---
title: "Sideshow Idiots, Now Shutting Down the Bay Bridge"
description: "The latest in chronic idiocy plaguing California."
date: "2016-02-20"
modified: "2016-02-20"
authors:
  - name: "Will Sabel Courtney"
    job_title: "Contributor"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/will-sabel-courtney"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/news/2271/sideshow-idiots-now-shutting-down-the-bay-bridge"
categories:
  - "News"
tags:
  - "California"
---

# Sideshow Idiots, Now Shutting Down the Bay Bridge

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/archive-images/021916-sideshow-bay-bridge-hero.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

There are plenty of places to take a car if you feel like burning rubber, cooking up donuts or just generally hooning around. An [empty parking lot](<https://youtu.be/sFdHe-7dr20?t=6s>), for example. An [abandoned runway](<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KfbugXA0WQ>), perhaps. A [dry lake bed](<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OTXKq6foyg>) or [large meadow](<https://youtu.be/I-pzol0sxro>), for the more rurally located. Here, however, is a place that isn’t ideal: The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

That didn’t stop one group of idiots, led by one idiot driving a Pontiac GTO. Around 12:45 p.m. on Saturday, February 13, [a sideshow shut down the westbound upper lanes of the Bay Bridge so the idiot in the gray Goat could vaporize tires](<https://kron4.com/2016/02/18/video-chp-investigating-illegal-sideshow-on-bay-bridge/>). Police were dispatched after a flurry of 911 calls from other drivers, but weren’t able to reach the bridge in time; the California Highway Patrol says an investigation is under way.

Sideshows—[where a pack of idiots in cars shut down a roadway so they can act like idiots](<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sideshow>)—are hardly new to the Bay Area. But up until now, the idiots have rarely blocked roadways quite as prominent as, say, the area’s largest bridge.

Seriously. Go home.

https://youtube.com/embed/jsxhOnwmhHA

## Author
Will is the former managing editor of *RIDES Magazine* and the former online editor for *0-60 Magazine*. He has worked for *Time Out New York* and *Rolling Stone*, and was the creator of *College Cars Online*, the first automotive blog specifically targeted at college students and young professionals.

### Author social links  
[Instagram](<https://instagram.com/willsabelcourtney>)  
[Twitter](<https://twitter.com/willscourtney>)