Sideshows, which use to be more rare on the SF side of the Bay, are happening in the city with some more frequency the past few years. And Friday night saw one that seems to have moved from the Embarcadero onto the Bay Bridge.
There was a major sideshow that blocked traffic on the Bay Bridge around 1 a.m. Saturday, and video posted from the scene shows onlookers with spray paint tagging guardrails on the eastern span of the bridge while the sideshow was going on and hundreds of spectators crowded onto the roadway.
The Instagram account @bayareaalert referred to it as the "party on the Bay Bridge," and other video shows individuals getting out of cars on the lower deck of the western span to run through the Yerba Buena tunnel to the party on the other side.
The account @itsthebay said there were "Two spontaneous Christmas parties on the Bay Bridge," but the action on the lower deck of the western span appears to just be people trying to get to the eastern span? Video also shows cars doing donuts in both the westbound and eastbound lanes of the eastern span, in side-by-side sideshows.
About an hour earlier, as ABC 7 reports, on Friday just before midnight, cars were doing donuts and onlookers gathered to watch for about 15 minutes near the Ferry Building in San Francisco, at Embarcadero at Washington Street.
A nearby resident who watched from his balcony and took video, John Wells, tells ABC 7 that most of the cars had scattered by the time police arrived. In a familiar refrain, Wells tells the station, "Someone could get badly hurt. And it seems like our public officials haven't formulated a good response so they can get this under control."
But it looks like the sideshow just moved locations, as they often do, and cars got onto the eastbound deck of the Bay Bridge and blocked traffic in some coordinated way, leading to the videos posted above about an hour later.
The last time there was a well documented sideshow on the Bay Bridge, that we're aware of, was back in July 2021.
A sideshow that took place near the Bay Bridge approach in Rincon Hill in October 2022 led to at least one serious injury that was documented on video.
As KTVU reports, CHP has not said if any arrests took place in connection with the latest activities on the Bay Bridge.
Subsequently, on Saturday night/early Sunday, there was another sideshow in Brentwood that went on for about 90 minutes — on Sand Creek Road near Highway 4 — and that was ultimately broken up by Contra Costa County Sheriff's deputies.
Related: Sideshow Law Helped San Jose Police Make Huge Bust
Top image via @bayareaalert/Instagram
