{"id":683,"date":"2007-01-04T09:35:42","date_gmt":"2007-01-04T15:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/wordpress\/?p=683"},"modified":"2007-01-04T09:38:34","modified_gmt":"2007-01-04T15:38:34","slug":"i-know-teenagers-are-stupid-and-all-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/2007\/01\/04\/i-know-teenagers-are-stupid-and-all-but\/","title":{"rendered":"I know teenagers are stupid, and all, but…"},"content":{"rendered":"

..come on. Really<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/font>Hip-hop’s dangerous dance<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By Garance Burke
\nAssociated Press<\/font><\/p>\n

December 30, 2006<\/font><\/p>\n

MODESTO, Calif. — An increasingly popular car stunt has killed at least two people, led to numerous injuries and alarmed police on the West Coast and beyond.<\/font><\/p>\n

“Ghost riding the whip” is a stunt in which the driver gets out of his car and dances around and on top of the slowly moving vehicle to a hip-hop beat.<\/font><\/p>\n

A fad among devotees of a West Coast strain of hip-hop music called “hyphy,” the stunt has been celebrated in song and performed in numerous homemade videos posted on YouTube.<\/font><\/p>\n

“It did not take Einstein to look at this thing and say this was a recipe for disaster,” said Pete Smith, a police spokesman in Stockton. Davender Gulley, a ghost-riding 18-year-old, died this month after his head slammed into a parked car while he was hanging out the window of an SUV in Stockton, police said.<\/font><\/p>\n

In October, a 36-year-old man dancing on top of a moving car fell off, hit his head and died in what authorities said was Canada’s first ghost-riding fatality.<\/font><\/p>\n

The stunt has also led to numerous minor injuries.<\/font><\/p>\n

Hyphy was born in the San Francisco Bay area cities of Oakland, Richmond and Vallejo in the late 1990s, and devotees often hold car rallies called “sideshows” where crowds perform risky stunts, including ghost riding.<\/font><\/p>\n

“Ghost riding” refers to the absence of a driver. “Whip” is slang for your car. Typically, the driver puts the car in neutral and dances around and atop the vehicle as it inches forward.<\/font><\/p>\n

Sometimes it is a solo act; sometimes a half-dozen or more passengers get out and dance too. The stunt is usually performed late at night, on a deserted road or in a parking lot.<\/font><\/p>\n

The Vallejo-bred rapper E-40 introduced mainstream listeners to ghost riding with the single “Tell Me When to Go,” whose lyrics describe how to pull it off. Another single, “Ghost Ride It,” by Oakland rapper Mistah F.A.B., offers a step-by-step guide: “Pull up. Hop out, all in one motion. Dancing on the hood, while the car still rollin’.”<\/font><\/p>\n

The antics have gone nationwide thanks in large part to YouTube, where a search for ghost riding turns up hundreds of grainy videos of young people pulling the stunt. The videos were shot from Portland, Ore., to Chicago and many places in between. Joe Calderon, 17, of San Diego, posted a YouTube video of himself dancing alongside his moving, driverless 2005 Mazda. “We love that style of music,” he said. But “my mom wasn’t too thrilled about it.”<\/font><\/p>\n

Another video shows a man sitting on the roof of his fast-moving pickup truck and leaping clear seconds before it crashes into a telephone pole.<\/font><\/p>\n

Stockton police said they have written more than 1,500 citations and impounded about 400 vehicles since late March for sideshow antics.<\/font><\/p>\n

The spontaneous nature of the sideshows keeps police guessing. Departments have spent millions in overtime policing the outlaw rallies.<\/font><\/p>\n

Even F.A.B. concedes that sideshows have gotten out of control. He said he would like to stage sideshows in large arenas where organizers could charge admission.<\/font><\/p>\n

“It would be like a ghetto NASCAR,” he said.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Copyright \u00c2\u00a9 2007, Chicago Tribune<\/a><\/font><\/cite><\/font> <\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

..come on. Really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9oLlO-b1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheplayer.net\/avablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}