Hoonery not heavy apart from foot

Press, 28 September 1988, Page 21

Hoonery not heavy apart from foot

Story:

JANE DUNBAR

Photographs: DEAN KOZANIC

Hanging out, watching cars cruise by, and dragging. That is what Friday nights are all about for the kids who meet under the Colombo StreetMoorhouse Avenue overbridge every week-end. Under the bridge is the place to be, says Dave and his mates. “You’re in the middle of everything. You see the guys hooning around, and can see what new cars are in town. “The kids hang out in or on their cars and wait for drags. “You check out cars, and then challenge each other.” The place for dragging is across the railway lines, down either Cass or Carlyle streets. “You go for a drive, then a car comes up and challenges you, and you put your foot down. Or someone will pass you and yell out ‘drag’.” Steve and his friends reckon Cass Street is the best street for dragging. It’s straight, wide, and “practically a dead end.” Cass Street is also “a good hang-out,” where they can show off their cars and look at what other people are doing to theirs.

“People come up to you and ask what you have got under your hood.’’ The Team Policing Unit say for. “years and years” young people have met under the bridge and held drag meetings along Carlyle Street. "They don’t cause any great problem, except when they spill diesel on the roads to do wheelies/ and burn-outs,” says one member of the unit. On a recent week-end there was an incident with a firearm being pointed out of one car at another, but such things are rare. Steve and his friends say they would have taken off if they had seen any sign of firearms. “When it gets a bit heavy, everyone leaves.” They reckon they know most people who turn up regularly, and say no-one comes to cause trouble. It is a place to meet friends, and not get hassled.

The main danger, says Steve, comes from cars pulling out from parks along Colombo Street, just over the bridge. Still, the worst accident he knows about is the time one guy backed into another. The Christchurch City Council should set aside a street for dragging, says Steve, so he and others can “be boons” without bugging anyone else. For them, spilling 20 litres of diesel on the road and “going for it” is great, but he appreciates not everyone thinks so. A woman working in the takeaway shop across the road says she hates the constant smell of oil burning out in the street, but otherwise the kids and the cars are no problem. The only thing that worries her is the number of young girls on their own who turn up each week-end. “Checking out the talent” is part of it all, admit both sexes,

but the cars are the main attraction. “It’s fun looking at the different cars and watching the boys blow their tyres,” says Julie. They all say they hang out where they do because they are car fanatics and there is nowhere else to go to drag. “You can’t drag you car in a nightclub.” The same goes for pubs, and they are too young to get in anyway. Money is less of a problem than age. Those who own cars earn enough to buy them, look after them, and buy petrol. Some spend $lOO in a weekend “just driving around,” says Steve. “With a VB, you go through that easy.” Warm summer nights, he says, are the most popular for meeting, and sometimes there are as many as 30 cars with, about six people in each parked in the area. “It’s like a parade, like ‘Miss Universe’,” says a friend. “It’s the poor man’s Ruapuna,” says another.