State of the PNW Car Scene

Date, time and location is set, the word is out, and from the responses you’re getting from social media, it looks like you’ve got a successful meet. You’ve worked hard, alone or with a team, to build a community, and to bring a space for car enthusiasts to hang out over a shared passion in your area. You’ve been clear about your expectations from the people who show up- all of your posts and fliers indicate no revving, no burnouts, only respectful behavior, so everyone should know that’s what you expect – especially if you’ve been hosting meets for a while.

While we love our games and media, lets be real- the type of meets we have are not the type of meets that have been advertised to many. As much as I love the first 3 movies in the Fast and Furious series, they got a lot of car culture wrong. Sure, we all want to have supporting found family like they built, and that initial race scene is what most newcomers think of when they think of meets- including the street race. Sure, it won’t change the fact that Hector is going to be running three Honda Civics with Spoon engines, and on top of that, he just went into Harry’s and bought three T66 turbos with NOS, and a Motec exhaust system – and we’d all love to actually see those, by the way – but the reality is some meets get super hyped, people get excited, and a lot of people don’t know how to behave, especially at a big meet. With so many people, it’s easy to feel like you’re kind of anonymous, and can get away with stuff. And too often lately, people have – until someone gets hurt.

So how do we fix this? Well, obviously just saying it on fliers and posts isn’t enough, because it continues to happen. Depending on the state/county/city, the cities and police departments aren’t necessarily on board with meets either (Example A: Wasted Week in Clackamas last year – they had permission, they’d talked to business owners, and they had talked to the county PD who said they were cool with it- and who immediately used the event to ticket people over license plate placement, tint, and more, which lead to frustration and escalation from participants.) So it needs to be on us. WE need to do a better job of self policing. Teams need to share information with one another when someone acts out at a meet – because banning them from one groups meets and not all just means they show up and do the same stuff somewhere else. It may be that larger meets like Wasted Week aren’t free anymore- simply because they need a venue with more control to have meets that big now. We also need to do a better job at protecting those who are just observers. People hanging out into the street , filling up sidewalks is a problem too – one because again it emboldens some to make poor choices, but also from a safety angle- it’s harder to see if a road is clear, and as a driver you can never predict what a pedestrian will do. Finally, accountability. We can’t keep using the ‘young and dumb’ excuse anymore- because it is getting others hurt, both in and outside of the community – and nothing will burn meets in an area like people outside of the car scene getting hurt as a result of a persons poor decisions at a meet, whether they were part of the regular crew of participants or not. When one of our own gets hurt, yeah we all hurt, and we come together as we can – but the general public dismisses it as we got what we had coming. It’s not just the organizers it affects, its all of us – and we really do need to step up and do better, regardless of whatever drama we have with other teams.