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Drag racers. Drifters. Cruisers. An assortment of loud, sometimes rampageous drivers have taken a keen liking to downtown St. Louis.
And it’s driving some residents mad.
Ask Brittany Walton. She’s a self-described “city girl” who’s lived downtown for five years and loves its walkability, the center-of-it-all feeling. But she recently moved from Washington Avenue to Laclede’s Landing. “The shenanigans downtown are completely why we decided to move.”
In August, a Dodge Charger ran red lights while speeding down Washington and crashed into a pickup truck, killing a 17-year-old girl and injuring several more. Since last year, residents here have reported a rise in drag racing, stunts, and occasional gunshots, especially late at night during weekends.To curb the behavior, wide concrete slabs called Jersey barriers were put in place on some multi-lane downtown streets, including Washington, Tucker, and South Broadway. Feedback has mostly been positive, says Brent Feig, District 4 commander of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. But the barriers aren’t universally praised. (Just check the message boards on NextDoor.)
“They’re not very pretty,” admits Feig, adding that residents may see oversized planters or gates in the future. He says community feedback is a key consideration. With businesses reopening and crowds returning to major sporting events, access has become an issue, so plans were being shuffled around at press time. “It’s still a little early to tell true success,” Feig says. “Our main peak season would start late April, early May as the weather turns and stays warm.”
Police officers are also patrolling the area, though reports of loud noise and reckless driving continue. “What we don’t want to do is create a more dangerous situation for the public, our visitors, our residents, and even those people who are fleeing from law enforcement,” Feig says. “We have to take their safety into account as well.”
“IT HAS JUST PERMEATED THE WHOLE AREA. IT’S HARD TO GET A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP FOR ALL THIS NONSENSE GOING ON.”
Then there’s the sheer noise from the hot rodders, which has become insufferable to some downtowners, especially while they try to sleep at night. Aside from screeching tires, some residents describe the sound like a single, straight pipe accelerating for minutes. Feig says that much of the noise comes from gearheads gathered in parking lots showing off the latest modifications to their cars.
James Page has lived downtown for many years. When SLM spoke to him, he’d just been elected 5th Ward alderman but wasn’t sworn in, so he declined to speak officially on the issue. Still, he had much to say as a resident. The earliest signs of trouble started about five years ago, he recalls, though the activity seems to have increased during the pandemic, with more people working from home and fewer cars downtown. “It has just permeated the whole area,” says Page. “It’s hard to get a good night’s sleep for all this nonsense going on.
“I can’t figure it out,” adds Page, a former drag racing fan. (Those were “sanctioned races,” he emphasizes, “on sanctioned strips.”) “Maybe I’m of a different generation, but I have no earthly idea what would incentivize people to drive like this.”
St. Louis isn’t alone. Over the past year, other cities have seen a rise in street racing. “The events, which are usually organized on social media, have grown in popularity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in December. There, the city council is cracking down with strict laws and fines. In Minneapolis, where a man was hospitalized last summer after being struck by a drag racer going 100 mph, the police received support from the county sheriff’s office and state patrol to respond to calls. In Glendale, Arizona, police activated a task force to address the issue. In New York, legislators proposed using speed cameras. Law enforcement officials in the Chicago suburb of Naperville are impounding vehicles, among other measures. And in Kansas City, some have proposed a local burnout park or drag racing strip. St. Louis has the World Wide Technology Raceway across the river in Madison. It hosts some late-night drag racing, but not every night.
Residents Crystal Gammon and her dog, Goose, don’t tolerate the noise well. She’s never felt particularly uncomfortable about crime downtown, but she does walk her dog on her building’s dog run rather than in the neighborhood at night. “I’ve seen cars make blind high-speed wrong-way turns onto Locust Street,” she says, “and it just feels very dangerous to encounter that situation with a very jumpy dog after dark.” She also uses what she calls “fairly high-decibel” brown noise (which is like white noise but a slightly lower frequency) throughout her apartment, day and night. It helps calm Goose, she says, “but I think it helps me deal with the drama, too.”
