Krispy Kreme Tuesday-The Day After

We came, We saw, We Kicked it

“More than 99% of the attendants showed up respecting the meet pulling in quietly and parking without nuisance, ect. Arguably the squad cars were the ones impeding traffic pulling over anyone to discourage such future events. It is sad we in the automotive culture have to be intimidated of our right to assemble.”- @socal_geo714

Well, it’s Wednesday, the day after the revival of the Krispy Kreme Tuesday car meetup. The day before, the meet turned from official to “come if you want.” With more than 2,000+ people confirmed going on the invite page and thousands more on social media saying they would come, it’s not like all of a sudden no one was going to show up. The Burbank Empire Center hired out a local towing company to show they meant business. Burbank police in conjunction with surrounding local law enforcement tried their best to prevent anyone from showing up, which they successfully did…sort of. What they couldn’t stop was the thousands of local car enthusiasts who came simply to chill and have a good time.

The meet’s original organizer knew this was a possibility, so after Plan B. (meeting up in a different location) didn’t pan out as police were already there, Plan C. went into effect. Yesterday’s meetup turned into something more than one car meet as close to a dozen mini-meets popped up all over the San Fernando Valley. Basically, the whole city was your meetup and everyone was instructed to “do you.” That meant, meeting up with your homies and your car crews and going to “that spot” (wherever that may be.)

This cop was shining his light on some baby’s face. Really?

NBC 4 reported on one mother from Bakersfield who drove her son all the way out to Burbank JUST to check out the cars because that’s what he loves. There’s a video below of that report with the awesome mother at 55 seconds in.

Ironically, it looks like Burbank police and local authorities did to themselves what they didn’t want to happen in the first place. Driveways to the Burbank Empire Center were shut off, some restaurants closed early because practically no one could park and people who did want to eat had to park somewhere else. The normal “flow” of traffic was diverted away from commerce. Local residents who wanted to prepare for the upcoming Father’s day couldn’t even do that. According to the Burbank Leader,

"“It was absolutely horrible,” said North Hollywood resident Nicole Massinello, who was blocked from multiple parking lot entrances before finally finding a spot near Olive Garden, though she wanted to go to T.J. Maxx. “I just wanted to get my dad a Father’s Day present.”"

All in all, it seems like the parking lot closures were causing more problems than they were preventing. Many store workers who would normally be busy where just posted up outside with nothing better to do. According to Jonathan Batas on Facebook,

"I spoke with some of the workers and they said they had nothing to do. They were all just sitting on the front curb in front of the stores. It was more traffic than the meet itself."

And if course, local police couldn’t pass up an opportunity to profit from anyone who was in violation of the vehicle code. Citations were handed out. More or less about half the amount as back in 2013. According to one report, 48 tickets were handed out for simply not having a front plate and two arrests were made for outstanding priors and one person for having a knife.

Even KCAL9’s own eye in the sky Stu Mendel was instructed to bring out the chopper to catch a glimpse of the supposed “mayhem” that was going down. All he seemed to catch was a couple of police cars with officers practicing their handwriting skills writing tickets. Everyone else who knew what’s up was chilling somewhere else.

So where does Krispy Kreme Tuesday go from here? It looks like the ring leader has something cooking up for Southern California sometime this Summer… (details are scarce at the moment, but we’ll update you when we hear something good.)

Next: Why Krispy Kreme Tuesday Should Continue.