A late-night sideshow in Irvine, California outnumbered available police and shut down this busy intersection.
You’d think that horror stories of $1,000 exhaust tickets, the end of fix-it tickets for loud exhausts, increased police presence around car shows, and low-key harassment of the regular car enthusiast would spell the beginning of the end of shenanigans like sideshows and illegal street racing but far from it. According to several Instagram videos and first-hand accounts of last night’s giant sideshow in the city of Irvine (Jan. 27, 2019) not only are hoonigans and “swangers” out in full force, but they’re also brazenly taking their antics to the streets regardless of what police say or act.
Check out the amazing bit of video captured below.
Crazy sideshow earlier tonight in Southern California. pic.twitter.com/am4YaarAUo
— TireMeetsRoad.com (@TireMeetsRoad_) January 27, 2019
The original video was shot by Instagram user @PedM5 who was at an unrelated function with his friends at the Hive and Honey Rooftop Bar that overlooks Irvine city streets. Keep in mind this isn’t the Bay Area (the birth of the modern sideshow) Fresno, Stockton, or Visalia where naturally this type of sideshow happens all too often, this is sunny Southern California in a rather well to do neighborhood in Orange County.
In the first video you can see police observing the spectacle at a distance. With only a handful of units at a location even I wouldn’t even think is ideal for a sideshow, Irvine police, for a lack of a better term, I’m assuming were unprepared for just how many people were on this relatively quiet intersection. Here’s what that intersection looks like via Google Maps.
It looks like only a few cars were actually participating in the actual sideshow but it only takes one car to start it off and it just kind of evolves from there.
Ironically enough, just as this latest sideshow kicked off, the resistance to this kind of antics also coming from car enthusiasts had their first salvo to fight back so to speak. A private meet organized by Change.org petition starter and event organizer @its_jeremylee had its first meet of many to show the positive side of car enthusiasts and to overall overturn a section of AB-1824 which close to 300,000 petition signers feel unduly burdens the regular car enthusiast.
It’s cliche to say but one bad apple really does spoil the whole basket and in this case, any headway of good faith made by the “good guys” in the greater car community in the Southern California area was erased with one sideshow session.
Source:@PedM5
