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From: BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: Chicago Wins Again! - Literal Highway Robbery
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2025 20:43:05 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On Apr 9, 2025 at 1:36:22 PM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
wrote:

> On 2025-04-09 3:37 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>>  In Chicago, men of a certain unsurprising demographic dressed as parking
>>  attendants are surrounding cars before they even exit the freeway and
>>  demanding money to park at Comiskey Park.
>>  
>>  In a (not-so) shocking twist, if you don’t give them the $40 they’re
>>  demanding, they become violent.
>>  
>>  
>> 
>> https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1908162578641027072/vid/avc1/650x480/wAy_4va6RimmcLHu.mp4?tag=16
>>  
>>  Well done, Chicago. Even in L.A. you don't get held up on the freeway by
>>  masked bandits like it's an 1820s stagecoach robbery or something.
>>  
>>  
> My friends and I were actually victims of something similar at a car 
> race around 45 years ago. We were at Mosport, which is a couple of hours 
> north-east of Toronto, camping for the weekend while we took in some 
> motor racing. Mosport had provided a huge pile of "firewood" - actually, 
> they were chairs like the ones we'd had in our high school cafeteria - 
> and as we approached in a car, a guy came over and told us it would be 
> $5 for a trunk full. We were a little surprised but Mosport had 
> obviously spent some money getting that wood so we coughed up the $5, 
> took a trunkful of wood, and went our way. It was only later that we 
> heard that the people collecting the money had nothing to do with 
> Mosport, who had provided the wood for free.
> 
> I had wondered why the guy who approached us spoke so quietly and 
> realized after the fact that he must have been trying to be discrete so 
> that no one else nearby could tell us the wood was free. I seem to 
> recall other guys also approaching people that were coming for wood so 
> I'm not clear if it was an organized scam or if other people just 
> spontaneously started imitating the first guy when they saw his scam was 
> working. (There were several big piles of wood around the park but I 
> have no idea if the same scam was used at the other piles.)
> 
> I also remember a bit of an epilogue to the whole thing later on that 
> long weekend: the wood piles (or at least the one we had gone to) were 
> set on fire and all the remaining wood burnt. I suspect that was a bit 
> of protest from people who'd been ripped off by the scam.
> 
> I should also point out that no one was threatened or abused if they 
> chose not to give these guys $5 for firewood. I'm sure we were free to 
> drive away and look elsewhere if we liked. But it probably would have 
> cost us more than that to drive to some other supplier of firewood and 
> it might have taken a while given that Mosport isn't in any town. I 
> didn't see anyone tell these guys to fuck off and then helped themselves 
> to the wood for free so I don't know what would have happened; I 
> *suspect* they would have simply got their wood for free without any 
> kind of altercation.
> 
> I would think the baseball team could arrange to get a couple of cops 
> (on- or off-duty) to hang out at the offramp to discourage these 
> scammers (and chase them if they try to leave on their scooters); it 
> would go a long way to rehabilitating the image of the team and the city 
> for tolerating that nonsense. (I saw the bit where the police car tried 
> to stop them but the scammers just scattered on their scooters. The cops 
> should have been on comparable vehicles that could give chase.)

This is why you should be allowed to carry in your car (and on your person).
Betcha these guys wouldn't be pulling this crap if they had to expect every
second or third car to have someone pointing a gun back at them.