mad_machine
mad_machine GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
9/25/22 4:08 p.m.

After more or less getting kicked out of Ocean City MD, they converged 20 miles south of me in Wildwood NJ.  Unfortunately the chaos saw several people needlessly dying.

 

https://www.nj.com/news/2022/09/see-video-of-massive-crowds-burnouts-and-chaos-at-fatal-h20i-wildwood-car-meet-up.html

z31maniac
z31maniac MegaDork
9/25/22 4:18 p.m.

Perfect example of why I don't participate in the kids/takeover events. Standing around as people are driving recklessly, can't be surprised when bad things happen. 

Gettingoldercarguy
Gettingoldercarguy New Reader
9/25/22 4:27 p.m.

I love a good car show as much as the next guy, but this is just obnoxious.  Take a page from how LA is handling it.  30 day impound of car and 3k in fines plus parking yard fees.

Appleseed
Appleseed MegaDork
9/25/22 4:37 p.m.

In reply to Gettingoldercarguy :

Even better? Get caught doing dumb E36 M3, car gets crushed. Crushed publicly.

1988RedT2
1988RedT2 MegaDork
9/25/22 5:41 p.m.

I think it's safe to say they didn't make too many friends in the community.

John Welsh
John Welsh Mod Squad
9/25/22 5:53 p.m.

H2Oi 

How is this pronounced? 

Is it h2o as in water with an i?

I'm not familiar with it and failing to understand the name.  

1SlowVW
1SlowVW HalfDork
9/25/22 7:12 p.m.

As far as I understand there was first H20 (like water) because it was a fairly large water cooled vw show/weekend event.
Then it grew and they added international I believe under new leadership. 

Then it got dumber and the organizers stopped being involved and now somehow the monkeys are running the circus.

johnp2
johnp2 Reader
9/25/22 7:28 p.m.

Went to 3 of these over the years and always had a great time. Watched as it got more dangerous and reckless the past 3-4 years. Really too bad because it was a great location for a rolling car show. They still hold hot rod weekend there which from what I gather is pretty cool and an older crowd.

-John

z31maniac
z31maniac MegaDork
9/25/22 7:29 p.m.
1SlowVW said:

As far as I understand there was first H20 (like water) because it was a fairly large water cooled vw show/weekend event.
Then it grew and they added international I believe under new leadership. 

Then it got dumber and the organizers stopped being involved and now somehow the monkeys are running the circus.

I thought the organizers stopped being involved because they city banned the event?

1SlowVW
1SlowVW HalfDork
9/25/22 7:49 p.m.

In reply to z31maniac :

Quite possible, I kind of dropped out of the modded vw scene 7-8 years ago because of life. Mostly just knew people that attended in the early 2000s. 

Scotty Con Queso
Scotty Con Queso SuperDork
9/25/22 7:50 p.m.

Gathering of morons. I avoid those type of events like the plague. 

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter)
Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
9/25/22 7:54 p.m.
Appleseed said:

In reply to Gettingoldercarguy :

Even better? Get caught doing dumb E36 M3, car gets crushed. Crushed publicly.

Maybe someone could work it out so one of these H2Oi events conveniently occurs within close proximity of a monster truck event?

californiamilleghia
californiamilleghia UltraDork
9/25/22 7:58 p.m.

Sad as it makes all car look bad to the regular public.......

here in LA  street takeovers and the new 6 street bridge have left a bad taste and the politicians feel they need to do something ,  

Stay safe

mad_machine
mad_machine GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
9/25/22 8:08 p.m.
johnp2 said:

Went to 3 of these over the years and always had a great time. Watched as it got more dangerous and reckless the past 3-4 years. Really too bad because it was a great location for a rolling car show. They still hold hot rod weekend there which from what I gather is pretty cool and an older crowd.

-John

Hot rod weekend happened at the same time.  These guys basically took over. The only thing they didn't get to do was park on the boards like the rodders do.

I had my first run in with the H2O crowd before the Pandemic.  I was heading down to St. Michaels for a weekend of sailing, so I had my almost 60 year old sailboat on a trailer behind my landy. The H2Oers were making people's ears bleed on the ferry by revving the E36 M3 out of their engines to hear the echo.  An all around distastful bunch to say the least.

I had almost gone down to Cape May too this weekend, I am glad I didn't, I would have taken the Abarth and really would have gotten mixed up in that asshattery.

Kreb (Forum Supporter)
Kreb (Forum Supporter) GRM+ Memberand PowerDork
9/25/22 8:30 p.m.

Ah yes, sideshows. Another degradation brought to you by the city that I call home. 

Johnboyjjb
Johnboyjjb HalfDork
9/25/22 11:06 p.m.
Scotty Con Queso said:

Gathering of morons. I avoid those type of events like the plague. 

Says the guy on the Grassroots forum. Though I guess technically we are Dorks, not morons.

travellering
travellering HalfDork
9/26/22 11:07 a.m.
John Welsh said:

H2Oi 

How is this pronounced? 

Is it h2o as in water with an i?

I'm not familiar with it and failing to understand the name.  

My understanding is it's pronounced phonetically.    The normal sound of spitting in cartoons and the like is P-tooey.  This event is so distasteful that you don't even bother to purse your lips for extra distance when trying to get the name out of your mouth.  Huh-2-oh-eee!

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter)
Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) SuperDork
9/26/22 11:15 a.m.
travellering said:
John Welsh said:

H2Oi 

How is this pronounced? 

Is it h2o as in water with an i?

I'm not familiar with it and failing to understand the name.  

My understanding is it's pronounced phonetically.    The normal sound of spitting in cartoons and the like is P-tooey.  This event is so distasteful that you don't even bother to purse your lips for extra distance when trying to get the name out of your mouth.  Huh-2-oh-eee!

I thought you guys were talking about the event I went to this weekend...

https://www.nrh2o.com/doggiebeachbash

No cars crashed here. Nobody got hurt. A few police dogs showed up.

 

Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter)
Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) UltraDork
9/26/22 11:19 a.m.

It's pronounced:

H

TWO 

OH

INTERNATIONAL

This is by people who remember when it was a VW club, and associated show and not the "takeover" asshats that started coming in the later years as the VW show and attendees went away. Big kick in the ass is there was a really good VW show in Wildwood a few weeks ago and now the same sort of asshats have ruined this town too.

cfvwtuner
cfvwtuner Reader
9/26/22 11:24 a.m.

H2Oi came about in the late 90's   There was a watercooled club "club H2O" out of the Westchester county, NY area.  They were a good club and got big.   They hosted one of the first H2Oi at Lime Rock. It was a well organized car show of like minded VW enthusiasts. (if you look in the Performance VW mag at the pictures of the event, you can see the corner of the back of my trunk, so, obviously my car was in the magazine!)

It was good for a few years.  The club grew, the scent changed.  As the Mk4 cars gained prevalence it became a "culture" and started going downhill, and quickly.  Other imports started showing up. Someone tried to keep the show going.  the last one was outside of Ocean City, MD. It was such a craptastic event that the promoter decided it was time to let it die.

The takeover kids, Instigram fameous, and the other idiots decided that they were just going to go to Ocean city anyway.  Well, it got beyond stupid.    I saw they wanted to do this weekend in Wildwood way back.   I personally contacted the Wildwood PD, North Wildwood PD along with a few of the followed Bookface people.   Nobody ever responded to me. 

My wife spent her summers in WW at her grandparents house on Toledo Ave.  We were supposed to have left last saturday morning for a weeks vacation there.   Happily we postponed it, partially because of this garbage.

I take the whole thing as a huge offence to me.  Both as a Car enthusiast both for the motorsport and show aspects, and as a lover of the Wildwood area.  

The area district attorney is already looking into the "organizers" of the event to hold them accountable.

David S. Wallens
David S. Wallens Editorial Director
9/26/22 1:27 p.m.

Talked to a friend about something similar regarding our BMX community. There's a big difference between an organized skatepark contest, for example, and a downtown ride-out with tons of people ignoring traffic rules. Hate to be the adult but, to the masses, it's basically the same thing, and that doesn't help us. 

Duke
Duke MegaDork
9/26/22 1:51 p.m.

In reply to David S. Wallens :

An acquaintance was attempting to put some distance between "real" H2Oi and this stuff, after someone else likened the takeover movement to the coal-rollers.  Here's my response:

The problem is, no one outside the select few knows the difference. All that 90% of the public knows is that a bunch of car hooligans got thrown out of OC, so they went to Wildwood instead, and some people got killed. So now we "need" more laws to stop this from happening again.

You can draw a parallel between car cultures and electronic music: while people on the inside understand there are a thousand variations, to the vast majority of people it’s all just “techno”.

Which means the real issue is that nobody cares if it’s a stancetard being an idiot, a Mustang Guy leaving a meet, a brodozer blocking a charge station and blowing smoke, or anything else. It’s all just “car guys” being a public nuisance or worse.

 

Captdownshift (Forum Supporter)
Captdownshift (Forum Supporter) GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
9/26/22 2:16 p.m.

In reply to mad_machine :

Hot rod weekend was traditionally 2 weeks after H20I, going back to 2000-2001. I was an Worcester county officer officer many moons ago and H2Oi weekend was one of our bigger narcotics bust weekends of the year. 

russde
russde GRM+ Memberand Reader
9/26/22 6:04 p.m.

It's not just 'unsanctioned' car shows, or cars.

On our drive from Dearborn to South Texas we witnessed three separate incidents of motorcycle groups (one was ~6 bikes, one was ~10, and one was at least 20+ bikes). They weave in and out of traffic at high speed, then when they are able to re-group, they slow down to roughly 30 (in 55-70 mph posted limits), pull wheelies, tailgate traffic, and generally act like an out of control mob for 1-5 miles, then flee on an off-ramp.

I don't know how law enforcement could combat this. Back home, we hear groups of 3-8 bikes at least 3 times a week doing WOT runs in a 3/4 mile straight-a-way on a four lane road half a block from our house. One of the idiots died last year, that stopped them for about 3 months.

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