Depending on where you live, you may have already heard of street takeovers: impromptu events, usually at night, in which drivers of muscle cars take turns doing donuts in intersections for cheering crowds. In Alabama, the police refer to it as "exhibition driving." Birmingham officer Mark Jones says it's hard to miss.
"You can see the smoke from them burning their tires from several blocks away," he says. Police say the phenomenon grew during the pandemic, but it isn't new. Filmmaker Yakpasua Zazaboi encountered it 25 years ago as a young man in Oakland.
Californians call the events "sideshows," and he says it helps to understand the original slang. "When you see young fellas pulling up in their cars and they're trying to look cool," he says, "the way that you kind of lean back and towards the side -- it was generally called 'sidin.' " And he says the sideshow is just a show of show-offs.
People showing off their souped up cars, along with elements of style and fashion. He says it was "love at first sight" for him. "[It was] hundreds if not thousands of black faces, all getting along together, all having fun in the middle of the night," he says.
But sideshows also disrupt traffic, disturb neighbors and endanger lives. Spectators make a game of crowding in as close as they can around the spinning cars, and the resulting collisions are prime viewing on social media. "We've had instances where people have been hit and killed, people have been hit and injured, people have been r.
