Thursday, January 31, 2008

Girl Groping Donut to Full Fledged Riot

Where I last left off, four random girls decided to sunbath in the center of the donut for no apparent reason, and the donut found a new focus. The center contracted once again. The thickness grew to close to 500 people trying to understand what all the commotion was about. Again the center contracted tightly to just wider than the towels the sun bathing girls were on. Then in just about 30 seconds this time it completely collapsed again in another grope fest. A top may have been ripped off this time according to reports issued later. It took a bit longer this time, but once again an undercover cop, this time with the help of a uniformed cop reopened the donut. They tried to get the center widened up. Then a couple beach cops on ATVs road into the center of the donut.


The donut had a new center of attention. This time it was the H.B. Police. A couple of beer bottles flew into the center of the donut. One actually hit a cop. One of the cops then sprinted into the donut, and dragged someone out of it and into the center, and started beating him with a Billy club. The Beer bottles really started flying into the center at this point. The donut was getting angry. The donut was focused on the cops. The donut continued to grow. Its center was pretty wide now, but its outside diameter was huge. The Donut was more than 1000 strong now.

The cops made a tactical decision at this point. Since this crowd was behind the grandstands, and was being fed by people defecting from watching the Surfing contest, they decided to try to separate the two, and starve the donut of its potential for growth. The cops started slowly moving towards the lifeguard headquarters to the Southeast. The Donut followed them. It was amazing to watch from the top of the grandstand this gigantic donut of people slowly drifting away from the grandstand. When the Cops made it across the wide stretch of sand to the Lifeguard headquarters, they panicked I guess and went inside and locked the doors behind them. The donut had lost its focus. They donut was mad though. Mad at the H.B. Police. Some cop cars were parked at the lifeguard HQs and the donut happened to be surrounding them. The crowd moved in once again. The center collapsed around a police car. The crowd rocked the car back and forth eventually managing to flip is over. Someone set it on fire. On to the next car. Rinse, repeat. There, 300 or so yards behind the grandstands, there were cars on fire and an angry rioting crowd. I turned to miss Jane bottoms, who had rejoined us at the top of the grandstand and said, "Can you believe that you caused all of this?"

She cried.

Fast-forward about 45 minutes, and the police from every city around were staged there on the beach. It must have been eerie living in Orange County that day and watching cop after cop from random cities speed by towards the beach with their sirens blaring. A line formed of cops stretching from the parking lot to the water just south of the surfing contest. They started inching their way north clearing the beach and the grandstands. When the line reached our grandstand, I decided to leave then, rather than wait to be forced off the grandstand by the cops. It was a good decision. I was able to scramble off the beach as the cops pushed north and also started to block the exit to the east. Some of my friends who waited including my brother would not be so lucky. They would need to fight their way off the beach and got clubbed a few times by the cops for good measure. The entire remaining crowd was basically pushed onto Main Street, and anyone loitering was getting beaten by the cops. My brother was running from the cops at one point and turned to go into one of the surf shops where he new the employees. They had locked the door, and were not going to let anyone in. He went back to the street, and got beat down by the cops.

Eventually the cops would clear the downtown area of the rioters. Changes would be made to the timing and set-up of the OP Pro to try to prevent a future occurrence. Things like removing the skate ramp from behind the grandstands. These changes don’t really exist anymore. This could all happen again.

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13 Comments:

At 11:53 AM, Blogger Gnome said...

Wow, great story. Mob mentality is a pretty dangerous thing.

 
At 6:58 PM, Blogger HB TNT said...

Wrong Thobe's, It was TThobe's that had the girl.

 
At 7:56 AM, Blogger Blinders said...

Wow, my bad. Are you sure you want to be on the record here?

 
At 4:29 AM, Blogger Joe L said...

I remember that day pretty well. I was at the top of the north grandstand next to the pier watching the riot move back and forth between the life guard headquarters and Maxwell's(at that time). Once we were forced out of the grandstands we had to make our way north through the crowds and police as our car was parked around 6th or 7th street.

 
At 9:41 AM, Blogger Aaron Rose said...

Hello, I would like to reprint this story for a magazine. It's fantastic! Is this possible? Please email me at "aroseisaroseisarose@me.com" if you're interested. Thanks!

 
At 9:01 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

So give me Miss Jane Bottoms number so she can reimburse me (LOL). I lost my wet suit, my board and fins that day, and had to go home with one sperry topsider. Only thing I left there with was my friends dads key to his truck we borrowed to attend the event, not to mention being thrown to the sand by cops, as they had me on the ground i guess my buddies in the grand stands starting hailing bottles onto the cops in my defense, but cops were breaking bottles all around me, and I was bare footed trying to get my stuff so I could leave... Lucky us. LOL. what a memory.

 
At 9:30 PM, Blogger JonnyV said...

Well you called it,it's happening now as I type again..rubber bullets ,tear gas ,porta potties tipped everywhere! Cops from all cities are surrounding downtown!i was 16 in 86 and remember the day well,saw it from water on north side then walked up and saw for myself, was knocked out by a cop, then came to and heade back to water and surfed up to my place at 19th st.its all these young,like 16-22 year olds sneaking drinks getting drunk and showing no respect for the town they're visiting.sad to see,hope everyone makes it out alive!

 
At 4:55 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

I wish i had a poster from the surf mag that had a surfer dude drunk holding a corona . behind him a cop car in flames. great memories. anyone with an idea how i can find a poster email me westwindpainting@gmail.com

 
At 4:59 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

One more shot one more shot one more shot

 
At 3:45 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Great story... and a lot it is accurate, but a lot of it isn't and there's even more that is missing. I was also there, operating the TV camera in the 42' crane that was right on top of the epicenter of the riot. I shot it all. I fed the director shots of the beginning of the riot and he had me pull off of the contest to focus solely on the riot. My footage was used by the police to ID rioters. I was up in that basket for hours, from the first pull of a bathing suit string to the last drop of rioter's blood was spilled on PCH. While the peanut gallery in the stands may have helped turn up the heat on the situation, for any one of them to say that they personally started the riot is a stretch. in my opinion the riot was started by a young man on the sand who pulled at the top of one girl posing for a photo, but the police made sure that his spark ignited in to a full blown riot.

 
At 7:55 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

i was that day as well and remember how crazy it got, i had forgotten about the line the police formed to clear us off the beach. it forced onto the street and into the city.
i remember 2 guys that we assumed were skate punks (we thought they were members of suicidal tendencies) who weren't afraid and walked right thru the middle of the pack completely untouched.
it was definitely a crazy time!

 
At 7:56 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

i was there that day as well and remember how crazy it got, i had forgotten about the line the police formed to clear us off the beach. it forced onto the street and into the city.
i remember 2 guys that we assumed were skate punks (we thought they were members of suicidal tendencies) who weren't afraid and walked right thru the middle of the pack completely untouched.
it was definitely a crazy time!

 
At 6:39 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

I was 17 and just got my first car...72 VW bug. Took my 14 yr old sister to the beach. We were laying on the N side of the pier and all of a sudden I saw a wall of people coming from under the pier. We grabbed our stuff and barely made it to our car that was parked near Jack's. That was a pretty scary situation and I am glad we were able to get out pretty quick. Not til today, reading this article did I know why. Stupid humans.

 

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