ALAMEDA — Car shows at the former U.S. Navy base are popular affairs, but what sometimes happens afterwards isn’t.
Some motorists speed through the streets and take part in sideshows.
That doesn’t sit well with the people who live in the old military housing near former aircraft runways and vast parking lots — attractive spots for drivers wanting to speed, do donuts or otherwise misbehave behind the wheel.
The City Council on Tuesday is scheduled to discuss what to do about it.
Doug Biggs, executive director of the Alameda Point Collaborative, which provides shelter to people who were once homeless and now live at the former military base known as Alameda Point, wrote the council to say residents there are upset with the dangerous commotion.
They want more done to slow traffic on Orion Street, Biggs said, and they wonder why the council hasn’t already taken action.
“Our residents also want to call out the increasing use of their neighborhood streets for sideshow, drag racing and other unsafe activities,” he said.
At night, the former base can seem isolated and abandoned, an easy target for vandals as well as thieves seeking to strip abandoned buildings of copper wire and piping to sell as recycling
In Oakland, sideshows have been a dangerous nuisance for decades. Last month, Oakland police said it was stepping up enforcement, and multiple people have since been arrested and their vehicles impounded.
Just how many sideshows have taken place at the former military base in Alameda was not immediately available.
Alameda police Lt. Erik Klaus said in an interview Thursday that police routinely patrol the former Navy base — which makes up about one-third of the city — and work with neighboring law enforcement agencies when they get word a sideshow might be planned.
“It’s a case-by-case basis,” Klaus said.
Alameda police have not heard about any sideshows planned for this Memorial Day weekend.
Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft and Councilman John Knox White put traffic at Alameda Point on Tuesday’s council agenda.
White said he and the mayor were mostly responding to demands that something be done to make people drive slower there.
“While billed as car shows, recent automobile enthusiast gatherings at Alameda Point have led to dangerous behavior in the neighborhoods surrounding and leading to Alameda Point,” White said in an email. “High speeds and unsafe racing are unacceptable in our community and more needs to be done to address these issues.”
He said the area’s residents have asked for the city’s help for nearly nine months.
“Action needs to be taken now to return the point’s residents to a more livable, family-friendly state,” White wrote.
Biggs said some sideshows break out near the lots around USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum.
“Among the events is an annual car meet and swap gathering,” he said. “There seems to be a natural affinity for car show attendees to head into other parts of Alameda Point to ‘show off’ with donuts in the middle of the intersections, drag races down streets like Midway (Avenue) and Stardust (Place),” Biggs said.
The Alameda City Council will meet at 7 p.m. on June 1. The public can participate via Zoom https://alamedaca-gov.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Nyud7sLnTSWyfgKZfdCh7Aparticipate.
People can also call in. The telephone number is 669-900-9128 and the Zoom meeting identification number is 861 0037 7976.