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They Just Moved Into an Austin Neighborhood. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions.
Car clubs have gathered for decades at “Chicano Park” in the East Cesar Chavez neighborhood. But residents of a new luxury apartment building have started calling the police to stop them.The fleet of several dozen cars pulled into East Austin’s Fiesta Gardens, or “Chicano Park” as locals call it, on a recent weekend with the booming of powerful stereo systems announcing their arrival. After a few loops around the park, some drivers—most of them Black and Latino men in their twenties and thirties driving customized lowriders, bright, candy-colored slabs, and jacked-up trucks with flashy chrome rims—packed into a nearby middle school parking lot. Some unloaded barbecue grills, toddlers, and pit bulls, then cracked open beers, and blasted Texas hip-hop and Tejano music. Others joined a slow-moving carousel that flowed from the parking lot into the street and back again, swerving from side to side and occasionally screeching their tires, unleashing plumes of white smoke that covered the block in a light haze.
Some variation of this assembly has taken place nearly every Sunday afternoon since the early nineties. But now many residents of The Weaver, a newly built luxury apartment building across the street—whose website promises renters access to a “community that is rich in history and tradition”—have decided it’s time for the weekly event to come to an unceremonious end. Some of the building’s residents defend the car club gatherings and note they predate The Weaver residents’ arrival in the neighborhood, but many others have grown tired of the loud music, annoyed by the traffic, and turned off by the smell of skidding tires. One particularly vocal tenant, a non-Hispanic white woman with short blond hair who appeared to be in her fifties and refused to give her name, claimed that smoke from the tires was killing nearby trees and that traffic from the gathering would make it impossible for an ambulance to reach her in the event of a medical emergency (though two other roads to the apartment building remain accessible at all times). Another Weaver resident voiced more generalized criticism, calling the event a “display of toxic masculinity.”
“[W]e should shut this thing down,” a third resident, who blamed the lack of police response on the “idiotic” city council’s decision to slash the Austin Police Department’s budget, wrote in March on a building forum. Indeed, at a recent gathering, a non-Hispanic white tenant had flagged two police vehicles and pleaded with officers to disband the celebration, calling it “scary.” The officers eventually drove off without taking any action. Even though the event sometimes violates noise and traffic ordinances, it doesn’t pose major threats to anyone in The Weaver, nor does it break other city rules.
By the Sunday I went to the park, the building had posted a security guard in the driveway in response to growing outrage among its residents, and concerns for their safety. Several angry residents gathered near him. A few threatened to call the police. A frustrated woman from Chicago who said she winters in Austin and would not be renewing her lease wondered aloud about the financial toll the gathering would exact upon The Weaver, which is owned by Greystar Real Estate Partners, an international developer based in Charleston, S.C. (The regional manager who oversees Greystar’s Austin properties did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.)
Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/austin-car-clubs-gentrification/
9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
overpriced condos without first doing any research on the area and it's residents is too stupid to ask for police help.
These people have been holding the events there for almost 30 years and it doesn't sound like there have been too many complaints. There was no police presence, so that in itself is tacit approval of what they were doing. I've been to several of those car shows, and the people have always been warm, friendly, and there's never been a lick of trouble that I could see. And the cars are incredible! I'm not too thrilled with the rolling boom boxes, but the low riders are amazing. Maybe if the snobs tried to join in and have some fun, they'd come to an amicable solution. But no, money always trumps common folk and their ideas of recreation. 
Money doesn't talk, it swears.
FUCK THEM!
Suck it up, snowflake.
