What is a Sideshow?

A sideshow is an informal demonstration of automotive stunts now often held in vacant lots, and public intersections, originally seen in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Sideshows first appeared in Oakland, California in the 1980s as informal social gatherings of Bay Area youth. 

Who started sideshows? 

They were pop-up parties — part car show, part block party. They first bubbled up in mall parking lots of deep East Oakland in the 1980s, says Sean Kennedy, a multimedia producer and local hip-hop historian. 

What makes a car sideshow dangerous? 

Sideshows are “illegal gatherings in which groups of drivers take over intersections, city streets, stretches of busy freeways and/or parking lots to do tricks with their cars, including burnouts and doughnuts,” says a source. Common activities at sideshows include ghost riding which involves driving a car, opening the door and climbing out, blasting off, sometimes onto the hood, and sometimes standing or dancing next to the car while the car continues to roll. Violent incidents, including fights and shootings, sometimes occur at the events.