outskirts of LA county, you can get about 1/4 acre of desert land.
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Plus, are there not already several racing venues that do a lot of business out there? Especially drag racing, 1/4 and 1/8 mile tracks. Street racing is a sub-culture of the Import Tuning crowd. Used to be a sub-culture of the American Hot Rod/Street Machine/Muscle Car crowds as well. My point is that there are several places they can go to legally race. They choose not to.
 
Re: California Police Raid Gathering of Enthusiast

Most of our tracks have been shut down because the land is so valuable, or because residential areas were built around them and the residents don't like the noise. We do have a couple surviving within the city such as Pomona Speedway for drag racing, but the "good" tracks are out of the city in the desert. Willow Springs and Buttonwillow come to mind. Lovely names that inspire visions of lush meadows and laying in the grass under a shade tree. The only trees out there were planted, and they struggle to survive, just like the tracks!
 
anthony7777 said:
stewart, i tend to lean to the side of the law, im not saying these kids should be racing those cars dangerously on our streets i just thought it was obvious why they would want all that power going to the engine when the cop probably drove an "interceptor" type car to this crack down, and shure they could find stolen parts on some of those cars, the thing is over a half million dollars was given to the cops for this type of law enforcement, and ill bet i could have bought a piece of property and build a race track for the kids (having them all do work on the project) so they could race safely and learn something about business, the law, safety, fund raising, sportsmanship, and the like, but noooo! give law enforcement a bigger hammer so things go even more to the negative. :wall:
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I also tend to lean on the side of the law (you can ask my friends as soon as a story of a huge drug bust hits, I'm usually the first one to say "serves them right"), but I think the police are going about the problem the wrong way. When I was a teenager up in Indianapolis "street racing", really wasn't a coined term at the time they used reckless driving, was on the rise, and to combat this, the local police talked with the owners of Indianapolis Raceway Park, who opened the park on Tuesday nights. Tuesday Night Street Legal Drags were born. Gates opened at 5 pm, 10 dollar admission, and as long as your car was street legal, plated, and insured, you were free to race. "Street racing" almost disappeared overnight.
 
steve, thanks for that property cost info its what id suspected thats why i mentioned "fund raising" in my first post, as usual i find myself looking for the most faverable solution for every ones sake, look the manufacturers of o.e.m. and after market parts for these cars is a multy million if not billion dollar industry, id think it would be in thier best interest to become involved, as well as all the local vendors even the guy/gal that sells hot dogs at such a track would be interested, or use the money to improve an existing venue, start with the purchase of the first small plot of land to develope, or improve/customise an existing track for the specific use, there are ways to chanel all this energy in a positive way, i dont believe we should minimise this issue by refuring to these types of cars as "ricers" as if there inferior, i dont care very much for these cars personaly but as long as we continue to use words such as "sub culture" it will remain so. id rather read a story about three street racers joining a legit structured racing event, then about the arrest of two hundred of them. i agree we cant save them all but the one we do "turn" might be the one that otherwise raced on the street and damaged the life of a spectator and of thier family members and loved ones, tell me how can the police look at events such as "cars and coffee" any differently? what excuse can they use to legitimise such other events? the actions of law enforcement is opening a huge can of snakes. here in stamford ct. burger king sponsers monday night and weekend shows "hot rod" gatherings and other events such as "hot rod" dances, shows etc. and i can tell you even though all these cars have lic. plates on them and are legaly registered they are true race cars, we never had a negative situation at any of these gatherings and several police officers are involved with cars, this is more of what we should be doing imho.
 
"Ricers" isn't a derogatory term. It's what the type of car is called. Search the web and you will find hundreds of "ricer sites". Here's an active forum with the word right in the title. https://www.ricerforums.com/

I'm not disagreeing with your outlook on the situation, but pretending something isn't a subculture doesn't make it mainstream! Some day it may become mainstream but that day isn't today. The situation is nothing new. Drag racing developed from street racers like the "Throttlers" in So Cal's 1930's.

By the way, where the police raided the street racers, there are TWO established race tracks within 20 minutes of that parking lot. One of them is a popular drag strip. I have no sympathy for that particular group of people.
 
Ah, no more Riverside International, No more Fontana, No more orange groves out in Highgrove, No more Santa Ana. Didn't they also shut down Ontario...

Kids don't have a place to go take their vehicles and get rid of excess hormone buildup anymore...

Used to be able to go through the groves out by the old DixieCup plant over to the back side of Loma Linda.... Got pretty good on that road, or so I thought, until one night I had a car go zooming by me. Caught up with him over in the Highgrove area(uphill side of Colton now). Saw who it was(Dan Gurney) and realized some people are just more gifted at certain skills....
 
Around here, they open the local drag strip to the kids 1 night a week
 
Ron, they even shut down Saugus! That crappy little circle was the source of much amusement. I think it's houses now.
 
tony barnhill said:
Around here, they open the local drag strip to the kids 1 night a week
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The same is true here...Wed. night is "run what you brung" night out at Moroso Motorsports Park (You must have seat belts and an approved helmet!)
 
tony barnhill said:
Around here, they open the local drag strip to the kids 1 night a week
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They do that at what used to be called Sears Point. They can even race the police down the strip - legally. It's great, but it still doesn't get them off the street.

From the Press-Enterprise (second) article, it looks like the raid was prompted by merchant complaints. We have some kids in our town that we call and complain about and someday I hope they get caught. I really don't like kids racing down our residential street and sidewalks. It wasn't until one of them ran into my car that he got caught.

I don't see this kind of crackdown affecting drivers that behave themselves.
 
We have 3 drag strips (Sunset, Lucky & Erie)
7 dirt tracks (Mercer, Slippery Rock, Hickory, Tri-City, Double-A, Kartrack & Naugle)
& 2 road tracks (Nelson & BeaveRun)

All within an hour.
We don't have a problem with street racing.
In fact it is kinda looked down upon as 'amateur' by the locals.

I'm thinking that it may be in the public's interest to start thinking about a <span style="font-style: italic">real</span> solution.
 
steves, yup as i suspected your getting all your information from the "left coast dictionary", here on the east coast calling a persons ride a "ricer" would require a small bag of ice to sooth ones facial injuries, im not "pretending" anything, or perhaps i wasnt one to think of the people developing our first space flights as being a "sub culture", oh ya "sub culture" has a very positive ring to it, ah what the heck lets just give the traffic cops a huge budget for bigger firearms that way they could eradicate the "sub culture with" sub machine guns, kidding aside, i feel humanity would be better off searching for answers to enable positive results rather then looking for excuses for why something wont succeed. :yesnod:
 
Can't disagree there. Funny how even in today's networked society, a term can be so regional, having one meaning on the west coast and another in the east.
 
Just have to say that when I mentioned "sub-culture", this is what I had in mind...an ethnic, regional, economic, or social group exhibiting characteristic patterns of behavior sufficient to distinguish it from others within an embracing culture or society... Which is a definition from Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary. The "culture" in this case being the "Automotive Culture". The "Import Scene" being one of many "sub culture's" of the "Automotive Culture". Where even we, British Car fanatics, form our own "sub culture" of the larger culture. Nothing derogatory about identifying a smaller group that sets itself apart from the larger group. A group within a group. Nothing more.
 
Re: California Police Raid Gathering of Enthusiast

swift6 said:
Nothing derogatory about identifying a smaller group that sets itself apart from the larger group. A group within a group. Nothing more.
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That's how I see it. A sub-culture is a group of people with similar interests which are separate from the majority. British car enthusiasts are a subculture of the automotive community. We are one of many minorities, and I like it that way!
 
swift6, i think most of us understand the constructive term "sub culture" but walk up to a hispanic kid in l.a. and tell him he belongs to a "sub culture" and see how understanding he is, we dont all see, or hear things the same way.
 
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