A Rincon Hill sideshow briefly blocked the entrance and exit to the Bay Bridge Sunday night, and Twitter Karen-dom is furious at the lack of arrests.
On a sideshow scale of One to Ten, the Sunday night sideshow first reported by Bay City News would probably score only in the low single digits. In a set of videos seen below, we notice there are two cars doing donuts at Harrison and Fremont Streets around 9 p.m. Sunday evening, with a smattering of onlookers either rooting them on, or hoping for them to hurry up and knock it off. KPIX notes that “The stunt backed up traffic on all sides of the intersection,” but upon the arrival of the police and their blaring sirens, the scofflaw motorists fled, and there was no injury or further incident.
Tonight in San Francisco…a sideshow at Harrison & Fremont blocking the entrance to the Bay Bridge. @SFPD @abc7newsbayarea pic.twitter.com/Ob6Px5Vn0c
— J.R. Stone (@jrstonelive) July 19, 2021
But in the Recall Chesa Boudin era, this will of course energize the “failed dystopia” and “Batman” discourse. While the incident was not as brazen as wrong way on the Bay Bridge dirtbike sideshow from January that left one person dead, a single wrong move could have easily exceeded that death toll here.
KPIX also has the raw Citizen app footage of the stunt seen above. KGO describes the melee with the brief sentences, “At one point you can see fireworks go off. When police arrived, all of the cars drove off. No one was hurt and no one was arrested.”
COPS SHOWED UP! NO ARRESTS MADE. This is how the sideshow ended last night in San Francisco. This happened at Harrison & Fremont. @abc7newsbayarea https://t.co/fVHXh6ODto pic.twitter.com/y2tsHtXR7v
— J.R. Stone (@jrstonelive) July 19, 2021
The all-caps “COPS SHOWED UP! NO ARRESTS MADE” has been a truer barometer of social media discussion of the affair. SFGate got comment from an SFPD spokesperson, and notes that “Officer Adam Lobsinger told local news outlets that no one was hurt or arrested following the event,” and that “Lobsinger told SFGate that if the sideshow extended to the highway on-ramp, it would have fallen under the jurisdiction of the California Highway Patrol.”
Despite the narrative that the city has surrendered to crime, certainly this investigation is not over. Police may receive smartphone pics and video from the scene to identify license plates, and there is an SFPD Tip Line for just that sort of thing. Many crimes do not get solved within 24 hours, so charges could still be coming. But if the supposed crackdown on sideshows is really in effect, it's clearly being cast aside by sideshow enthusiasts.
Related: Dozens of Cars Converge on SF for Five Separate Sunday Morning Sideshows [SFist]
Image: via Citizen