Sideshows were born on East Oakland’s streets in the 1980s as a way for people to show off custom paint jobs, sleek interiors and souped-up engines.

Motorists parked their cars, popped the hoods and opened the doors so others could peer inside and admire the work in a mall parking lot. The history is documented in popular songs by Bay Area rappers.

Three decades ago, sideshows were held in parking lots or sometimes on dead-end streets, according to Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office. They didn’t draw thousands of people, attract police or make newspaper headlines. Back then, to show off powerful engines, drivers would race on strips that weren’t packed with cars.

As sideshows grew in popularity, they outgrew parking lots, Kelly said. In the 1990s, drivers became more daring as they raced through neighborhoods before doing doughnuts at intersections. It became dangerous to attend as spectators, who stood close to the action and got hit by cars spinning out of control.

In 2005, the Oakland City Council approved a law allowing police to arrest spectators at sideshows.

Sideshows were once word-of-mouth events, but these days the street takeovers are blasted on social media. That’s how hundreds gathered on April 14 at 42nd Avenue and International Boulevard in East Oakland for a sideshow that turned violent.

An AC Transit bus was burned, and the driver of a commercial truck was removed at gunpoint. The truck was pillaged before it was set on fire. Toilet paper and Styrofoam products were strewn in every direction. Guns were fired into the air.

An Alameda County sheriff’s deputy suffered a knee injury. Oakland police said officers issued nearly 200 citations, numerous vehicles were towed, and several firearms were recovered.

I was curious: How many of the citations were written for people who live in Oakland?

“A large majority of people are not Oakland residents,” Kelly said of the sideshow participants. “They just use Oakland as their playground.”

That’s got Oaklanders who grew up watching sideshows on street corners upset.

“This is not how we treat our city,” said Yasmin Arreola, a 28-year-old Oakland native whose Instagram post jump-started a cleanup effort the day after the sideshow.

She was joined by Ginger Cuevas, Yanira Cortéz, Diana Garcia and Crystal Lucero. They showed up with gloves, brooms and trash bags. Their message: Don’t blame Oakland for the mess.

“It was sad to see that people were talking about how Oaklanders trash this and trash that,” said Cortéz, 33. “I don’t demonize the sideshow, because it’s evolved. It is part of my culture. Don’t tell me what my culture is going to be like.”

Garcia, 24, said sideshows are art, noting the skill it takes to make a car gracefully pirouette.

“No matter what hood you’re from, no matter what you rep, as long as you come with a nice car and you want to swing it and have fun, that’s what it is,” Garcia said. “People just stand there and take videos and have hella fun.”

But, as Arreola, said, “there’s always dummies.”

As the cars burn rubber, some passengers lean their bodies out of windows, mugging for the cameras. Onlookers try to get as close as they can to the spinning vehicles before slipping out of the way like a matador teasing a charging bull.

That behavior is daring, dangerous and dumb. I find sideshows thrilling to watch, but I’ve got no love for the car mobs that impede traffic on bridges and highways. And the people who shoot guns in the air are defiling the feel-good sideshow spirit. The violence and vandalism must be stopped.

Sideshows are just as popular in San Jose, Fresno, Richmond, Martinez and Sacramento. But drivers come from all over the state to Oakland, the birthplace of the sideshow, because it’s like performing on the biggest stage there is, according to Kelly.

“They know that they can come here and act a goddamn fool and nobody’s gonna stop them,” said Cuevas, a 36-year-old New York native who has lived in Oakland for 15 years.

Oakland police said last week that they would work with other law enforcement agencies over the weekend to try to prevent a repetition of sideshow activity. Seriously, does anyone believe that a few weekends of police chasing moving caravans of hundreds of cars with helicopters and drones through East Oakland neighborhoods is really going to curtail sideshow activity?

It’s time for Bay Area cities to change their approach to sideshows. Why not build the stage for drivers to perform on?

Ten years ago, then-Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums suggested that there may be a legal and safe way for sideshows to be permitted. Oakland hasn’t come up with a plan, but just last month there was a legal sideshow at Sacramento Raceway Park. Hundreds of people sat on bleachers and stood behind concrete barriers and metal barricades as cars twirled on the pavement.

“There absolutely is a place for sanctioned drifting sideshow events that would absolutely be well attended,” Kelly said. “But there’s the outlaw element that people seem to enjoy that’s bringing in thousands of people. You’re not going to be able to show up there and shoot guns and jump in the middle of cars and do all of the stuff that they like to do.”

Good, because that’s not what sideshows are about.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr