YOUTHS DROPPING UP
TO $20,000 ON SYSTEMS

SOME PEOPLE call them boom cars. With sufficient vol-
ume, when you’re inside one, you wear the music. When
you’re near one, with the windows rolled down, you can’t

miss the music.

It’s not uncommon fer people,
mostly young men between the age
of 16 and 30, to drop thousands of
dollars into claborate car audio
systems. It doesn’t raise eyebrows
when customers drive in to car
audio outlets and purchase car
stereo systems worth as much as
$20,000.

While the North Shore hasn’t
been blasted by boom car cruisers
the way Vancouver has, car audio
specialists are busy putting a lot of
pricey equipment into local cars
2nd trucks.

When 22-year-old West Van-
‘couver resident Mashi Akiyama
turns up the volume of the sound
systern in his late-model 4X4 truck,
you quickly forget that you are sit-
ting in a motor vehicle surrounded
by the discordant rumblings of a
Tuesday afternoon trafiic rush
hour.

Akiyama, the son of former
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
conductor Kazuyoshi Akiyama,
has spent about $10,000 on his car
stereo system. Why did he do it?
Said Akiyama, ‘‘I guess I did it for
personal enjoyment. I drive
around a lot.’’

A common rationale for the
boom car phenomenon sees the at-
tention to car sound systems as an
°80s variation of the hot-rod fixa-
tion of younger men in bygone de-
cades.

Today most car manufacturers
offer fast and sporty versions of

By MICHAEL BECKER
News Reporter

most cars and trucks sold from the
lot. Self-expression in the car arena
subsequently shifted, from adding
beefy tires and mags to a car, to
beefing up the sound system.

Twenty-three-year-old Markus
Entz of North Vancouver drives
around with $5,000 worth of
sound equipment screwed and
wired into his import sedan.
Digital sound from a shuttle deck
CD player pumps out of six
speakers strategically p!aced
throughout the car.

Said Entz: ‘People should be
allowed to spend as much money
and have as big a stereo system in
their car as they want. There are
some people who will buy $5,000
systems so they can crack their
windows open and impress
everybody outside the car. But I do
this for my pieasure.

“If 1 go in a place where there
are a lot of people, Pll tend to turn
off my system. I don’t want people
looking in my car. I tinted the
windows so people can’t see what’s
in the back.”

But car audio purists have to
contend with the negative public
image created by the more reckless
aural exhibitionists in the crowd.

Said Bill Denison, sales manager
for Performance Car Stereo in
North Vancouver: ‘One of the

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New
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300m cars replace hotrods of the

PAGE 40

MARKUS ENTZ takes his sound on the run with a high-tech car stereo system. While audicphiles iike the 23-
year-old North Vancouver resident swear they invest big bucks in car audio equipment to please themselves,
boom car opponents argue high volume sound hertz the ears.

reasons you need more power in a
car is because driving down the
road creates more ambient noise.
That’s why you need more power
to recreate the bass frequencies.
But with the boom car thing that’s
going on, it seems to be annoying
some people. If someone was
parked in front of a house and
cranking it, | can understand being
bothered. For the short time that a

guy might drive by and you hear
some boom, I mean a truck with
its brakes on is louder. I can un-
derstand a group of people crank-

ing it up at an organized sound-
off, because that’s a competition.
If you’re in a residential area, I
wouldn’t like it.’’

Lonsdale Quay
Quayside Plaza

151 Chadwick Court i
North Vancouver, B.C.

TELEPHONE 983-3773

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