Street takeovers, otherwise known as “sideshows,” are a cultural phenomenon that exploded in popularity during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’ve been anywhere near car culture in the past six or so years, you’ve probably seen videos of street takeovers, where a handful of cars commandeer a public intersection or roadway to do donuts while crowds of onlookers watch and film with their phones.
These actions are obviously illegal and very dangerous, and often get out of hand quickly. There are countless videos online from these events where cars lose control and hit each other, strike public or private property, or barrel into crowds, which are sometimes standing just inches from the bumpers of drifting cars. Some takeovers get so out of hand that the crowds wind up just burning cars to the ground.
Despite some states implementing new laws and forming task forces specifically to combat sideshows, these events remain prevalent across the country, representing the absolute worst part of car culture. [Ed note: Is it even “car culture”? Yes, it’s a culture that includes cars, but do these clowns even like anything in car culture that isn’t this nonsense? – Pete] Going by the actions of this latest street takeover in Maryland, it seems the crowds aren’t even afraid of the police anymore.
Back in 2020, when I first started getting takeover-related content on my social media feeds, it felt like people actually gave a shit when the police appeared to break up the crowd. Once the flashing lights illuminated in the distance, people made a break for it, and the cars participating immediately stopped and found the nearest open roadway to escape.
This became doubly true once task forces in places like California began to stage coordinated mass arrests of drivers and the crowds surrounding intersections. I’ll be the first to admit it was incredibly satisfying to see the people encouraging this type of driving backed into a corner and forced to face the consequences of their actions.
Sideshows make car culture look bad! If you love cars and the act of driving, you should be against this kind of stuff, even if it is fun to see V8-powered muscle cars melt some rubber on a quiet street in the middle of the night. There are plenty of places where you can legally do this type of performative driving, so you have options that don’t involve the rest of the car world hating your guts.
They’re Getting Even More Brazen
Despite all the heightened awareness from law enforcement, sideshows remain a scourge that car culture in America can’t seem to get rid of. This past weekend, a takeover in Montgomery County, Maryland ended with two cop cars getting vandalized by crowds.
The incident began early Sunday morning, when police started tracking cars as they began swinging their tail ends through an intersection. Instead of fleeing when they saw the blue and red lights, onlookers went on the offensive. From the Montgomery County police department:
The vehicles continued along East West Highway and gathered at the intersection of East West Highway and Connecticut Avenue. Drivers blocked traffic and performed donuts in the roadway.
Several people got out of their cars and stood in the intersection, preventing officers from entering while the activity continued.
During the incident, two marked Montgomery County Police cruisers were damaged. In one case, an officer was inside his vehicle when the rear window was broken and the windshield was smashed. No officers were injured.
Dashcam video from inside one of the cruisers, published to YouTube, shows members of the crowd attempting to block the vehicle, while also setting off smoke-producing devices. As the cop tries to maneuver their vehicle through the situation, you can hear glass shattering at 40 seconds in, presumably from when that rear window was smashed in. At 2 minutes, 32 seconds, you can see the windshield get struck.
While this is all happening, you can see a Dodge Challenger continuing to perform donuts and burnouts in front of the police car. Later in the video, the crowd continues to block the cop as other cars in the vicinity flee.
This video is dumb for a lot of reasons, but mainly because if you’re doing something as illegal as participating in a street takeover, you should at least have the wherewithal to flee when the cops show up. Instead, these people are crazy enough not only to stay at the scene but to break the law further by impeding the cops and assaulting their vehicles. Some of them don’t even have masks covering their face, meaning they’re going to be easy to identify.
Cops say they’re currently asking the public for help to track down the identities of everyone involved, and offering rewards ranging from $250 to $10,000 for tips leading to arrests. Personally, I’d be very happy if everyone involved went to jail. It’s this type of stuff that gives gearheads a bad rap.
Top graphic images: Montgomery County Police Department
So far these have resulted two deaths in France, and one young lass lost a leg…
“Where is Jonny The Boy? You will go back for him Bubbazanetti. Not for me, but for him…”
cops should start drifting into the takeover to take it over.
Oh God, I can only wish!
What is this all about?
lmessage approved.bmp
Just another example of the third-world uncivilizing of what’s left of America at this point…
Yup, all fun and games until the officer behind the wheels is justified to use lethal force. Then protesters come out of the woodwork, the cycle continues.
Ehh, no fun at all for the officer in any part of that.
When people feel like they don’t have a place, or feel like they don’t have a say, or feel like they don’t have any “legitimate” way to garner attention and express themselves, they find a way that expresses those feelings. You can’t enforce your way out of it, you can’t legislate your way out of it, and you can’t expect people to suddenly see it your way because you distain their actions.
If people who enjoy sliding around and getting the crowds attention, for what ever reason, are barred from doing it in a way that is more controlled, then they find a way that’s less controlled. These are not 60 year old mangers sliding their new merc around. These are young people without a way to express themselves and enjoy their cars because the have no other option. Track days are expensive, tracks are going away, and the ones still around are not willing to do the cheap events people used to go to.
Smashing windows is counter productive, but the choice of whether or not you want to have a positive interaction with the cops is not up to a lot of people. I don’t agree with smashing windows, but windows are not people and cops smash windows too.
Street take overs are hard to poo poo when think about it in the lens of who does them and why and when. Is it annoying? Yes. Would I do it? No. But is it safer and less destructive than some of the other things young people have done with cars? of course. Hell my teen and early 20s car nonsense was made into an increasingly over the top set of movies. Are we going to also shame the Beach boys for their Little deuce coup? The difference was the availability of other options for a small fee or free. For me it was open track nights, autocross, then track days on the cheap. Now, what would the option be? Would those options have the people that are taking over the street? Could the area offer a place with structure that might take the place and energy of the street and benefit everyone?
So often the discourse on street takeovers has been so pearl clutching and dismissive of many of our own youths that it rings hollow and feel like a reaction to and othering of a culture we are often on the outside of and don’t understand.
Also, can you blame people for reacting to authority in this way and then turn around and say F this group or that group in power? If its F ice for what they do and are, then you have to understand the F the police for the people that have that prospective too.
F your pathetic defense of street take owners and street racing!!!
F You!!!
Ok, I’m in no way advocating for them. I’m just saying that they don’t happen in a vacuum and that people don’t have the constant ill intent that is often attributed to them. It was not a defense, it was a suggestion that the way we look at actions we don’t like matters as much as expecting the people who take those action to understand why we don’t like them. To suggest that a certain action makes a person a certain way and to not ask why they would do something is a huge reason for people to make responses to another opinion or preferences boil down to “F You!!!”. That’s as narrow and dismissive way of looking at the world. People don’t do things because they are “evil” or “dumb” or what ever the dismissal is. They do them because they get something out of it that they are not getting in another way.
That’s what I’m saying. There is a tendency to label people in large groups based on how a person individually feels about an action rather than to understand the action. I wouldn’t participate in a take over. I wouldn’t street race. I would not condone those that do. But I will acknowledge that they don’t do them without thought of their own and that those thoughts are not taken with me in mind.
Its also hard to take a critique from some one suggesting that actions you dislike should be responded to with indiscriminate violence and vandalism.
“even if it is fun to see V8-powered muscle cars melt some rubber on a quiet street in the middle of the night.”
I don’t find being woken up in the middle of the night of by howling tires and a roaring V8 fun in the slightest. I don’t know what point you were trying to make there.
Similarly annoying are the “loud pipes save lives” motorcyclists.
Semi-related, I’d love to see The Autopian do a sort of “taxonomy of car cultures” with their domains and subcultures.
You’re only preaching to the choir here because the people who do these takeovers aren’t reading The Autopian
These ‘animals’ aren’t car enthusiasts. They are just destructive assholes that showcase why abortions should be ENCOURAGED in all communities.
I’ve figured out something rather nefarious over the years: the churches and corporation/imprisonment complex prop up the facetious ‘pro life’ movement because they want us to breed excessively so they have a glut of weak minded, ignorant and desperate people to brainwash into keeping churches propped up/in power; to be their wage slaves or to keep their private prisons full.
The excess of this ambitious project is the precise types you see performing takeovers.
Please see ‘Idiocracy’ and its opening sequence for exactly how this has played out over the last 40 years. All the dumbfucks and ne’er do-wells have bred excessively, and the smart people are either queer and not biologically programmed that way (me) or are only having one or two kiddos that they can reasonably support.
There should be an IQ test and an aptitude test for keeping your spawn, as well as REQUIRED parenting classes. If you can’t pass? Your kid gets adopted to a loving family that IS capable of raising them. Plenty of good people with infertility issues out there that shouldn’t have to pay 10-20k to adopt a child out there.
I guarantee if you rounded up the average takeover crowd, and did a socioeconomic profile, you’d find a LOT of poverty, mental health issues, absent fathers and sub 80-IQ’s in the crowd.
Takeovers are a manifestation of a lot of really bad policymaking and social failures on the part of the good ol’ US of A.
Personally, I’m of the disposition that elevating participating in a sideshow to felony ‘rioting and public endangerment’ but, instead of just throwing them into the prison cesspool and throwing away the key only for them to re-emerge and re-offend…
Force them to go to trade school, get educated, get a job and contribute to society, OR they go to the federal clink for a five year stretch.
I’m all for punishing these brats, but let’s make them into productive citizens by threatening their freedom and forcing them to learn a trade and pay their own damn bills and be a decent human.
I think that’s far more productive than capricious punishment for their assholery.
I hate take overs as much as the next guy but we can do better than ranting about how poor people are “animals” and ruining our country. Theres plenty of rich people doing far worse to the US and the world as we speak.
You are making a lot of jumps to who these people are in this…. You might want to look at why you would assume the IQ level or the work ethic or the family dynamics you think are at play here. You are painting with a broad brush.
“Poverty”? Those cars you saw in the video were not beaters.
The cars used for this type of activity are usually either stolen or assembled from stolen parts.
This happened right near where I live, although I was thankfully off of the road at the time. Assholes.
Ingredients:
Thin glass jars, about two or three cups in size,
Lunch sized paper bags,
1/2 Roofing Nails,
Preparation:
Fill the jars 2/3 to full with Roofing Nails,
Place in paper bag,
Twist the extra paper of the bag to make a handle to throw it,
Throw nail grenades into the area where the sideshow is taking place,
Quickly disappear into the crowd…
Are you familiar with caltrops?
The military invented a particularly slick version that packs flat and assembles from two similar pieces slotted together, like Japanese carpentry.
This is right up there with rolling coal in terms of activities that are actively harmful to car culture. Stupid things done purely to be an ass and piss people off. The only and obvious result is a backlash. Normies don’t know the difference between coal rolling and any other car activities. They MIGHT associate it with diesel. Same goes for this stuff; zero differentiation between this and your run of the mill Miata. When that happens, the entire car culture will suffer.
I say this with all due respect. F-ck these people.
My favorite NWA song.
Nah. I say don’t f-ck these people. Add them to a National Do Not F-ck list. Everyone should Lysistrata them until they’ve proven they’ve changed their ways.
How stupid do you have to be to record yourself blocking a police car? The only reason would be to post it so all your friends can also see how stupid you are. And you find out the hard way at least one of them values your friendship at less than $250. Worth it?
> How stupid do you have to be to record yourself blocking a police car
As stupid as doing donuts on a public street with cops present would suggest.
Someone honked at me for stopping at a stop sign during heavy traffic.
Then drove around me facing oncoming traffic and ran the next three stop signs and threatened to drive into me, though my heavier truck may have dissuaded that.
Location? Literally next to the county prison and the sheriff’s dept, quite near the federal prison. Had a state tag with a skull and crossbones on it.
Turns out it’s a fundraiser for Lions Club saving vision.
Maybe he was going home.
Going home to where he abides, or going home to be with his Lord and Savior?
(I got those two mixed up at work one time, when a manager sent out an email to announce that a former employee and his wife were “going home.”)
Home to the nearby prison I thought had been mentioned by a commenter upthread, but I may have hallucinated.
So there is a good chance it was a law enforcement officer.
This was before 7am yesterday.
The next intersection is a three way stop sign, backed up in all directions.
He ran that one too, and disappeared.
The road is a major choke point for a lot of routes.
There are a mile of local government buildings also, including local pseudo law enforcement called “code enforcement” that BTK enjoyed so much.
That would be my first guess, since they are essentially immune to any repercussions.
Odds are quite high law enforcement saw this.
I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.
I don’t think he was even directly behind me when I stopped for the first stop sign, which gave me no right of way, so high speeds from the other directions.
Not that I want to be defending that, but at least the drivers are presumably getting their rocks off doing that. But standing in front of a police car? How is that a good time?
No idea. Maybe intoxicants are involved?
I would hope…
The venn diagram of people who do this and people who visit this website looks like two completely separate circles really, really far away from each other.
here’s hoping.
I am getting old, I’ll get that right out there. However, who are the people who think this is cool? I’m on most socials (and largely follow only car content) and just about everyone I see coming across a takeover page or video or whatver is commenting on how stupid and reckless it is. Even the guys who street race and act like 6 year olds when they’re triggered and talk shit on other badges. Even the squatted truck folks. Might make an exception for the crackle tunes…I bet that’s a pretty circular venn diagram, but I also don’t personally know anyone who thinks a crackle tune is cool either.
Is it like a fully obfuscated community or something? People feigning disdain but secretly loving the takeovers? Or maybe I’m just old and have zero overlap with the people who steal hellcats.
This isn’t car culture. It’s criminal culture.
Most of these cars are stolen.
Some of the cars aren’t stolen.
They are merely bought with stolen money.
The same people that do flash mob robberies and their thug worship supporters are the culture involved, if one dares to call moral depravity culture.
I taught Engrish in Japan from the late 90s through the millennium and saw regular insanity. The Bosozoku were always trying to outdo each other in their affronts to civil society, from riding endless circles in local roundabouts to blocking toll roads.
They’d make endless early AM noise by my apartment tower, and one night, fed up with their cacophony I chucked from my balcony five floors up a half dozen tomatoes for lack of better missiles. They didn’t see who did it, but did enter the building and knock on doors demanding revenge. I just shrugged and went back to bed.
Despite my inherent distrust of American police, I’m all for these hooligans getting clubbed in the face.
I taught English at night and on weekends too when I was stationed at Yokota in the early 90s. Which is how I learned about drifting – which does not occur in a parking lot, a stadium, or a wide stretch of road.
Bosozuku were really motorcycle gangs who eventually deviated into cars.
Zokusha are the cars resulting from those gangs.
https://www.yokogaomag.com/editorial/bosozoku-cars-japanese-zokusha-car-culture
Yep, I meant the motorcycle gangs, far worse than anything on four wheels. Watching a group of them go around a traffic circle dozens of times is a prized memory of my time in Odawara. Generally, I love Japan.
Generally.
“…a cultural phenomenon that exploded in popularity during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Dude – you make it sound like it’s a new thing.
Sideshows have been a thing since the 80s and 90s in the East Bay/Oakland CA and LA.
When I lived in SF in the 90’s, we saw what was going on across the bay – where city councils proposed to make it illegal back in the 90s and early 2000s
https://www.kqed.org/news/10647205/sideshows-the-birth-of-oaklands-hyphy-culture
Just like kids see pro sports and decide they want to be baseball, basketball or football players – kids now see the Fast and Furious films, drifting (don’t get me started on lame US drifting vs it’s Japanese origins), video games and social media – and decide they want to do that IRL.
It’s right up there in stupidity with Coal Rollin’, Carolina Squats, etc.
Could’ve just stopped that it’s all stupid. Including coal rolling and Carolina squats.
“Street’s closed pizza boy! Find another way home.”
i.e. it’s been a thing long enough to get put into a mainstream movie by 2001, so I’m sure it was much much earlier than that.
I was gonna say “that can’t be right because it happens basically three times in 2 Fast 2 Furious”, completely forgetting that it was the opening race of the first movie.
That reminds me of the legendary KRON-TV interview with Bubb Rubb and Lil’ Sis in the muffler shop advocating for what is possibly the dumbest car modification ever – whistle tips.
Reporter: Can you tell me about the whistles?
Bubb Rubb: The whistles go WOO– You wanna WOO WOO–
Reporter: Some neighbors are saying it’s “way too loud.”
Bubb Rubb: …That’s only in the mowrning. He’s supposed to be
up cooking breakfast or something, …so it’s like an alarm clock!
Gosh I love that video. It still makes me laugh every time I see it. As a bonus, the appalled neighbor that looks like a poor version of Susan Sarandon is just so angry.
People Behaving Badly!
You just don’t remember what it’s like to be my age, Fast & Furious is very important to my generation
I never watched all 10 of them or whatever, but F&F was more about street racing than anything else. Sure there are sideshows but it was mostly in lots with subs and playstations. I remember when the first F&F came out, everyone was out there in their moms minivan cruising lot to lot and stoplight racing. The racing was dumb but nowhere near the level of stupid as takeovers. A lot of that original F&F energy is what Cars and Coffee is now…just everyone is old and doesn’t stay up past 10pm so its easier in the morning to get a lox bagel and coffee.
“I never watched all 10 of them or whatever”
I never watched any of those stupid F&F movies either.
I watched the first 3 I think. After the 3rd I thought ti ran its course. I just looked it up and holy shit there actually are 10. I thought I was being facetious!
Yeah. My take was the first was entertaining, 2F2F basically killed the franchise (even though I still love Brian’s R34 in the beginning), and Tokyo Drift was a memorable celebration of life.
Anything after doesn’t exist…
What’s the difference between a street race and a sideshow?
From a police / average civilian perspective they’re the same thing.
Sideshows are for confrontation and forcing other people to stop and watch.
Even California treats that as illegal detention.
People are assaulted and killed for objecting.
That’s the whole point.
You wouldn’t be treated well trying to force your way onto a road blocked off for a street race either.
Possibly.
I’ve never been to an organized one, though I’ve had the option.
When I would have, I was driving ultra light sports cars, and most street races here were pure drag racing.
I understand there have been some people focused on gambling, and possibly a lot of stolen parts.
Other people were putting huge sums of their income into their own cars, simply not a criminal element there.
I was fascinated to see the organizers in LA that claim to have brought all groups together on the theme of brotherhood, and been successful in setting safety rules, etc.
I hope it’s accurate