The third of three threads inspired by the massive San Diego Power Outage. When I was a kid the power going out was fun and exciting. It'd be out for a couple hours and we'd play a family game of Yahtzee by candlelight and then they'd have it back on again. But I imagine it going out everywhere in a 30-mile radius would be a different sort of thing, and that there is the real possibility of some bad behavior in large crowded areas - riots, looting, crimes, etc. FOCUS: When have you ever been witness to a mob, where the rules of civil society had broken down and temporarily did not apply. Did you join in, or did you sense that some bad shit was going down and hightail it out?
I lived in the LA area during the Rodney King riots. That was fun. Even though the actual riots were in the city and I lived in the San Fernando Valley, we had curfews. I worked at a Blockbuster at that point, and I remember we rented out every single one of the 4,600+ movies we had in the store, and sold every copy of movie that was for sale after the rentals were all gone. Probably the most profitable few days in LA Blockbuster history. We kept a TV on and watched the idiots going around stealing shit. I still don't understand how smashing windows and stealing things protests someone being beaten by the police... I thought then (and still do now) that it was just a convenient excuse for some people to show their true colors. I followed the rules, stayed home, and that was that. My Dad's print shop was in LA, about 3 miles from the Beverly Center (a giant mall that you can see in the movie "Volcano") and that's a pretty pricey area of LA. Beverly Hills is about 6 miles away. Someone broke in his shop, stole about $25 in cash from the register, emptied out the candy dish, and left. Morons.
The Newark riots of the late 60s. I remember we were driving home from my grandmother's house, seeing police with big dogs and firemen using high pressure hoses to try to repel and disperse the crowd. My father-in-law was a Jersey City cop and my wife remembers him coming home after his shifts with all of his riot gear.