Area’s Freeway Violence Leads Entrepreneurs to Fast Bucks

Creative entrepreneurs are discovering humor and a quick buck in Southern California’s roadway violence.

“It was inevitable that somebody was going to do it. I’m glad it was me,” said Robert Holton, an Anaheim T-shirt printer.

His four-color shirt, punctured like Swiss cheese with bullet holes, proclaims the wearer a “Survivor of Southern California Freeways.”

For $12, anyone can become a freeway survivor. “I’m trying to make it fun--to see the funny part of it,” Holton said.

Holton, like other entrepreneurs, hopes to cash in on the highly publicized incidents before the field of freeway shooting-inspired paraphernalia gets too crowded.

Family to Support

“On one hand it’s sad that I have to print these shirts,” he said. “But I have a family to support.”

Holton is not alone. A local radio station is printing more bumper stickers after giving away 500 last week carrying the message: “Please don’t shoot! I’m driving as fast as I can!”

“It’s a cure for the problem because the guy with the gun will be laughing so hard he won’t be able to pull the trigger,” said Howard Freshman, director of promotions for radio station KPWR.

Other stickers seen on Los Angeles freeways in recent weeks proclaim: “Honk if you’re reloading,” and, “Don’t shoot! Honk . . . I’ll pull over.”

And, with the flip of a switch--and an active imagination--fuming drivers can now blow up their roadway antagonists. A North Carolina firm has marketed toggle switches that give the impression the car is equipped with such James Bond-ish accessories as a grenade launcher, flame thrower and front-mounted machine gun.

Attached to a car’s dashboard, the switches offer a substitute for aggression. “Hit the switch, not the people,” the packaging advises.

More Than 40 Shootings

There have been more than 40 roadway shootings in Southern California since mid-June. Three people have been killed and eight injured, according to a tally compiled by United Press International.

Holton, 28, said he has sold more than 550 of the T-shirts out of his sign-painting shop in the last two weeks. Lacking a distribution network, he takes the shirts to swap meets in a race to sell them before competitors flood the market with similar designs.

Some souvenir sellers, leery of scaring away tourists, don’t want to carry the T-shirts or other paraphernalia.

“It’s not funny. I hope it’s not a craze. I wouldn’t want to carry them,” said Barrie Cooper, who has sold souvenirs for 11 years from her shop near the Redondo Beach pier.

“I think it’s horrible--playing on sickies and encouraging them,” Cooper said of the blossoming market for freeway-violence paraphernalia.

“It hurts business. If this keeps up, it’s going to affect the tourist business. It will keep tourists from coming here,” Cooper said, adding that travelers have told her they were avoiding the region’s now-notorious freeways.

However, other souvenir dealers are eagerly awaiting shipments of freeway-shooting spinoff goods.

‘I’d Be First to Buy Them’

Leaning over the counter of her Redondo Beach souvenir shop, Betty Thompson said: “If I knew who was selling those bumper stickers, I’d be the first person to buy them.

“It will be hot for a few weeks and then it will die out after it starts to calm down.”

Many of the shirts are purchased to send to skittish relatives on the East Coast, Holton said.

“None of my relatives want to come out here because of the freeway shootings,” one customer told Holton, who reassures them that Angelenos will overcome the series of shootings.

“It’s not easy living in Southern California. We’ve got earthquakes and fires and mud slides and freeway shooters,” he said. “We’ve survived all these other things. We’ll survive this one too.”