New Times - San Luis Obispo

the shredder
It was a lovely riot

I sure hope nobody else starts blaming me for last weekend’s Mardi Gras riots just because I said a few things here last week about the optimum trajectory of a beer bottle and the top 10 police taunts.

I’m kidding. I said no such thing.

What I did say is if the Mardi Gras parade was going to be toned down and Disneyfied, that there’s no point in having it anymore—and this may have made people mad at me today. I’m encouraging bad behavior, they say. No I’m not. I’m encouraging Mardi Gras behavior, and if we can’t have it, then to hell with Mardi Gras.

What led up to the weekend fracas was a confluence of circumstances that together have likely spelled doom for future festivities, which is good if you ask me. On one end we have the progression toward a cleaned up and dumbed down parade, while at the other end are people more interested in smashing car windows than just getting smashed. If that’s what’s offered, the choice is clear.

Early on, the SLO Police Department placed an ad in the Tribune to dissuade people from coming to Mardi Gras, which was totally stupid, since nobody reads the Tribune. It was also stupid because it said, “Obey the Law … Tell Your Friends to Stay Home,” which is something nobody’s going to do. I think they must have meant “Tell All Your Out-Of-Town Friends to Stay Home,” seeing as how over half the arrestees were from out of San Luis, one from as far away as Florida. (This has been puzzling to me. If I lived in Florida and were looking for a Mardi Gras celebration, would I really gaze 3,000 miles to San Luis Obispo, or check out New Orleans a couple hundred miles away? San Luis Obispo, definitely.)

It’s pretty obvious that rioters were mainly Cal Poly students and students from out of town, so I don’t know why people aren’t referring to them as that. If you removed all the students, you’d have removed all the rioting.

SLO Police Chief Deborah Linden is adamant that the police definitely did not go from house to house breaking up parties, thus flushing drunken students out into the streets and allowing them little choice but to riot, a claim being made by several students, some with fresh pepper-ball-bullet bruises. Whatever happened to the good old days of water hoses and snarling dogs? Pepper balls sound downright delicious.

SLO Chamber President Dave Garth went out on a limb proclaiming that the riots weren’t good for downtown, adding that, “I don’t think we want to be known as the party capital of the state,” to which I ask, why not? It’d certainly be better than “that dorky town with that big pink hotel.” For his part, SLO talk jock Bill Benica proclaimed in his inimitable style that any defense of the rioters was a “cockamammiebuncha bull,” to which I agree and add, in my best Brooklyn accent, “Fuhgeddaboudit.”

On his Tuesday talk show, Benica came up with the novel idea of requiring drinking-age students to live on campus and underage ones to live off, thus at least removing legal drunks from the streets. While they’re at it, they should require them to spend all their money at my house.

Some say the cops “overreacted.” Others say, fuhgeddaboudit. Some say the ringleaders were from out of town. Others say we’ve got plenty of homegrown troublemakers capable of whipping up a most respectable riot all on their own. Some 187 students/rioters were arrested, each of whom has a story and an opinion that few of us will hear, which is okay since it’s all pretty much the same story.

All of which has once again put Mardi Gras under the neutron microscope of public opinion as long-held criticisms come forth: The event brings little economic balm to the city or financial help to any nonprofits; it promotes lascivious behavior and drunken debauchery; it’s colorful for no good reason; and it glorifies fun to no reasonable end. Throw in a few riots, and Mardi Gras has an image problem attached to an image problem.

Mardi Gras is all about fun, a difficult thing to defend. Fun is frivolous and small and easily dismissed. It’s much easier to admire someone for their temperance and force of will than somebody who succumbs to pleasure’s allure.

This is the advantage fuddy-duddy doomsayers always have over zippity-do-dah fun seekers. How can you just run about playing like that when a hurricane could hit us any minute? Stop all that frivolity this instant!

The negative person is always viewed as being smarter, more level-headed, less apt to lapse into the perils of enjoyment.

The upbeat person who likes to have fun is seen as naive and untrustworthy, a credulous Pollyanna, whose penchant for guffaws and giddiness are suspicious at best, probably dangerous—who knows? Better lock him up.

This is the problem that’s always plagued Mardi Gras. And now it has riots nipping at its heels.

I’ve never had any trouble defending fun. ³