Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
Seems there was some sort of college student riot in Ames, Iowa early Sunday morning. After police broke up a party about midnight, hundreds of enraged (and when I say enraged, I mean shit-faced drunk) students began uprooting lightpoles and parking meters, breaking windows of businesses, and raining bottles on police. The predictable police response apparently involved lots of mace and pepper spray. Clashes continued until 5:30 in the morning.
Now, I've lived in college towns since I was about 6 years old, including a six-year stint as an honest-to-god college student, so I've seen this before. I'm certain it seems like very big news to the Iowa State student body and the residents of the town, but the only unusual circumstance here is that ISU hadn't won some sort of athletic championship that evening, the happy event that normally starts violent, destructive riots by upper-middle class kids in khakis.
So why bother even to note this story? Only for the two sentences that cracked me up. The first is the photo caption: "A riot participator pushes a flaming dumper down Lincolnway..." The second: "We're having fun," said Derek Weber, of Dike, as he walked away from a lamp post he and others pulled from the ground. "This is about us leaving the bars and them gassing us."
Yeah. Fun. Iowa must be just boring as hell.
TrackBackWhat this reminds me of (especially the last line - "This is about us leaving the bars and them gassing us") is the Franklin Street Riot the night the drinking age changed. When they closed the bars at midnight and kicked everyone into the street (who's brilliant idea was that ?)
I've seen the post-athletic "riots" and the flaming couches in the street, but that's the only night I ever saw windows getting broken out and the police using gas to keep people away from the businesses.
Posted by: owlmother at April 19, 2004 11:04 AM