My attention was drawn to an article which appeared in the local newspaper recently; an article that I suspect was widely syndicated; perhaps you read it as well. With the article was a photograph of a young girl that appeared to be dancing atop the hood of an automobile. This young lady had attended that 'event,' one that had obviously been attended by a number of reporters as well, to celebrate the life of her younger cousin; that cousin had died with two others in an automobile 'accident' earlier that week in the same spot where now they gather bringing memorials. ~ The photo of the dancing girl was not what commanded my attention; it had been the glaring word 'sideshow' in a headline that hinted at the menace that came with such an event. It was the menace that had attended a previous, and unphotographed street gathering, and the three deaths that had resulted that night, that the reporter was detailing with facts and interviews with several that had shown up to memorialize the three dead youths. ~ Sideshows are impromptu events, usually held on a public street after most bars and clubs have closed down for the night. The 'kids' organize these gatherings using their ubiquitous cell phones, texting one another, in code(not sure if the writer meant 33lite or not), with a time and location. Oakland Police are hamstrung in their efforts to crack down on the participants in these potentially lethal social phenomena. ~ When the cars, the real focal point at these sideshows, start to arrive at the advertised location, all too frequently a good-sized crowd of 'pedestrian' on-lookers has already gathered; those cars come zig-zagging all over both sides of the roadway, with headlights blinking, horns and woofers blaring, in a sort of conga line for cars overstuffed with more kids, which they call a hyphy train. ~ Another stunt, one the kids call the ghost riding the whip, involves the driver jumping from his moving vehicle, dancing alongside it as he and the unattended vehicle continue along the boulevard, until he is forced to jump back into the car and regain control. Noticeable in the background of the photo that ran with the article, are a profusion of circular rubber tire-marks on the pavement which instantly put you in mind of the 'celebration' that ensues when the victor in a Nascar race smokes his tires before a packed grandstand, and then leaps from the racecar and climbs high on the safety fencing there, pumping a victory fist with one free arm. ~ Mortal danger is not just making the reckless drivers and their derring-do passengers its subjects. Nor is this 'reaper' content to stalk also those pedestrians who crowd into the dangerous thoroughfare to obtain an unobstructed view of the 'entertainment' on offer there. One girl, who was interviewed for this article, told the reporter she had been hospitalized when she had been seriously injured by one of these cars that came crashing right into her MacArthur Boulevard apartment. Her place must be really close to all this action, having been the 'fixed object' struck by a motor vehicle on no less than 3 separate occasions. ~ If you are from Atlanta(especially if you work in the downtown area), you cannot help but be reminded of the annual 'FREAKSHOW' that clogs the streets with cars full of university student revellers in a parade of sorts, marked by the perfume of smoking clutch plates and fuming hot radiators. The traffic snarling to the point of gridlock is not the only adverse affect, as the commerce of many small businesses along the affected routes grinds to a costly halt as well. The lack of restroom facilities causes another set of problems that characterize the complaints of those vocal business owners who hail mostly deaf ears. It is most probably a wise decision the authorities have made in 'permitting' the event, as I think, deep down, we all realize that they would be helpless to prevent it. ~ The 'empowered' youth of this nation will probably not flag in the creativity they bring to designing new and more exciting amusements for themselves, and I feel sure that it is the increasingly lawless nature of their creations, and not the lethal danger(mostly to themselves) that is worrying us most. If we fail to understand these disturbing phenomena; fail to correctly assess the motivations which drove us in our mostly forgotten youth; then we must submit to the fear these reports instill in us. Perhaps their pursuit of a more abundant life remains obscured because our(mostly irrational) fear has achieved an adulthood, with seasoned arms and legs, that in our youth remains a tentative force at best(not yet conditioned to outrun our intellect). Perhaps the real reason they are driven to ‘hook-up’ in places and situations where we have not yet successfully extended our laws; where-ever we have failed to subvert their exuberance with the authority of our fear-demons, is that if we succeed in quelling that fragile and precious spirit they keep alive at these illicit ceremonies, then we would have to face the next cataclysmic change to our circumstances(be it some pandemic of exotic disease, a massive volcanic ejection spurring instantaneous climate change, collision with any sufficiently large mass traversing our solar system or just a wobbling correction to that axis the planet currently spins about) without the divine gift that has, in the past(perhaps upward of 2 million years), guaranteed the survival of this oddly maladapted-looking species.
