KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Super Bowl wasn’t Sunday night’s only spectacle.
One of Kansas City’s notable sideshows chose Union Station as its stage, with drivers doing donuts on icy streets in frigid single-digit weather. More than 70 cars were there as drivers did reckless stunts in their cars at Main Street and Pershing Way. Some drivers even shot fireworks from their cars while performing donuts.
Desmound Logan and Michael Cooper have organized sideshows in Kansas City for years, via their group “Smoke Your Tires.” Both men said sideshows will continue happening in the streets until there’s someplace else to hold them.
“(The drivers) are trying to one-up each other. They live and die for clout,” Cooper said. “This is not going to stop. You can make it a life sentence to do a donut on Prospect or wherever, and they’re going to do it. It’s going to be a mess.”
As it stands, Kansas City Police officers can only disperse the crowds, or, in some instances, write tickets for reckless driving. People living near Union Station complained to FOX4 about the noise and traffic.
“If they’re doing the donuts when it’s below zero, and there were seventy some people out there, what do you think it’s going to be like this spring? It’s going to get bigger and bigger,” Logan said on Monday.
KCPD Sgt. Jake Becchina said the shows are dangerous, but so is the flood of people fleeing a scene, and law enforcement’s best course of action is to tell people to go home.
“We will show up whenever people call,” Becchina said. “It’s not always a situation where you can legislate your way out of something or arrest your way out of something. That seems like a quick, easy fix to some people but it may not be a long-term solution.”
Becchina said officers don’t pursue drivers leaving those scenes since sideshows are considered to be a non-violent crime. FOX4 reached out to the Kansas City mayor’s office for comment, or update on any new city ordinances involving sideshows, but our request for comment wasn’t answered on Monday.