For years and years, the Kennedy Commons car meet (Hwy 401 & Kennedy in Toronto’s east end) was the place to see and be seen in the Scarborough car scene. A newer plaza, there was an AMC theatre, casual restaurants, late night coffee shops, and a massive parking lot. Suburbs are boring, so all the broke teenagers would bring their cars and just hang out.
Of course, with so many young men together in a confined space and there’s bound to be some headbutting to see who’s the alpha. But it was harmless fun for the most part. Occasionally gearheads would rev their engines and others would lay rubber when leaving the lot. Some guys even made arrangements to drag race at the edge of town; same thing that’s been going on since the ’50s.
But at some point, it changed. Store owners became intolerant to ‘youths’ just having fun, and only spending a buck or two on coffees. So they complained, got the cops involved, and got the meet shut down. Some believed there was a racist undertone to the police being called in. Just look at the pictures above; all black and brown guys (or white guys immersed in black hip-hop culture) that caught the ire of store owners. Are the pictures blacked out to protect their identities, or to cash the sinister shadow of guilt on them?
Here’s an excerpt from Andrew Palamarchuk’s 2016 article about the end of Kennedy Commons car meets.
Car meets caused havoc at Kennedy Commons last year. On Wednesday nights, hundreds of youth with souped up cars would gather in the Scarborough shopping centre’s parking lot to hang out.
“They were doing burnouts and wheelies,” said Sharilene Rowland, coordinator of Kennedy Road BIA. “Some nights there would be a 1,000 cars. It’s not that we have anything against young people with nice cars who want to meet, but when it gets out of hand and there’s drinking and it starts to intimidate shoppers and workers then it becomes an issue.”. This year, area businesses reached out to police; extra patrols were sent to the area, and the gatherings have stopped. “It was a safety concern.
There was a lot of disorderly behaviour,” Const. Mark McCabe said of the car meets.
www.TORONTO.com
June 24th 2016
What a bunch of malarkey! They don’t have anything against young people? The old-heads at the local BIA are jealous of their youth and refuse to let them just hang out, listen to music and enjoy life.
Disorderly behaviour? Poppycock! Nothing short of a dragster can pull a wheelie, and that’s only on a grippy dragstrip. What lies these people spout to promote their own agenda.
By summer 2016, youngsters evicted from the parking lot increasingly turned to street racing for thrills, rather than just hanging out in their cars. Intolerant members of society try to blame popular culture like ‘Fast & Furious‘ films, but that’s absurd. People were saying the same baloney 75+ years ago when hot rod flick “The Devil on Wheels‘ was released in 1947.
Vice Media reporter / photographer Norman Wong wrote an article at the time, documenting how the Toronto car scene had changed before his eyes. Gone were the fun car meets; the scene moved underground to takeovers and even more dangerous pursuits.
I would hear of meet-ups around Kennedy Commons, which became a prime ground for modified automobiles showcases. I’ve been documenting official and unofficial car lot meets to fully explore the world of modified automobiles in Toronto, and do it in a style that hasn’t been done before. I’ve also been going out to the “runs”—a term for street races around the airport strip.
There is a lot of unspoken code … but people just meet at a spot, generally at a Princess Auto shop with a Tim Hortons, where they wait until a unanimous leader starts revving his or her engine, and this person leads the pack to a race zone where motorcycles and mod cars race. These races happen with a couple rounds, and they race until they get busted.
Then everyone meets at another location until it happens again, eventually ending up in somewhere like Oakville, sometimes going until 5 AM….such an exciting and subversive underground scene going on around me all along.
www.VICE.com
July 8th 2016
Kennedy Commons has been withering away for the better part of a decade now. First the AMC Theatre closed, then Cafe Mirage closed its doors. and last year the Chapter’s anchor store disappeared. Is this fallout from kicking out the kids from the car shows? It certainly didn’t help! Why would gearheads want to patronize businesses that don’t want them around, and store owners who are jealous of their youth.
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