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The movie " The Fast and The Furious " opened today and it is truely a fine piece of political correctness. Supposedly based on an article in the New York Times about street racing in The Big ( Rotten? ) Apple, this movie takes the bottom feeders of the east coast and portrays them in Southern California. Too bad the makers of this so-called movie didn't bother to research the marked difference between the car gangs of New York and the attempt to organize California street racing into a safer, yet still illegal, activity!
Unlike the overly violence filled movie, organized street racing in California was started in an attempt to semi-legalize and take the dangerous activity off the street and onto private property. The Los Angeles Police Department actually offered their Terminal Island automotive training complex in Los Angeles to the Street Racers, billed as a New Breed of Brotherhood, in an effort to take them off the streets.
While nobody can speak for the improptu street racing done by high school kids, the movie did more to glorify that conduct than to accurately portray the organized weekend racers looking for respect and not to get arrested or injured.
The LA street racing scene was organized starting back in the 60s by Big Willie and Tomiko Robinson, a black man and his asian woman who both had extremely fast race cars. The Street Racer Organization was completely racial and sexually color blind, bringing all shapes, colors and sizes together for some competition. They even periodically rented local drag strips to hold massive racing events!
As opposed to the movie, where within the first ten minutes a girl beats up a guy in extreme ludicrous political correctnes and there is a car chase, the real organized street racers frowned on such activities. The Streetracers actually would let the air out of the tires of any car observed to be burning rubber near the meeting place, usually the parking lot of closed businesses. The jacketed racers would also enforce rules against drinking or drugs anywhere near the parking lot or racing area, with the same penalty of letting out the air from all four tires of the subject's car. Safety and reducing the interference of LAPD was what it was all about, not criminal activities ( other than the racing ), petty prejudices or ego inflation!
The organized Streetracers in Southern California bear little or no resemblence to the mindless glorified violence of the pitiful poor excuse for a movie, The Fast and The Furious!
- Bongo ( Hold your foot to the floor? )
Updated ( 6-22-2001 )
(c)2001 Bongo.