The Fragility of Car Shows
I’ll get right to the elephant in the room.
We just did a talk about how to make your car show last longer than a hash brown. Make no mistake, in spite of our twelve years at this, we’re just as fragile as the next car show. It’s why we’re as picky about the details of our show as we are.
It feels like most of our work each season, after our initial kickoff, is just protecting the show from bad behavior, and those who don’t care if E@RTC is damaged or destroyed. Some would even prefer it for their own personal reasons. Who cares about the greater good for the community, or the thousands of volunteer hours? Well, we do.
We had an incident on Saturday that was not within our control, but it does impact our show and our brand. Apparently someone from RTC’s security got upset over the behavior of two BMW owners who wouldn’t cooperate with directions. We were not close by, so we didn’t know what happened or why she was mad. As I write this, we’re still piecing it together.
The person who then posted the security personnel on TikTok, never thought one second about how his actions would impact our event, or the negative impact on Redmond Town Center who allows us to hold E@RTC on their property.
He obviously didn’t care, this was just a good post in his mind with lots of views. Never mind that the person lost her job. If he wanted to solve the problem, there are were lots of better ways to handle it, and it turns into just one more ding in all car shows everywhere.
Some think it’s funny, entertaining, appalling, etc., but we don’t know what happened before the camera was recording. It was something small turned into something big because of where and how it was posted. Never mind the thousands of comments. It wasn’t one of our volunteers, but it was painted as such.
We have strict criteria about who gets into E@RTC and a lot of the basis in car criteria has to do with who we think categorically shows better judgment. The stats speak for themselves. An immature kid, compared to someone who’s had a bit more life experience and can better measure consequences of their actions can make or break any car show.
We want E@RTC to first and foremost be about having a good time for everyone. We have our rules to preserve the event and keep everyone safe. We’re deeply disappointed that we can’t get more car owners to respect Redmond Town Center for allowing us the opportunity to put on this event.
We are the guests of Redmond Town Center. We’re not the owners and we don’t get to claim special privileges, ever. It is private property. If security tells us to move our ass, we move our ass. We’ll sort out the problem later. We cooperate with them at all times, and we’d never show Redmond Town Center any disrespect by posting a video of an employee having a bad morning.
We regret it happened and our apologies to Redmond Town Center.