 "Photo: Chris Dreyer Illustration")
The days of the Chinese fire drill are over as a new, more dangerous trend has become popular among young thrill-seeking drivers.
"Ghost riding the whip" has exploded across Internet sites like YouTube.com and infiltrated the media with songs like rapper Mistah F.A.B.'s "Ghost Ride It."
"Pull up hop out/ all in one motion/ dancing on the hood/ while the car still rollin'," state lyrics in "Ghost Ride It."
"Ghost riding the whip" is not a demonic possession of a vehicle but rather a dance move where the driver of a moving car, known as a whip, puts the car into neutral and gets out, letting it roll while dancing alongside the vehicle and sometimes dancing on the roof or hood.
The trend has been made popular with the rise of "Hyphy" (pronounced "hi-fee") music, a California Bay-area music style that's main idea is "getting stupid" and "going dumb" - which simply means going crazy. Ghost riding was a popular trick at San Francisco "sideshows," which are illegal demonstrations of car tricks on city streets.
"They have been [ghost riding] for 15 - 25 years," said Blaine Swarthout, a Gonzaga sophomore from San Francisco. "It's an expression of their culture."
Swarthout feels that it is silly how many people have jumped on the ghost riding bandwagon, or maybe danced alongside it, because of its longstanding tradition in areas like Oakland and San Francisco.
"People can tell if you are being fake," said Swarthout.
This is not enough to keep ghost riding from going mainstream though.
After the University of California's football team beat the University of Washington last fall, Marshawn Lynch, Cal's star running back, jumped in a golf cart parked in the sidelines and drove wildly all around the field. After the game he told a Sports Illustrated reporter, "I was gonna ghost ride it for a minute at the end, but it ain't got no neutral, so it would've just kept rollin'. So I just did that move."
Ghost riding has gotten so popular that in the "Pimp My Ride" videogame ghost riding is a mini-game. Hundreds of videos of young adults ghost riding can also be seen on YouTube.com. Some of these videos even show the dangerous consequences that often result from this activity.
In one popular video, a young man is shown sitting on the top of a red truck as it travels at about 25 mph down a city road. The car veers off course, hits a telephone pole and knocks the man off the top of the vehicle.
As amateurs try to imitate the ghost riding maneuver, the consequences can sometimes be deadly.
In November of last year, an 18-year-old from Stockton, Calif., died when his head hit a parked car while hanging out of the window of an SUV while attempting to ghost ride. In October, a 36-year-old man died when he fell off his car while dancing on the roof. Authorities say that hundreds of other ghost-riding injuries have been reported across the nation as well.
Just ask Mistah F.A.B. about the dangers of ghost riding. While shooting the music video for "Ghost Ride It," F.A.B. fell out of the door of a moving vehicle and suffered minor injuries.
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