What happened to the Mulholland "King of the Hill" RSR?

[lfot]

So many new people all within 24 hours!

Love it.

[Jeff Hail]

Originally Posted by kcassady

hi everyone!

i found this thread yesterday, wow it brought back so many memories..
i had forgotten about the eye on la segment with paul moyer..
didn't he also do one on the banzai runners ? i remember he interviewed
jastit rarewala....

i had also forgotten about the sannett bro's lolas

i'd been looking for anything on the mulholland scene for quite sometime .
this is the best thread i've read anywhere in a long time....

koyne

That was back in 1980. An article also came out in New West Magazine about the Bonzai Runners. Some bits on the previous pages of this thread.

Jas Rarewala is still around pushing Lambo's to this day.
Back in in the 1970's Jas was at ACI. They converted european cars to meet US specs for bumper and emissions update. Some big bucks were made making grey market cars compliant. They also had many headaches involved. Later I think it was called Rarewala Enterprises. Location was Telo street in Torrance.

Long story short is Jas hooked up with Trefor Thomas and went deep into the raging bull line with Lamborghini of N. America.

A lot of those cars kept Claudios on Van Nuys Blvd very busy.

[kcassady]

Originally Posted by Jeff Hail

That was back in 1980. An article also came out in New West Magazine about the Bonzai Runners. Some bits on the previous pages of this thread.

Jas Rarewala is still around pushing Lambo's to this day.
Back in in the 1970's Jas was at ACI. They converted european cars to meet US specs for bumper and emissions update. Some big bucks were made making grey market cars compliant. They also had many headaches involved. Later I think it was called Rarewala Enterprises. Location was Telo street in Torrance.

Long story short is Jas hooked up with Trefor Thomas and went deep into the raging bull line with Lamborghini of N. America.

A lot of those cars kept Claudios on Van Nuys Blvd very busy.

did claudio ever finish his book on the cizeta?
the site hasn't changed in some time..

www.16cylinder.com/

and what ever happened to the blue 935/14 a.i.r. built for john bond?
i had a pull out mini poster from vw/porsche magazine of that car on my wall as a teenager....

[Banning]

During the making of the book, The Mulholland Experience I had to interview over 30 people and transcribe their words. I thought that some of you might like to see one of those interviews. The interview below is of Phil M. Part I

Phil is the guy on the front of the article about Mulholland racing that the Herald Examiner did in the 80's. Phil had a 924 Porsche and was an avid Mulholland racer.






Phil M. Interview 11-26-05

Phil: You are really serious about this thing.

Chris: I’ve wanted to do this for many, many years.

Phil: Okay!

Chris: Did you ever race Mulholland?

Phil: Yes, I raced from the middle part of 1980 to 1982.

Chris: Where did you race?

Phil: Mostly from Coldwater to Laurel, but also from Coldwater to the 405 freeway.

Chris: What was it like back then? Who do you know who raced on Mulholland?

Phil: Gary Hendrickson, Chuck Turner, Gary Shore, Joe Valarde, Joe Primitare, John Rosner, I looked it up he is John Vancagnum.

Chris: Those were the fastest ones?

Phil: At least they thought they were.

Chris: Who were the fastest ones?

Phil: Besides myself? Chuck was pretty good. John V. was one of the fastest ones. Court was pretty fast. He went to Uni High. Everyone that I knew was pretty good. One does not stand out above the others. I think John V. was the fastest.

Chris: You and him?

Phil: My car didn’t have a lot of speed. It was more of once I got up to speed, then I could maintain my speed. The fastest car up there, that I remember, was the Porsche 930 Turbo.

Dan: What other cars were running up there at that time?

Phil: Lots of Dotsun Z’s, 510’s, Mini Coopers, nothing really too exotic. There were a couple of Corvettes, and not too many muscle cars. There were mostly road race cars that were modified for road racing. They were lowered, had suspension work done on them. The reason why John V. was the fastest was he had the best car the Porsche 930 Turbo. He was also a very skilled driver.

Chris: What is your favorite Mulholland story?

Phil: The most memorable was when I was driving with Chuck. We didn’t check the course to see if it was clear of cops, or hazards, or water stops, or debris. We were driving from Coldwater towards Laurel Canyon, and I did a high speed pass. I was flying and I came up on a LAPD car, at Summit, without his lights on. He was patrolling very slowly with out any lights. He was hiding looking for some target that night. I was taking the entire road, from curb to curb. I was on his side of the road and his eyes lit up as he saw me coming right at him. I quickly swerved and cut back on my side of the road. I was traveling at about 80 MPH, in my Porsche 924, at that point. As soon as I made it passed him, he flipped it around and came after me with his lights and siren blaring. He tried to catch me. I proceeded to get on it, and go through the racecourse as fast as I could. I few pass, Skyline, where I picked up another LAPD car. He turned around, so now, I had two LAPD units after me. I had some distance on them, but they were coming up fast. My passenger was Chuck. Chuck is a very cool headed person when the heat is on. He directed me to go up Skyline, and we proceeded to go on some dirt fire road. We made our way back to Bel Air, and switched out cars. We then came right back out to Grandstands. We discovered that a half of dozen police cars were out looking for me. A helicopter was out with his searchlight searching for someone. I was back in the parking lot watching the activities with everybody else.

Chris: Did you ever get arrested?

Phil: Not racing Mulholland, but another traffic related matter I did.

Dan: Was there any big bust when you were hanging out up there?

Phil: There weren’t any big busts, but there were a lot of police harassments. They would come up and write people up for no front license plates, equipment violations, and they would block the driveway to get into Grandstands. They were active in checking out everybody’s cars for violations. If they found any little thing, they would write them up. One night I remember, there were 40 of us up at Grandstands. An LAPD helicopter came over and hovered above us. He was just sitting 20 feet off the ground, and he threw up rock and gravel with his rotor blades, purposely. He created a huge dust and dirt cloud, using the dirt from the side of the road, and dusted everybody pretty good. He went down the North Hollywood Division Police Station and filed a complaint. I didn’t do any good.

Dan: What was the atmosphere at Grandstands like? What did you guy’s do?

Phil: I was mostly social up there then. Everybody would come up there and hang out, show each other their cars and thing like that. I was up there, during a period, where there wasn’t a lot of racing going on, but there were a few good races every night. It wasn’t just constant, one race after another. People would hang out for awhile, somebody would want to go for a run, but that wasn’t the main focus for going up there. I was much more of a social thing, and showing off cars.

Chris: Was there still cruising on Van Nuys?

Phil: Yes, I started off cruising Van Nuys, I think it was Wednesday, and people would also cruise Friday and Saturday nights. That would get slow around eleven or twelve, then I would go over to Westwood. I discovered that Westwood cruising was even better. We would hang at Westwood until one or two in the morning, and then we would make our way up to Mulholland Drive. We stayed up there until the wee hours. That was the general schedule.

Dan: Did you drink, were there girls, did you party?

Phil: There were some girls that came up there with us. The majority of the girls were there with their boyfriends, who raced. I had a girlfriend, at the time and she would come up there with me, on occasions. I don’t ever remember driving fast with her in the car with me.

Chris: Did you hang out at Grandstands every night?

Phil: No, not every night. I was there, I would say, once or twice a week. Chuck lived up there. I think he had his own parking spot up there. Nobody was up there than old man Gary. He was a fixture there.

Chris: The guy with the Rancharo?

Phil: Yes, he had a Rancharo, a late fifties Corvette, that looked like it was four wheel drive.

Chris: Do you know who Charley was?

Phil: I only heard of him, I never met him. He was a racing legend up there, racing in his Corvette. We always heard about this person named Charley. He was the fastest, and he was the king of the hill. I never met him. He was more like a legend. I don’t think you have ever met him either, have you?

Chris: Yes I have.

Phil: You have, was I far off?

Chris: He was a legend all right.

Phil: Did he have a Corvette?

Chris: Yes.

Phil: All right, that is what we heard about him. I never saw him drive up there, it was just talk.

Chris: He died.

Phil: I didn’t know that either.

Chris: Did you ever lose control or crash on Mulholland?

Phil: I lost control when I spun out a couple of times, but I never crashed up there. I was very lucky and fortunate, as I look back, I would never do the thing that I did back then, today. We were stupid kids. I avoid Mulholland today. It is just too easy to lose your life, it’s just too dangerous. Back then, there were either no guardrails or very few guardrails. It is not what you see up there today. You would just go off the side, nothing to hold you in. I’ve seen a lot of cars go off the side.

Chris: Tell us about that.

Phil: I’ve seen cars go off at Deadmans, Carls Junior, Carls, and in between. During my years up there I have seen maybe a dozen cars go off. I wasn’t there, at the times, that the event happened, but I would see the after effects maybe an hour or two later. It wasn’t that uncommon. Some of the people that went off, maybe even half the people that went off the cliffs weren’t even racers. They were just bad drivers. They were the type of people that just came up there to race around, and they didn’t know how dangerous it really was. They just didn’t know what they were doing. They weren’t the Mulholland crowd. They just went too fast and lost control. As a matter of fact, Chuck Turner got hit by someone racing up there. His car got totaled out. Neither party went off, but both cars were mangled. The person that hit Chuck was racing around and didn’t know the road, and he went right. He lost control and smashed into Chuck’s AMC Javelin.

Chris: Did you ever have any other good chases on Mulholland?

Phil: Not on Mulholland. There was one that happened in the daytime. I had two chases that were back to back. This one was a daytime pursuit. I was at University High, in the parking lot, and I was making a lot of noise. I had a thousand watt sound system with eighteen inch Sherman Vega sound woofers, and I was playing loud music disturbing the classes in the morning. When I came back in the afternoon, to do the same thing, the police were waiting for me. They started following me when I got to the school and I took off. I took off down Wilshire to the 405, and now I had a helicopter above me. I took off towards LAX where he couldn’t fly in the restricted airspace. Once I lost the helicopter, losing the ground units was easy. I left the car in a parking lot and took off on foot for a couple of hours. I returned to the car later, now I was so scared, that I had Chuck drive my car back home. I was too scared to drive. That was the first pursuit that I was in. It scared the hell out of me. I was shaking. As I remember, there was this initiation that you were not a true Mulholland racer until you had a pursuit. That’s how we would pop our cherries back then, by getting into a police pursuit. That is what Chuck told me. He said that you weren’t a bona fide racer until you had at least one police pursuit under your belt. I ended up having two in two days.

[Banning]

Here is the second half of the interview with Phil M.

Please let me know if you would like to see more.





Chris: Did you ever know about any car groups on Mulholland?

Phil: No not really. It wasn’t organized up there. People associated themselves with Mulholland racing groups. There weren’t any club meetings or things like that. It was a very loose atmosphere.

Dan: Did you ever hear of ACR or TVL?

Phil: I had heard of that, but I think it was just names that people gave themselves as monikers.

Dan: Did you know what happened to the racers who were up there before you were?

Phil: It was just roomer and innuendo, dealing with people like Charley and Chris B. I have heard a lot about Chris, but I never saw him race up there.

Dan: So he sort of became a legend?

Phil: Yes, I would say so. I met Chris through Chuck, and through that newspaper article.

Chris: Do you remember any kind of social structure when you would hang out at Grandstands?

Phil: I can’t recall, I think we gave names for things, but I just can’t remember.

Chris: If you could sum up why it was fun, how would you do that?

Phil: It became fun because there were no rules. What we were doing was illegal, it was dangerous. Looking back on it now, it was very stupid, because you could get killed so easily. I would never do what I did back then today. I was seventeen at the time, I was just turning eighteen. I did a lot of things out of being immature, just to prove that I was faster than the next guy. I was one of the lucky ones who never had a serious incident up there. A lot of people did not fare as well as I did. People died. I know of people who when off the cliff and died. I remember one story, there was an older guy, in his Ferrari, in his sixties, he wasn’t even racing, and he went off at Deadmans. I didn’t see that one with my own eyes, I read about it in the paper. Then I hiked down and saw all the wreckage. Some people with nice cars think that they can drive fast and handle the road, when in reality it is no place to show off. Deadmans is very deceiving, as you are coming out of the Sweeper, and you have built up a lot of speed, well there is a hairpin turn right at Deadmans. Most people are not ready for that turn. They skid and go right off.

Dan: Do you have any idea why it all shut down?

Phil: It never really shut down. The police began cracking down with parking restrictions. There was a higher police presence where there was always a police car patrolling. That just dissuaded people from racing. It is one thing to encounter a police car when you are racing, but to race when the police are already there? You would have to be an idiot.

Dan: How about when the signs went up?

Phil: I believe that happened early 1982. People still parked in the parking lot, but they did not park right off Mulholland anymore. People parked on the shoulders, on the dirt part, of Mulholland to watch the races. That was pretty dangerous, because some of the spectators got hit as well, when the racers lost control coming out of those wicked turns. That ended when the signs went up.

Chris: Do you miss racing Mulholland?

Phil: Yes and no. I miss the excitement, the freedom, living on the edge, but I don’t miss the bad things that go along with it like getting injured or even killed. I don’t miss that part of it. It is just not safe. Those of us who know that there are too many people who got hurt, injured or killed, it is just not worth it.

Chris: Do you have any other stories relating to Mulholland?

Phil: I sure I do.

Chris: What are you doing now?

Phil: I am in real estate. I live not too far from Mulholland. I purposely avoid Mulholland, because racing is still in my blood. I cross over Mulholland every single day, and every time I cross over that threshold going over Laurel Canyon, I always have fond memories of the Mulholland race days.

Chris: Do you think your experiences on Mulholland led you to where you are now?

Phil: I think that they made me a better driver. It is kind of a lousily way of becoming a better driver, to go through that. If you start road racing at sixteen, and you figure out how a car handles under racing conditions, it make you a better driver when you understand all of that.

Chris: Did you ever have any car rallies?

Phil: I went up there a few times to have a preplanned race. It was very loosely organized. The time I spent up there I did not find anything thing that was really organized. If anything it was more disorganized. It was just a spur of the moment thing. Whoever showed up on any particular night. There were times where I was with Chuck and we would park somewhere on Mulholland by the western Coldwater side. We would just park on the side of the road until a car came by traveling at a high rate of speed. We would then chase after them. We picked up races that way. Grandstands was the central stop if you wanted to talk, but if you wanted to get into a race you would go and wait for someone to drive by real fast and you would challenge them. I would just pull up behind them and see if I could stick to them. That was the way I got races. Then sometimes they would turn around and we would which positions. That was the way it was. It was very rare that two guys would leave the parking lot to go race each other. It was more of running around looking for opportunities. I don’t ever remember it being a verbal challenge. I was a skill challenge. If you could stay with somebody, then you were at least as fast.

Chris: Did you ever race with your headlights off or in the fog?

Phil: Once I had LAPD chasing me and I turned my lights off, but I knew the road backwards. I lost them in the fog on Beverly Glen.

Chris: Did you ever go and race, purposely, with your lights off?

Phil: No, that would have been stupidity. Having you lights off on Mulholland is just asking for trouble. I still remember that pursuit I was in. The cop eyes were bugging out when he saw me.

Phil: I remember the Christmas lights that I had on my car. I rigged up the miniature Christmas lights on the outline of my car, the wheel wells, the roofline, the windows etc… I waxed the car real good and then I used duct tape. It didn’t hurt the paint. I hooked up a converter that converts twelve volts to 120. I would go down to the parade route in Pasadena, on New Years Eve and drive down the parade route. My car looked like it was an electric car. That was actually a lot of fun. I did it to several different cars.

[Banning]

Here is a copy of the front of the Herald Examiner with Phil on the cover, Photo taken with Deadmans in backround.

[slodave]

Gotta love the last paragraph...
"There's no thrill to it there (race tracks)." he says. "There's no cops. No other nice little problems like road construction, bumps, CLIFFS."

[Jeff Hail]

Originally Posted by kcassady

did claudio ever finish his book on the cizeta?
the site hasn't changed in some time..

www.16cylinder.com/

and what ever happened to the blue 935/14 a.i.r. built for john bond?
i had a pull out mini poster from vw/porsche magazine of that car on my wall as a teenager....

Mechanic to the stars and those with very disposable incomes....Claudio Zampolli.......I have not seen him since the shop closed. Was a very personable guy for an italian tech and a great wrench- able to sync six double throat Webers in a single bound by ear!

Check out this classic video. Claudio is in the opening shot at Saugus Speedway. The driving scenes were filmed at my friend Mike Thompson's ranch in Piru, Ca. 3 miles of closed road course on private property. That road is not in good shape these days but I watched the filming and no one held back. http://youtube.com/watch?v=MiVfaTJUZXU

I forgot about the Cizeta. Book? I never knew!

[Jeff Hail]

Thanks for posting that Chris,

I like the way Phil said it like it was. The truth. Guys just hanging out.
This confirms the interview in 7/78 New West Magazine "when the complaints get heavy- which is usually twice a year -the police set up a sweep".

Quote:
Phil: I was mostly social up there then. Everybody would come up there and hang out, show each other their cars and thing like that. I was up there, during a period, where there wasn’t a lot of racing going on, but there were a few good races every night. It wasn’t just constant, one race after another. People would hang out for awhile, somebody would want to go for a run, but that wasn’t the main focus for going up there. I was much more of a social thing, and showing off cars.

Quote:
John Hall: "It was never organized like that. The police think we go up there and and plan who's going to race and run them off against each other like drag racers. We go up there to talk and hang out..............."






Personally I think the whole time the cops were stigmatized by the Mini Coopers that "terrorized" Mulholland during the 60's. Then again I can't see a Mini threatening anything?? How many times when one of us went across the hill did it result in an actual race? Stopping to say hello on Mul was like bowling it was a social thing. Today is no different except we park Radu in a race seat in the middle of Mul and take publicity photos. Its about the fun. It was always about the fun.

[kcassady]

Originally Posted by Jeff Hail

Mechanic to the stars and those with very disposable incomes....Claudio Zampolli.......I have not seen him since the shop closed. Was a very personable guy for an italian tech and a great wrench- able to sync six double throat Webers in a single bound by ear!

Check out this classic video. Claudio is in the opening shot at Saugus Speedway. The driving scenes were filmed at my friend Mike Thompson's ranch in Piru, Ca. 3 miles of closed road course on private property. That road is not in good shape these days but I watched the filming and no one held back. http://youtube.com/watch?v=MiVfaTJUZXU

I forgot about the Cizeta. Book? I never knew!

too cool!!!
i forgot he was in that video...

claudio is still making the cizeta..
i wouldn't mind one in my garage......lol
www.cizetav16t.com

[Banning]

If you go hiking along the racecourse, be careful of the groves of poison oak below Mulholland. Here is one grove near Deadmans.

I got some on my right hand because I wasn't wearing gloves. However, Jeff wasn't wearing any protection on his arms. How are you fairing Jeff?

[Banning]

Here's a shot looking down into the canyon below Carls. Jeff and I hiked to the bottom of this area. It is very beautiful and green but one heck of a trek back up to Mulholland.

[Jeff Hail]

Originally Posted by Banning

If you go hiking along the racecourse, be careful of the groves of poison oak below Mulholland. Here is one grove near Deadmans.

I got some on my right hand because I wasn't wearing gloves. However, Jeff wasn't wearing any protection on his arms. How are you fairing Jeff?

No problem from the poison oak, a little itching on the drive home.
I did get torn up on my left forearm from the brush we had to go through. Looks like a cat attacked me.

[nameisbauer]

Do you guys have a higher res photo of the "map" I still mix up the names of all the turns.

[Banning]

Originally Posted by nameisbauer

Do you guys have a higher res photo of the "map" I still mix up the names of all the turns.

Here's one map.



And here is another.

[KevinP73]

Here is a recent google earth shot of Mulholland from Laurel west to around Coldwater.

[kcassady]

Originally Posted by Banning

Here's one map.



And here is another.

awesome!!!

this is the best thread ever..........

[SCCRA]

Hey guy's,

Here's a no excitement police chase story. I was driving through from Beverly Glen around 1am or so. It was drizzling and I like sliding around a bit, so I was just having some fun. Not going fast, just having fun. So I go past Grandstand, nobody there. Keep going and turn up Skyline. Normally, I'd make a u turn and buzz back through, but this time I went up to the Campbell house to see if Kelly was home. She wasn't. Head back toward Coldwater. A car coming the other way flashes it's lights at me and I slow down. It's Stilts.
"Where you going" he says.
"Back to Grandstand" says I.
"Don't you know there's a cop chasing you" says he.
"Nope" says I.
"You should probably split, I'll come by your house later" Say's he.
So, I went home. Stilts came by and we had a good laugh about the non-chase. I guess the cop continued on to Laurel Canyon when I went up Skyline. Gary thought he might come back through so I went down Coldwater.

Jeff

[Banning]

Here's a good shot of Carls Jr at night looking towards Deadmans.

[Banning]

Originally Posted by slodave

Gotta love the last paragraph...
"There's no thrill to it there (race tracks)." he says. "There's no cops. No other nice little problems like road construction, bumps, CLIFFS."

If you like hearing Chuck say that, here is Chuck's interview...




Chuck Turner Interview 11-26-05

Chris: I’m really glad that I was able to get a hold of you because I’m just about finished writing this book that I have been working on since the beginning of the year. If some of the stories, about things that we did, aren’t written down then they are going to pass into obscurity. All of these ideas of what Mulholland use to be like is never going to be the truth. I thought that I better get stories quickly before I’m dead. I got your number from Phil.

Chuck: I left my number with your mom.

Chris: Thank you very much. I wonder if I can ask you a few questions while I have you on the phone.

Chuck: Yeah, sure go for it I have plenty of time I am just watching a football game.

Chris: Am I correct, didn’t you call yourself the keeper of the lore?

Chuck: No, we were always teasing old man Gary about that. Remember the Hawkins book had just come out and I had read it. I was teasing Gary about who knew the history and background about Mulholland. Who knows all the facts and stuff like that? The keeper of the lore, the keeper of the ring does.

Chris: What was the atmosphere at Grandstands?

Chuck: The atmosphere at Grandstands was usually upbeat. I know that the gals were ready to jump in a car and go for a run with the guys. It was always watching the track and having a good time. There wasn’t that much drinking alcohols or beers, it was more interests in the cars. The guys would come in after they had been working on their cars. They would show off what they had done by opening up the hood, and we were excited about the changes. It was similar to what was going on down at Van Nuys during the cruising time. It was more about socializing. There were times when people would come up there and drink a bottle of beer. But generally there was not too much alcohol.

Chris: Were you more of a racer or passenger?

Chuck: More of a racer. I was driving a 1973 AMC Javelin. It was green with a vibration stripe down the side. License plate read RACE MUL. I made runs of a regular basis. At times I would run the gals around. I used my bachelor status to my advantage. I was averaging between tow to three pursuits per week.

Chris: For how long?

Chuck: God, for a couple of years.

Chris: You hung out at Grandstands every night?

Chuck: Yes, I was there every single night.

Chris: Between 80 and 82?

Chuck: I started going up there in 77. I started going there with the mayor’s daughter of Burbank. The cops were furious and so was her dad. She was sneaking out in the middle of the night. I was going to high school at that time. She was fifteen and I was seventeen. After her I went out with Pat Collins daughter. Pat was a hypnotist down on Sunset. We would go down and see the shows and then go to Mulholland after. The other girl I was seeing was the daughter of the President of the Bel Air Country Club. I was always in the Mulholland area, and always racing up there. I think it was 1983 when I bailed out of there. In 1983 it started tapering off. I was up there every single night even when I was going to school. I was up there till three in the morning.

Chris: Do you know who had your plates before you?

Chuck: No.

Chris: Do you know why racing stopped on Mulholland?

Chuck: They came up the roadblocks, that didn’t work. What really kind of killed it was the residents being built up there.

Chris: What about the signs that read no parking dusk till dawn?

Chuck: No, we used to take those down. We would go on a walk and taking the signs down. I had my car impounded so many times out of Grandstands. They would give me a citation and take my car down to the West LA impound tow place. The guys knew me so well that they would park my car right outside. I would get my car and then go immediately back up to Mulholland. The first cop I saw I would blow by and the chase would be on again. A couple of girls, borrowed my car, and parked it at Grandstands one night. They towed my car. I got ticked off and I got into three different chases that night. The last one we got boxed in on a side street. I told this girl to strip naked and jump into the backseat and pretend that we were having sex in the car. The cops came up, and they knew as well as I did, that they couldn’t arrest us. How would have it looked when the ticket read reckless driving and the judge ask what I was doing at the time of the arrest? I would just say having sex in the backseat of the car. I just would not hold up in court. I did that a couple of times. Anytime I got into a chase with a gal with me, well that would be one of my best pitches.

Chris: Any other good chases?

Chuck: I was just a regular guy, they chased me because they didn’t like that I was dating the mayor’s daughter. I would go up the hill south of Bowmont. I saw a cop and ditched him. The next day I came blowing through and there was a cop with a radar gun. I lost him. The third day I came by driving in my mom’s car and three patrol cars were waiting for me. It was fun though. They put the signs up during the day, the put half the track up, by the time they came back the next morning all the signs they just put up were gone. First they just put them in the ground. It took two of us to shake the signs loose. We pulled it up and threw it off the edge. We made sure to throw it down far enough so they could hall it back up. They got smart and they started to put the sign in concrete. They opened up a hole and put the sign in and then poured concrete in the hole. Okay fine, we thought, you want to be that way? Well, we came up with hacksaws, one on each side, and we sawed the signs down. They ended up with cement and a piece of bar. Every time I got a citation I went to court to fight it. One of my favorite maneuvers is the power of subpoena. That I learned from Gary. With all the parking citations that I received on Mulholland, I needed to do something. A couple of days before I appeared in court I would have a subpoena party. I subpoenaed every cop that I knew to go to that court case. When I showed up, I told the judge that I wanted my officers here. The officers had to come in. I also took my girlfriends in nice short mini skirts, who had a lot of flash potential. That was for the sake of driving the cops up the wall. I spent the entire day in court, and generally I would win the case. The sings had to be posted at the time of my citations. They were not. I brought in paperwork from the Department of Public Works and showed the judge that the sign had to be replaced at the time I received the citation. I had the reports that the DPW was replacing the signs constantly. I would point out that to the judge. I said how can I be responsible for this infraction? He would dismiss the case. What this plan did was the officers who worked the night shift now had to go to court all day long. Then they had to go to work and do a graveyard shift. During that shift I made sure that they had to chase me, and the other racers. Now these officers driving skills were hampered. That gave us a distinct advantage.

Chuck: When it came to chases, it was not uncommon for me to get chased three times a week. There was that one night where I was chased three times.

Chris: Who were the fastest ones when you were up there?

Chuck: You were real fast, second I would say was John Hall, third would have been Bobby Carradine.

Chris: What about John Rosner?

Chuck: John Rosner, very fast. He would rank up there right behind John Hall.

Chris: Any crashes?

Chuck: Well, Dot was the last racer before I lost the Javelin. Dot came by me going the opposite way, and I got nailed by an Audi trying to catch Dot. The Audi came right through my rear driver’s door quarter panel. That is how I lost the Javelin up there.

Chris: Do you remember an evening where I got chased in my red Camero?

Chuck: Oh yeah, I remember that.

Chris: Can you remember what happened?

Chuck: Cops were over on Bowmont, we heard you come all the way up from Coldwater. You pulled into Grandstands on your way back and we told you that a cop was at Bowmont. The cop was twenty feet behind you when you lit up the tires. He was trying to pull in on side and you pulled out the other way. He immediately put on the lights and siren and went after you. He was driving a brand new Grand Fury patrol car. You took off and you were gone. By the time you were at Coldwater he was just entering the Summit. He had no opportunity to catch you.

Chris: What happened after that evening?

Chuck: The cops were all over us all the time. The next night the cops tried to crack down on Grandstands. They threw everybody out. We would go down Coldwater then come back up Bowmont. There were times the cops came looking for us. Our cars were not at Grandstands they were up at Bowmont and we were in the bushes. They couldn’t quite figure out where we were.