San Fernando Valley Illegal Soap Box Federation

The Blow N Glo Special, built and driven by Maddog, is a nice-looking car built to compete in the San Fernando Valley Illegal Soap Box Federation races. The February issue of Hot Rod has an article about the S.F.V.I.S.B.F.

"I've been doing dumb and dangerous stuff for years," Paul de Valera, 36, said with a strange sort of exasperated enthusiasm during a conversation a few days earlier at his one-man Atomic Cycles bicycleshop in Van Nuys. Paul and his friend Tick One (it's a name he chose) are the S.F.V.I.S.B.F.'s co-instigators and currently act as the group's half-serious organizers and fun-first spiritual advisors. "It's stupidity," Paul added, "and it infects all of us."

This isn't soap box racing the way it's practiced at the All-American Soap Box Derby -- where squeaky-clean preteens line up in cars built by their fathers and a gaggle of aerospace engineers to race down a sanitized hill in proscribed, arrow-straight lanes. In the S.F.V.I.S.B.F., adults in makeshift gravity-powered jalopies clandestinely sneak out early on the second Sunday of each month from March through December to meet and then barrel through unsuspecting suburban neighborhoods or over dirt fire roads with plenty of collisions, corners, and comeuppances.

Link

[#1 posted by darkbeanie , February 5, 2008 3:04 PM]

For those who might otherwise miss it, there's a great Youtube video on the SFVISBF site. Well done!

[#2 posted by cstatman , February 5, 2008 6:37 PM]

innit summat like that in San Framcisko?

http://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/2007/10/sunday-sunday-s.html

just for lulz....

i may have to consider this now that I have a kid, and need to be seen doing MUCH more dangerous, irresponsible, and fun things than roadracing motorcycles.

[#3 posted by clumsygirl , February 5, 2008 10:17 PM]

Similar to, but different than, the Portland Adult Soapbox Derby held every summer.

www.soapboxracer.com/

[#4 posted by grimace , February 7, 2008 4:53 AM]

Similar to, but different than, the Red Bull Soapbox Derby held when they can find enough retards to judge it.

http://www.vbs.tv/player.php?bctid=1380403468&bccl=MzE1MzUxOTU3X19FVEM=

[#5 posted by rev106 , February 7, 2008 10:36 AM]

Redbull is a parade, not a race. Portland is better, but still more paradesque. Conclusion: SFVISBF rules soapbox racing.