Was there ever anything as innocent as the Sunday spin? Back in the days when cars were scarce and the options of anything meaningful to do on Sunday afternoons were even scarcer, the Sunday spin was the highlight of the week. Whole families poured into one of the dozen types of car available at that time, and they travelled up and down bumpy country roads in search of something...anything. Normally a toilet or some place for the carsick kids to spew up.
The Sunday spin died away with the opening of shops and garden centres, but the ethos of just hopping in the car to go for a spin never died away totally. In fact, this week in Galway, we got to see a whole new iteration of it, when hundreds and hundreds of teenagers decided to revive it by arriving en masse into the city, many in their souped-up motors.
In one sense, the notion of the Salthill Sundays seems emanated from that same sense of boredom that existed back in the day when there was nothing to do. I spoke to a few of the participants in Sunday’s event and they told me of their pent-up frustration at not being able to get out and see their friends or meet-up in such numbers as headed west.
In theory, it seemed like a decent idea, but in reality, bringing many hundreds of smoke-belching cars into the city on a quiet Sunday was at odds with what the majority of people want right now.
However, what evolved became an ugly manifestation of machismo and bravado. The scenes of frightened children bawling with fear at the sound, the brakes, the horns, the smoke, coupled with the sickening abuse that was thrown at people by the occupants of some of these cars as they crawled their way through the city and brought it to a crawl.
At a time like this when opportunities for families to get out together in a safe environment are limited by choice and by regulation. what evolved in Salthill and across the city was an ugly event, where the testosterone-fuelled elation of having your own set of wheels set in and in effect, the participants gave the two fingers to anyone who looked on disapprovivngly
While the initial intentions of the organisers nay have been noble, ie, to meet up, to network, to compare motors and to boost the local economy, it became instead an event in which children were reduced to tears.
Galway welcomes any event. God knows we have a festival for everything, but all of these from the biggest to the smallest are tolerated and allowed only if those who attend behave in an appopriate manner.
An event like this which requires the occupation of so much of the public space should only have been encouraged and permitted with the co-operation of local gardai and authorities. Hopefully the organisers will have taken note before they pull a stunt like this again.
