Sometimes, we see something at Caffeine&Machine that makes us, quite frankly, angry.
We’ve put in years of work at The Hill, and are beginning the process all over again at The Bowl, to become a positive presence in the areas our venues sit in, places that are both welcoming and welcomed. An overwhelming majority of people who visit us understand this, and that we ask people to behave in a certain way when visiting us for the benefit of everyone – ourselves, our community, and you, the Cult of Machine.
Sadly, there’s always been a tiny minority that can’t seem to understand this, and think that they, for whatever reason – personal gratification, attention-seeking, a simple inability to understand our purpose – have the right to behave in a way that’s actively damaging not just C&M, but automotive culture as a whole.
It’s matter of fact that the car is an inherently dangerous concept, especially when driven at speed. Thousands of kilograms of rolling metal, requiring the passing of a relatively rudimentary test to be operated in a public space. Had anyone come up with this concept today, likelihood is they’d have been chased out of town by an angry mob. But they didn’t – they came up with it well over a century ago, and the concept has grown, flourished, and accrued millions of devoted fans the world over during that time.
The car is dangerous, but as it became the predominant form of transport across the world during the twentieth century, that danger became an accepted fact of this new way of life, and engineers have made every effort to minimise it.
It will never be gone completely, and we, as enthusiasts, accept that, and we celebrate our machines for the undeniable joy they bring us. But for that celebration to be accepted and understood by the world at large, a bond of trust is required between us and both those who don’t view cars on the same terms and those who make the rules. And, at a time when the car as a concept is under greater scrutiny than ever before, for a whole slew of reasons, we’re seeing that bond being broken more and more often.
It’s possible that there’s some kind of vicious cycle at play here: some rule, some regulation gets brought in with the intent of making the car safer, more holistic – speed limits, speed cameras, congestion charges and LEZs – and, rightly or not, we perceive it as an attack on our way of life, and respond with misbehaviour, and so begins the cycle again.
Or perhaps this is overanalysing things, and the misbehaviour has always been there, and is just being more widely broadcast by social media’s ever-tightening grip on every aspect of life.
Whatever the case, one thing’s for sure: car culture rarely comes up smelling of roses. We know the overwhelming majority of enthusiasts understand that there’s a time and a place for indulging in this passion of ours, and we see on a daily basis the incredibly positive things that come out of our community. We make it our job to scream about these things from the rooftops.
Because this isn’t what non-enthusiast outlets are reporting on, and it’s not what non-enthusiasts see. Those outside our little world, and crucially, those who make the rules, see the negative minority in disproportionately high doses: another speeder, another street takeover, another pedestrian turned into a statistic.
We’re incredibly lucky to have these brilliant, diverse, life-affirming machines at our disposal. As they increasingly shift towards being a hobby (at least in human-controlled, internal combustion form), it feels appropriate to exercise some level of responsibility in ensuring their use is still acceptable, affordable and enjoyable well into the future.
This is not a statement of anti-fun. We, as a business whose core tenets celebrate all the joy that cars, bikes, whatever, can bring us, have to tread a very delicate line so our physical spaces can continue to exist and flourish. This is just an acknowledgement that we sit as part of wider communities who may view the ‘Machine’ part of Caffeine&Machine as just that: machines, transportation devices; not the expressions of joy, freedom and wonder we know they can be.
There is a time and a place for properly enjoying our machines, but ensuring we can keep treading that line requires a little help from the Cult of Machine. So when you’re leaving one of our venues, listen to what our marshals tell you, and pay attention to the sign across the road: Don’t Be a Dick. If you ignore that simple instruction, you’re endangering not only us, but car culture as a whole. You are actively contributing to a negative perception of it, and in the process, shooting yourself directly in the foot. And you will not be welcomed back.