The Clarksville Gearhead Car Club & Vet Speed Racing defied city, county, and state ‘stay-at-home’ orders Saturday and held a mass gathering, branded as a ‘Corona Cruise’. Videos & photos show approximately 60 people attended the event, which did not practice social distancing or other precautions amid the COVID19 pandemic.
The State of Tennessee, Montgomery County, and the City of Clarksville, all have active stay-at-home orders for all non-essential activity, and specifically prohibiting gathering of groups of people. In a well-planned and noticed event Saturday night, the organizers of the ‘Corona Cruise’ defied all those orders, and gathered around 60 people, and near as many ‘car club’ cars, in a Clarksville parking lot, where the crowds stood inches apart, and displayed their cars for everyone to gather around, touch, without any regard for safety concerns, or legal orders, amid the current pandemic.
According to event flyers, the ‘Corona Cruise’ was organized and planned by the Clarksville Gearhead Car Club, and Vets Speed Racing – both of which have previously been on ‘Good Morning Clarksville’, produced by Scoop: Clarksville, to promote prior events, and talk about how their car clubs were different from ‘rouge’ clubs in Nashville, and always attempted to partner with law enforcement and give back to the community. After last night’s events, both clubs declined to provide an on the record comment about last night’s events. The Clarksville Gearhead Car Club is lead by Kevin Patrick Martin.
In a social media post, the clubs posted a notice:
“We are doing another Corona Cruise with more notice this time! Meet up this Saturday at 9pm at Regal Cinema off Tiny Town. Please try to not group up with a bunch of people while waiting for us to leave. We’ll meet there at 9pm and roll out about 9:30pm.”
The Clarksville Gearhead Car Club has multiple upcoming events scheduled, despite the stay-at-home orders for non-essential activities, including a birthday cruise later this month, which is has had a large number of interested club members, according to the event planning page.
Neither the Clarksville Police Department or the Mayor’s Office has responded to a request for comment as of publication.
The meet eventually turned into a street race on Tiny Town Road, where an estimated 100+ cars were involved, some recorded on video at over 100+ mph.
