One of my favorite things about my apartment is the sideshows that come to my neighborhood.

They usually start long after I’ve gone to bed and announce their arrival with the prolonged soprano whistle of dense rubber ground against asphalt. The squeal is often accompanied by the pop of fireworks, rousing even the heaviest of sleepers.

I roll out of bed, head to the living room window, and draw open the curtains. At the main intersection visible from my window, a crowd gathers and circles tighter and tighter around one or more cars doing donuts in a relatively small space bound by four corners.

These corners are home to the pillars of our neighborhood: Laundromat, mixed martial arts studio, convenience store, and beauty supply. Traffic lights, unable to read the moment, continue to cycle through their orderly green, yellow, and red.

As the procession continues, the cars take their turns in the ring and smoke from burnt rubber and exhaust rises, creating an atmosphere that most venues need smoke machines to generate. Headlights and taillights set the smoke aglow.

People arrive from all directions, walking up sidewalks and in the middle of streets. Phone screens light their faces and reveal slight smiles that belie an excitement more genuinely expressed by the speed and intentionality of their steps. Some people are alone, some are in groups. Some carry jackets folded over the hooks of their forearms.

There is a sideshow to the sideshow, featuring those driving to the event, turning major streets and sidewalks into spontaneous parking lots. There are no conflicts, no horns honking, contrary to the norm on these streets during “standard business hours,” as people fight for parking spaces and right of way. There is just a kind of jubilation that I associate with childhood memories of arriving at the carnival.

It is 1:36 am. A crowd of hundreds arrived seemingly by private channels and word of mouth generated by the sound of the sideshow itself. It is free to attend. There’s no advertising and no exclusive guest list. All at once, it is civil disobedience and a release from the increasingly dystopian lives we lead in 2022. The release is not without danger, but it takes a lot to divert our thoughts from the 6M deaths from COVID-19 worldwide and the untold personal traumas that each of us watching the show has experienced so far.

After about an hour, the police start to show up. The policing pattern is about keeping a distance and blocking off main entryways to the active intersection. There is no rushing in to break things up. If you’ve seen the hair-trigger dance of a car doing donuts with people hanging out of its windows in an intersection full of people with cameras rolling, you understand the strategy.

And then it is over, and the end is just as interesting as the beginning. People walk back to their cars parked in the middle of main thoroughfares. They sit and wait until the foot traffic thins and then begin a concerted exit. Four lanes of traffic move out in the space of a two-way street and a sidewalk. The cars flow out through the one opening left unblocked by the police.

It is 3:24 am. People have returned to doing what they do at this time of the morning. Moonlight illuminates the black interlocking rings left on the asphalt in the intersection.