“Man caught up in Stockton sideshow had foot amputated after hit by vehicle”

-KCRA, Sacramento

https://www.kcra.com/article/stockton-sideshow-man-foot-amputated/45784815#

I could risk losing my Bay Area card by saying this, but I’ve never been a real big fan of sideshows. Seeing things like the story above just makes me sigh and question Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection. I get it, sideshows and takeovers can get pretty wild. People like to get wild and have their fun. But if I’m crossing the fucking Bay Bridge at 1 or 2AM (which I sometimes do, in order to commute back to Stockton from HQ), I better not find myself stuck in a traffic jam because a dozen blockheads wanna take over a section of the upper deck to swing their cars. And yes, Bay Bridge side shows are actually a pretty common occurrence. It’s not like you can just drive through the action either, in order to continue going wherever you were going before encountering the sideshow. The spectators, alongside the participants of these spontaneous events, will prevent you from doing so. If you try defecting from the area, by driving across the ring of fire, you are probably gonna get mobbed.

I could go on and on about why I don’t like side shows, but to keep it simple I’ll just give a couple more reasons. For one thing, they’re destructive. I’m not saying that all of the participant drivers are there to damage their vehicles intentionally, but most of the time you will see cars with horrible front end/quarter panel damage because they end up colliding with each other. If I was still a car guy, I’d care more, but I still cringe seeing a banged up 2020 Hellcat hit the light post and damage itself even further. And yes, people do get hurt at sideshows- a lot. “Get back, or get smacked,” is generally the mantra at these events. Spoiler alert, most people end up getting smacked. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s the rush of it, but spectators love getting close to the cars in order to take a 30 second snapchat video that looks like this:

But back to the point, yes you can get injured at sideshows (especially as a spectator). And if you’re unlucky enough, you can end up like the guy in the story above. Your chances of being shot are also increased when you go to one of these.

So I’m doing a lot of complaining, but not a lot of constructive thinking towards this issue. Well, here is my response to that. It wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world for the sideshow drivers to take their “skills” to a Sonoma Raceway drift event. It’s literally almost the same thing, just in a controlled environment- away from a loose crowd, other cars, and other traffic. The physics are the same, except the drivers would have to maneuver their drifting vehicles around corners, and not just spin a donut in the middle of an intersection. A bit of an ambitious stretch, but all I’m saying is, take it to the track boys- stop disrupting traffic (that’s really what I care about the most). As for the spectators who end up getting injured, "go at your own risk."