Thanks to Aron Robinson.-Bob






Sanctuary Shrinks for California Car Guys.

Only trouble can come from car guys searching for a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning. Car guys are thick in the hedgerows of Southern California, and their mass migrations have occasionally caused trouble. In spring and summer, usually in the early-morning hours before the traffic develops, huge flocks will descend suddenly on a private parking lot, milling and chattering and kicking the pebbles around until the conversation grows tiresome, which usually takes an hour or two. Lacking apparent leadership but with a keen sense of group will, they just as abruptly take flight to a screeching of rubber and excreting of hydrocarbons.




Some businesses welcome these migrations of car guys and especially the coins jangling in their pockets. But to a coastal homeowner determined to protect the tranquillity of his or her mega-priced divot of paradise, they can be noisy vermin. To a mall manager living in pale fear of injury lawsuits, car guys are the demon ambassadors of Satan.


So it was in February 2003 that a flock of car guys from the more fashionable area codes of Orange County, near Los Angeles, happened on an ideal roost. The Spanish-mission colonnades and terracotta roof tiles of this newly built strip mall on Pacific Coast Highway just north of Laguna Beach held no particular attraction. (Indeed, where in California can one buy a pizza or get a pantaloon dry-cleaned without basking in the pleasures of replica Spanish architecture?)


The palms soaring above the mall's freshly paved parking lot, though lovely, did nothing to distinguish it as prime car-guy habitat, either. And the four women's boutiques, the only retail businesses yet open in the mall, were decidedly irrelevant to the car guys' foraging habits. No, the mall became Southern California's great car-guy flyover because it is separated from the shimmering Pacific by just four lanes of traffic and because it has a suitable watering trough in the form of a franchised coffee drinkery.


On that first Saturday, about 25 car guys showed up. On the following Saturday, it was like 75. The Internet worked its multiplicative magic, and soon there were hundreds of cars. Gleaming Pebble Beach entries rolled out of trailers. Auto-industry executives circulated in the crowd. Porsche and Ferrari owners arrived dutifully, and car dealers and wax salesmen pressed business cards into their hands.
"I looked down the rows and learned what the term 'river of people' really means," says Marc Greehly, a Newport Beach hot-rod builder credited with discovering the mall.


Rumors abound as to what happened next. All agree that the mall manager took a hysterically negative view of the proceedings. Some say she ranted and screamed. Some say she set the sprinklers to run right through from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and that a sprinkler head once "accidentally" popped off, causing a water jet to shoot up and splash right into somebody's vintage Ferrari. Or maybe it was a Cadillac. Some say there were crashes out on the highway among the cars lined up to get in. Some say the police were summoned.
Very little of it is true, says Greehly. Accusations and threats, the cantus firmus of everyday life in Southern California, did occur. There were confrontations with the manager, who stormed right up to the Dan Gurney while he was parking one of his Alligator motorcycles and, to the flock's infinite mortification, let fly with a tirade of threats. (Gurney went away and didn't come back for a very long time.)


People revved their engines and performed smelly, shrieking burnouts. Residents in the chic neighborhood behind the mall complained. The coffee outlet testified that their Sunday-morning business was just as brisk so they could probably do fine without all the Lamborghinis stuffing up the lot on Saturday, thank you.
Greehly, who assumed the W. Averell Harriman role between the flock and the mall's owners, vowed to get things under control. The offended mall manager left, and the new one was more amiable and amendable to the flock, if it kept the noise to a minimum and obeyed the rules. Rule No. 1: Before 7 a.m., no cars may enter the roughly 25 percent of the lot designated for the flock. Rule No. 2, intended to prevent pedestrian mishaps: No cars may enter the coned-off pen after 7:15, regardless of the availability of spaces. Dressed in black and wearing flat-brimmed Mountie hats, several security guards patrol the orange cones with the rapid response afforded by golf carts.


Another rule, less visibly enforced, is a ban on commerce. The mall management desires, understandably, that its stylish venue not become a flea market. Thus, for-sale signs are discouraged, and the hucksters who distribute brochures are politely-at first-asked to shuffle on. The flock, however, has proven too tempting a target for predators. Naked commerce has given way to the seminaked. A San Diego dealer known for presenting half-a-dozen exotic cars every Saturday sometimes brings along a few exotic assistants. They use their amply displayed credentials to entice prospective clients to take a turn in a creamy leather seat. Such subtlety seems to work to everyone's satisfaction.


No effort is made to screen the cars entering the lot, so a line of matching Honda S2000s and a Chevy Caprice on chrome 22s can share this egalitarian asphalt with a $3 million Ferrari GTO. Better yet, nobody is there to knock off points for a grass blade wedged between the treads or a slightly misaligned air-cleaner sticker. Park, caffeinate, yammer, leave; the flock offers all the joys of an organized car show without the fuss of judging and the tedious hours wilting under the sun.


Yet the crowds are down, says Greehly. Some are repelled by the rent-a-Gestapo guards and their cones, which seem to embody everything foul about overcrowded, overregulated, overlitigated California. Greehly, like many, wants dearly to be rid of the restraints, but he accepts them as necessary to placate the landlord. The reality is that the days of free-range flocking are over. The boulevards are too busy, the old desert drag roads are all developed, the parking lots are restricted, and the cops are always hunting. Car-guy habitat is shrinking with each passing year.


But on Saturday morning, on this lot, after some struggles, car guys have a sanctuary.