Angelino Heights residents are fed up with Fast & Furious wannabes, stage protest
Members of the neighborhood are protesting Fast X's filming after decades of dealing with street racing
Aux News Fast & Furious
Nearly every night since The Fast And The Furious debuted in theaters over two decades ago, members of Los Angeles’ Angelino Heights neighborhood have endured the late-night sights, sounds, and dangers of illegal street racing and street takeovers. Over the weekend, community members are staging protests around Fast X’s filming, in an effort to push Universal to do something about the franchise’s rowdiest fans.
“On any given night, especially on the weekends, cars come to Bob’s Market to do burnouts, do screeching tires, burning rubber, which has caused a lot of problems as you can imagine with the community,” Damian Kevitt, executive director and founder of Streets Are For Everyone tells The Wrap.
Fans flock to the aforementioned Bob’s Market as it serves as the location of the Vin Diesel character Dominic Toretto’s family business, Toretto’s Market & Deli. The franchise also films at a nearby Victorian-style home where Dom and his crew live. The protests are being held at Marion Park, a block away from Bob’s Market on Bellevue Avenue.
“There are street takeovers, and spinouts and then they rip up the street doing 70 miles an hour on residential streets on Kensington and then across to Bellevue,” one unnamed woman tells The Wrap. “It’s depressing and scary for everyone that lives in this neighborhood.”
In an interview with Variety, one family describes the constant flow of street racing fans who practice donuts in the streets, revving engines and screeching tires.
“Our mom stays with us, she’s 90, she gets scared at night with this kind of sound,” resident Robert Howard says. “There’s kids in the neighborhood right on that corner. It shouldn’t be allowed.”
The City of Los Angeles previously installed plastic street posts around Bob’s Market and on specific streets as a way to combat the illegal racing—but it’s done little to actually deter enthusiasts. Illegal street racing and takeovers have increased by 27 percent over the last year, according to numbers offered by the Los Angeles Police Department. Residents of Angelino Heights fear it will only get worse with the release of Fast X.
“When they found out that Fast and Furious 10 was going to be filming here—again—and despite requests from community members to stop the filming, to not film here, because of the increased traffic it’ll bring and the increased street racing that it’ll most likely bring, they were ignored,” Kevitt says in an interview with ABC 7.
Protestors are calling for more action from local police as well as Universal to reduce the street racing, which is not only noisy but extremely dangerous. In the last year alone, fatal collisions have increased by 23 percent in LAPD’s Central Bureau, which includes Angelino Heights.
“What’s happening in Angelino Heights is a result of an industry that doesn’t care about its potential consequences,” Kevitt says. “That needs to change and Universal needs to step up and take responsibility for the consequences and billions of money that they’ve made off of this.”
8 Comments
Protesters are calling for more action from local policeThis seems like the real issue. If this really happens as much as they say, how is it not worth it to park a cop there. Or better still install a speed camera.
Or send a young, blond, handsome but reckless undercover cop in to join their illegal street racing gangs and bring them down from the inside.
I absolutely loathe purposefully loud vehicular noise, so I sympathize with the people living in this neighborhood, but I’m not really sure what Universal would do other than cordon off the neighborhood and charge $75 admission to come in and be Fast and Furious. Do they want them to put a “Please don’t try this at home, and especially don’t try this in front of Bob’s Market” disclaimer before the movies?It’s my understanding that street racing is an extremely old pastime, especially in LA. Maybe the movies popularized it, but it’s still something I’d probably expect to hear pretty often if I lived in the area even if they never made them. Aside from being extremely annoying, is it really so dangerous to the neighborhood? I’m sure a few drivers get killed or maimed every year from it, but are many pedestrians or bystanders injured?
I live across from Bob’s Market and it’s a complete shitshow, every weekend. Can’t count the number of times I’ve been sitting at home, walking the dog, what have you, and some idiot with a rented Charger decides to start whipping donuts right in the middle of our street. We’re moving away from this lovely neighborhood, and the street racing wannabes are the main reason. We’ve tried to install some city policy that protects or monitors our area but the council just isn’t doing anything. Good riddance, ff franchise.
Serious question from a non-American: Can you not just go down to the corner store and buy a gun to shoot them with?
“What’s happening in Angelino Heights is a result of an industry that doesn’t care about its potential consequences” Or, bear with me, maybe the fucking COPS could do something about this? I mean this has been going on consistently for two decades and no one’s put a permanent police presence there? Make arrests, impound cars, and it will stop soon enough. It’s almost as bad as the half-billion dollar bridge LA had to shut down after two weeks because it couldn’t stop people racing and burning out. “There’s only one way on and one way off, so we are stumped how to contain the problem…”
Skid Marks
People do the same thing here— I don’t live in an area where films or major TV shows are filmed, and people still heavily trick out their cars and drag race around quiet suburbs where peoples’ kids are trying to sleep. And the cops don’t even attempt to do anything about it.*
*We thankfully have no cases of police brutality that I know of, but our local cops are about as useless as the cops in a hick horror movie and people still constantly suck their dicks, I’m mind-boggled by it.