Welcome to Thunderdome. Two men enter. One leaves.

I live in Alameda, a small island town in the East Bay. It’s pretty nice – it’s a bedroom community very close to BART, San Francisco and Oakland. There used to be a military base (where the soon-to-be legendary freeway chase scene in Matrix Reloaded was filmed), so there’s lots of ex-military people, but there’s also quite a few young families and older people. To get to Alameda, you have to drive through parts of Oakland, and take one of three bridges, or the Webster Tunnel. The bridge I use the most is the Park Street bridge, a green drawbridge that’s no more than 100 yards long. Alameda is rather infamous for its strictly enforced speed limit – the entire island’s speed limit is no more than 25 mph. I’ve had friends get ticketed for driving 33 mph. Oakland, of course, has a much higher speed limit. Often, drivers will come barreling off the freeway through Oakland, then suddenly slow down at the bridge. Oh, and the bridge’s road isn’t pavement – it’s metal grating with no traction. Sounds like a fairly mundane problem, doesn’t it? Well, there’s roads coming from three different directions that merge into the bridge in this weird vortex. “Weird vortex? What does she mean by that?” you wonder. In this vortex, and in the roads leading up to it, there are no traffic lanes painted. There’s not even a line painted to designate where the shoulder is. There are no stop lights, or stop signs to regulate the flow of traffic. There’s also more than a few crater-sized potholes. Do you see where the problem lies? But that’s not it yet - some fool attempted to make the area where the three routes converge into a lameass traffic circle. One route is sort of s shaped, one is a modified u-turn, and one is straight. On a well maintained street, it’s confusing enough, but subtract the paintlines, add in the potholes, bad Bay Area SUV drivers with road rage during rush hour jockeying for prime positions in traffic, the sudden change in speed and lack of traction, and voila! Thunderdome, live every weeknight, between 4 and 7 at the Park Street Bridge. Except with automobiles, instead of people.