>>28500480 (OP)I was very involved in the SoCal canyon/touge and drift scenes in the '00s. It was pretty chill but eventually got infected by street racer types and F&F/Initial D larpers who took everything way too seriously and tried to make it all into some big confrontational drama bullshit. I then got into the track scene and worked at a track shop/race team through the '10s and that was pretty fun. Everything outside of track in SoCal is a total shitshow now though, absolutely runed by sideshow culture.
I recently moved to Central Oregon to be near my elderly parents and it's an interesting scene here. We've got a short driving/riding season, limited number of fun paved roads (and many are snowed in until like June), but a fuckton of gravel and dirt so there's a big 4WD scene, a really strong Subaru culture (the dealer here was apparently one of the first in the US), and a surprising number of JDM import vans and Land Cruisers and stuff like that. There are also a shitload of Sprinter van campers, which everybody local fucking hates because they drive like retards, take up a ton of parking space, and their occupants are constantly setting the forest on fire trying to camp out there. We also have some degree of a brodozer scene but it's dwarfed by the guys in overlanded out Tacomas.
As for bikes, there's a very strong dirtbike, dual sport, and ADV scene, and not a lot else except the ubiquitous Harley boomers. I ride a dual sport and pretty much everybody I run into is pretty chill. There isn't much of a formal scene or anything though, couple of annual events that are more Harley-oriented and otherwise it's just groups of friends going out, we don't even have a weekly/monthly bike night or anything that I can find.
