Undie 500 undone again

As I finished getting petrol in Dunedin on Friday evening a couple of young women in fancy dress rushed up and asked me to sign their arms as one of the things they needed for a scavenger hunt.

The bloke who took my money explained it was one of the activities for Undie 500 weekend and he was pleased he wouldn’t be working the following night because the last time the Undie 500 hit town the Saturday night was no fun for workers.

As I drove north a couple of hours later I noticed a large contingent of police on the outskirts of the city and an almost constant stream of cars heading south.

There was no sign of anything amiss when we passed through the campus yesterday.

Today we spotted dozens of decorated vehicles like this one heading north:

Several stopped at Moeraki. Their occupants looked tired but sober.

From what we’d seen, the Undie 500 hadn’t been undone by alochol-fulled foolishness. But when we caught up with  the news: we realised we’d obviously seen only the better behaved bits of the weekend:

Police arrested between 50 and 60 people. This follows the 20 arrests made on Friday night. The weekend’s violence and disorder saw the highest number of arrests in recent years.

 It’s not the Undie 500 by itself, but students say:

Students from Otago believe that the tradition of the Undie 500, even if it didn’t start with bad intentions, will continue to attract people that want to riot. . .

. . . Jason Bay (21), a second-year management student who organised a sausage sizzle on Castle St on Friday night, believes that “[the students] just reach a certain degree of drunk after which you either get violent, or let nothing in the way of stopping you partying.

“I think the cops did a good job overall, but they can’t always distinguish who are being dickheads or who just want to have fun.”

It’s very difficult to distinguish the dickheads from the people just wanting to have fun in this ODT video. But those who end up in court are likely to find the judge puts most of them in the former category.

Why didn’t they learn from last year?

The unofficial Undie 500 resulted in similar mayhem  in Dunedin to last year’s with multiple arrests after a confrontation between police and students in Castle Street.

Maybe none of those involved are students of history – or perhaps they are but as Aldous Huxley quipped, the most important thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history.

So far so peaceful for Undie 500

The ODT gets applause for its headline: Police welcome rebels with a pause and the story below reports that the first day of the Undie 500 passed peacefully.

A heavy police presence greeted rebel Undie 500 participants to Dunedin last night, but the atmosphere between students and police appeared jovial and good-natured.

Inspector Dave Campbell said there had been no problems, but there were “quite a few more cars” than expected, with about 40 vehicles joining the event. Earlier estimates had put the number at 30.

Police checkpoints in Oamaru and on the outskirts of Dunedin did net a couple of people who were charged with drink driving, but neither was involved with the student rally.

Unofficial Undie 500 event this weekend?

Police reinforcements are being called to Dunedin this weekend in preparation for the probable arrival of the unofficial Undie 500.

The annual Undie 500, in which students drive from Christchurch to Dunedin in vehicles costing less than $500, would have marked its 20th anniversary this year.

The event was marred by disorder in 2006 and again last year.

Attempts to negotiate a revamped Undie 500 with authorities failed and traditional organiser Ensoc (University of Canterbury’s engineering society) cancelled the Undie 500 this year.

Legal advice also led to the cancellation of an alternative official event, Trek 08.

A rogue event has been talked about on social networking websites Facebook and Bebo since the official events were cancelled and an email was circulated among Canterbury University students this week saying an Undie 500-style rally was planned for this weekend.

It’s not just Dunedin that has problems. The manager of Oamaru’s KFC, Barry Baylis,  told the Oamaru Mail that previous Undie 500 participants have created chaos and left revolting messes in their wake.

I must be getting old because I can remember a time when it was possible to have fun even if alcohol was involved without upsetting other people and with no need for police.