“We like to get these cars out when we have them. If they sit all the time, it’s like blood in your body. You have to get it flowing,” said Beverly Curry, a bespectacled 76-year-old known as “Mustang Sally,” who drives a bright red ’66 six-cylinder. Ford Mustang owner.
People travel to Marlborough Square every Wednesday for the evening car rally, which runs from early April to late October. The parking lot next to Advance Auto Parts will be transformed into the “Hump Day Car Meetup and Cruise-In,” a four-hour event to bring together the coolest rides and connect other car enthusiasts. This year marks the group’s 10th anniversary.
Many of the men and women involved have invested years of effort and money into buying classic cars and restoring them to their former glory. Some relationships are rooted in childhood gatherings at neighborhood race tracks or other car shows. Week after week on Hump Day Wednesdays, they wheel and scream at each other as they build community.
“I love cars, but the cars are second-rate,” says retiree Terry Daye, 72, who has been driving his ’68 Plymouth GTK since the rally began. “I like to run my mouth with people.”
But in recent months, as many pandemic restrictions have been lifted and the mall’s businesses have tried to scale back, property managers at Marborough Square have said the group can no longer meet in the parking lot, and that it wasn’t licensed to do so in the first place. On one of the last Wednesdays in August, a security guard waited for his fate And he warned car fans to get out.
“It’s disruptive to tenants, and tenants are paying rent,” said Marlborough Square official Adam Steuer.
The mall, on busy Crane Highway in Prince George’s County, is home to a beauty supply store, liquor store, grocery store, Advance Auto Parts, Dollar Tree and Nipsey’s, local bars and restaurants, and other businesses. Jauhar Abraham, a member of the family-owned Nipsey, said his business has received complaints about drinking, card games and littering during car rallies since June. He said he was concerned that Nipsey’s would have to close on Wednesday. He brought his concerns to the car team’s creators and property managers.
Abraham, 50, said: “I am not in favor of meeting anywhere.” “When there is an incident or disaster, we become the people who defend ourselves, not the part of it.”
The car enthusiasts, mostly old men and women from Prince George’s County and the surrounding area, contend the weekly gathering went off without a hitch. The show is meant to appreciate the camaraderie of car owners and their mid-week vacation, not to create trouble, said Van Newman, creator of Hump Day Wednesday. They also support the center’s businesses, such as local Chinese food carryout and chicken wing restaurant.
The conflict pits a business trying to recover from the pandemic against car owners who are their lifeline for their weekly car rides.
Asset managers seem to see the group as a liability rather than a commodity. Steuer, the Marlborough Square official, said the gathering in Marlborough Square was not allowed because it was a “public safety risk” and that the group had not obtained permits or permission to hold an event – not that it would have been approved.
Newman, a 70-year-old man from Brandywine, Md., with blond facial hair, sits in a blue lawn chair next to other seniors in the shade of a beauty supply store. A long-sleeved white shirt says, “I’m not old, I’m classic.”
Newman said he started the midweek car rally a decade ago after retiring from a 38-year career at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, first as a bus driver, then a train operator and finally a station manager. Car shows are held in parking lots around Prince George during the week, but there wasn’t one on Wednesday, he said.
So, along with his uncle David Proctor and friend Leroy Proctor, they talked to Advance Auto Parts on Marlborough Square about bringing their cars to the lot on Wednesday. The location provided a central location for many participants traveling from across Charles County and Prince George’s.
Ricky Sampson, assistant manager of Advance Auto Parts, started working at the store four years ago. Car enthusiasts buy their car wash, wax and towels there. The store allowed Newman to mount the car show on a Coke machine.
“We’re never going to say, ‘Hey, you’re going to bring a riffraff.’ It’s nothing like that,” Sampson said.
At least 50 cars will roll through the lot on this late August night. Many motorists gathered in rows of car hoods that popped up on the road like a candy store. Visitors to the nearby Dollar Tree stop to see vintage models from the 1940s to the 70s.
Marcus Boykin, 50, and Deshawn Clarkson, 62, sat admiring the scene. Boykin got into old school cars because of the 72 Pontiac GTO his grandfather gave him in high school. Clarkson sat in the back seat with his four brothers as his father drove, “My car goes!” He said he remembers him shouting. When passing other vehicles. Clarkson, who now owns eight cars, calls them “one day boys.”
“They think of a simpler time and age,” Boykin said. “When you think about society and everything we’re going through every day, it makes you feel better about the present when you can go back to a simpler time.”
Newman said the group has received no response from community members, businesses or property managers. Over the years, his popularity and influence grew, with up to 60 cars filling the lot on Good Wednesday.
Nipsey’s Abraham said some Nipsey employees and customers were unable to get in and out of the parking lot due to heavy traffic.
“A few years ago, the auto show wasn’t that big. Some old cars, old people, I never paid much attention to,” said Abraham. But he said the reunion attracted some young people and accelerated in his lot.
“Once you create that atmosphere, it gets out of control,” he added. “They couldn’t control what grew up.”
Prince George’s County police have received just one call this year for carjacking and drag racing Wednesday, Aug. 31, at 5775 Crane Highway. Prince George’s County police spokeswoman Kristina Cotterman said in a statement that officers responded and “were unable to confirm any criminal behavior.” On three other Wednesdays — July 20, Aug. 3 and Aug. 24 — police received trespassing calls at the Marlborough Square address and also “couldn’t confirm any criminal behavior,” Cotterman said.
Officers had known about the car assembly for years without any problems being reported to county police until recent weeks, Cotterman said.
Avis Thomas-Lester, spokeswoman for the county’s Department of Licensing, Inspections and Enforcement, said special event permits are required for organizers who sell tickets, set up stages or sell food or alcohol. There are also requirements to ensure safety.
In a statement, Thomas-Lester said, “People have a right to peaceful assembly, but it is the responsibility of management to decide whether a gathering, such as a car enthusiast rally, is allowed on their property.”
Newman said the team tried to reason with Abraham and his leadership. In past years, participants have been able to clean up during and after the meeting, bring their own trash cans, and collect litter in the woods bordering the parking lot, he said. He also encouraged those who bring motorcycles and dirt bikes to act responsibly.
By early September, Newman was back on the lot. He received a call from a property manager saying no contact was allowed and the police arrived. But he arrived in a Ford pickup to see if anyone showed up and let them know it was over. He rolled up the windows and sat in the driver’s seat as it rained.
Hump Day Wednesdays were on the calendar until Nov. 2 and it may take a while for people to get used to it, he said.
“We’ve had a great 10 years,” Newman said. “It’s a shame we couldn’t ride it to the end.”
Only one driver showed up for the meeting that night. Newman tells him to spread the word that the group is looking for a new location.
