April 27, 1990
The Slotopia dude, Ryan Magill, may be wondering what all the fuss is about.
What could go wrong with a little party and a few thousand of your closest friends at the beach?
He may have been surprised at the backlash the community had when word got out.The first viral party gone bad I covered was almost exactly 19 years ago, the 1990 Poly Royal.
It officially marks my transition to old fogeyhood.Until then I thought had more in common with Poly students than city officials.
Though to be fair to the local students, there were a lot of out of town folks flooding the streets. It was an unofficial tradition that Poly Royal weekend was a good weekend to go home if you didn’t have a commitment to stay in town. Arrest records would later show that three quarters of the arrests were out of town partiers.
I was working the night shift on Friday.
The evening was warm and the local liquor stores had been advertising beer kegs in their windows. The stores had been banned from using the term “Party Royal” after the University trademarked the term and threatened legal action. There had been some rowdy parties the year before and they hoped to put a lid on it.
The first inkling of trouble was just before 9 p.m. a when three students were attacked at their apartment on Murray Street by a group of men wielding baseball bats. They had come back to settle a score from the night before.
As I drove through the area it seemed like there was an unusual number of people cruising around with beer in their hands looking for the next exciting thing.It didn’t take long; a speeding bicyclist on Fredricks Street collided with a car drawing spectators to the lights and sirens. As paramedics and police offered aid, a few in the growing crowd, started throwing rocks and bottles.Sometime near 11 p.m. a group of helmeted police officers tried to break up the throng milling in Hathway Street and California Blvd. at the Campus Bottle Shoppe. The officers were far out numbered and the effort just compressed the crowd into a smaller space.
The crowd ignored orders to disperse. The police fell back and regrouped.
At some point the crowd became a mob, began chanting “Free beer, free beer” and broke the windows on the liquor store and began looting. An employee fought back using champagne bottles as clubs.
Private cars were attacked; bottles and rocks from the railroad tracks would sail randomly through the air. I was hit in the back of the leg at one point, leaving a half circle bruise in the shape of a Budweiser bottle.
Others were hit in the head and fell to the pavement.At one point a roving gang threatened to beat any photographer who took their picture.
It was a lawless, fluid situation alternating between danger and an surreal air of levity.
Usually journalists let their work speak for itself but I would like to take a moment to point out that several people took personal risks to report this story.
Jeff May photographed both nights of rioting and Robert Dyer covered the second.David Eddy, Tony Hazarian, Dan Parker, Gary Taylor and David Wilcox all took to the street to report.
There were a few hours where civilization was a long way from California Blvd.Police called in reinforcements, used tear gas, fire hoses and handcuffs to eventually break the crowd up.
The sad story would repeat the following night with the addition of Molotov cocktails, dumpsters being set on fire and more injuries and arrests.As an alumnus I felt betrayed and no longer proud to be a Mustang. I could no longer pretend that the town I called home could avoid the world’s bigger problems.In the end there were 127 arrests and at least 100 were injured.
The tradition of Poly Royal had been driven off a cliff in a drunken stupor.
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Wow. Compared to the 1990 Poly Royal riot, the so-called “Mardi Gras” riots of a few years ago sound like nothing.
And of all of this could have been avoided, had it not been for the unfortunate combination of alcohol, personal arguments and college kids with mischief on their minds.
My unit responded, and we were standing by on Murray St. Never got the call to advance on California. Packed up after 5 hours, and went back to the armory.
My wife and I were in town that weekend and knew something was wrong when the choppers w/lights started hovering over SLO. Hey, we got away to SLO to be away from that! ’79 alum.
Thanks for the comments Sarah, SSG David and Bob.
Mardi Gras had airborne beer bottles too. No fun to catch one in the noggin.
I did not know about the Guard being called to the scene.
A 1979 alum, hey that was the fall I started at Poly.
The first night of the Poly riots happened hours after the end of my last day on the job as a reporter at the Telegram-Tribune. I spent about four years working there, and then I gave two weeks’ notice to move on to other journalistic pursuits. A few hours after I got off work on my last day at the paper, I was sitting at a downtown SLO bar with a few reporters. I think maybe Dave Eddy and Wilcox were among them. We were just drinking a few beers to celebrate my last day. Then Dave Eddy’s wife came in and said a riot had erupted. We ran to our cars and speeded over there, and there it was, unfolding right before our eyes. We spent the next several hours covering it. I think, because I technically was no longer an employee, I just called information in for the stories, but didn’t do any actual writing. Pretty wild.
Good to hear from you Dan.
One of the stories I heard this year was about the retired fire wagon horses. They were stabled near town when the city bought it’s first engines in the 1920′s. When the horses heard the alarm bell ringing downtown they kicked down the corral fence and ran to the station.
Guess we all have a little of that fire horse in us.
I lived on the corner of Foothill and Hathaway, in a crappy little tear-down, known then as the Casa de Fear. Naturally we had a front row seat to the mayhem. Some highlights that were not mentioned in your narrative above, include:
- throngs of hooligans smashing out the front window of Campus Bottle and attempting to gain entry while chanting “free beer, free beer!”
- the owner and employees of Campus Bottle trying to repel the looters from inside the store by throwing full champagne bottles at them.
- some dimwit trying to climb the light pole on the corner and getting halfway up, before getting beaned with a beer bottle and falling flat to the pavement unconscious.
- roving bands of thugs attacking girls and trying to rip their clothes off.
- the same idiots sucker punching anyone who tried to stop them.
- the cops finally coming in a using tear gas and police dogs to break up the crowd
Despite being only 30′ away from the riot, our house made it through relatively unscathed, as did the SAE house next door. Amusingly, the local papers came by the next day and shot pictures and made much ado about the destroyed car in our front yard and broken windows on the house. Alas, that was all damage that had taken place previously – mostly by ourselves. But you know how reporters are when looking for an angle…
Still, for a good two hours SLO was host to a bono fide riot – which subsequently resulted in Poly Royal being cancelled permanently (at least in the context we had come to know it).
Thanks for the comment Paul.
Your recollections fit with mine from Friday night/Saturday morning. Robert Dyer photographed the second night and Jeff May covered both and it seemed from their images and stories that the second night was meaner than the first.
Note to self, photographing tear gas grenades, not fun.
The daylight reporters must have been from another organization. Good reporting involves talking to witnesses, especially if you aren’t there to witness it yourself.
As you can see from these pages our photographic coverage was concentrated on the nights of the riot.
I heard about this from my dad,who was pasing by at the time, and I wnated to see the photos my self. The imagination can only imagine so much.But the number of arests is a lot more than Mardi Gras look like a tame party hosted by an elderly couple.
I was a SR in HS coming up for the festivities, I remember their being some mayhem but all in all I was lucky because I had a blast!!
I was a student at the time, had heard about a bunch of out-of-towners coming up, so stayed out of the party zone. There had been a “riot” the year before, small in size, but it was pretty big for SLO. I think a lot of kids came in from down south, because of the trouble the year before. I remember heading home with my brother from a dance & seeing the cloud of tear gas flowing down California. We did a u-turn & took another route home. It was pretty sad that a tradition like Poly Royal was to be canceled after that. I made it back last year & am glad that the spirit is back, even if it is only one day instead of 2.
Dave, don’t exactly know how I stumbled onto this page, but your post and photos bring the memories flooding back. What a wild night that was. It was hard to believe so many idiots could be in one place, at one time, but it gave me a sense of mob mentality power and rage. The scene outside the Campus Bottle Shoppe was reminisent of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” which had come out the year before. Hard to believe that was 20 years ago.
I was a dispatcher for State Parks in Oceano back then for both riot nights. SLO Sheriff called for rangers for back-up because they had 4WD trucks (not a common thing for police back then). One of the rangers videotaped the riot. I wonder if that videotape is still around? It was pretty gnarly.
Did you write anything about this, Carol?
Either my memory is gone completely, or the story didn’t get national coverage.
I was a stringer – sort of – for the TV station, and shot film of the plane crash at the 1967 Poly Royal. Cal Poly must be one of the few colleges to have an airport on campus. At the air show a light plane flew slowly down the length of the runway, banked sharply into a left hand turn, and didn’t have enough lift at that speed to stay in the air. He was only a hundred feet or so off the ground and just looped strait down. I ran on foot to the crash site and took film of the burning plane, or what was left of it. I’m sure the passengers died on impact.
Had to be an inexperienced pilot. I understand that between about 200 hours and 1000 hours pilots are the most likely to have accident. They have enough experience to be technical competent, but become over-confident and lose respect for the danger. By 1000 hours, if they are still alive and haven’t been scared away by close calls, have regained respect for the danger.
A very experienced pilot told me that this phenomenon is probably what killed John Kennedy.
The same is true of other dangerous activities, motorcycles for example. Sky diving, water sports, and probably new teenage drivers.
Gees, Carol. You must feel really old if I was old enough to be shooting film professionally in 1967?
John,
CNN did a story on the riots. I was interviewed.
The story also ran in the SF Chronicle and LA Times with wire photos shot by Tribune photographers. The Times placed in on A3 in their big Sunday paper.
I lived at the corner of Grand and Fredericks. The second night I was at home and saw huge groups of people walking up Fredericks to get to California St. I remember the atmosphere was surreal. The police had stopped me in my car earlier in the evening, There were five people in my 1962 bug…I think there was a concern about any groups of students. I will never forget how disappointed I was with the behavior of certain people. I was really glad it was my last year.
They were arresting students on Monday who were videotaped in the riot. I figured it was a good time to quit school. Never went back to class for fear of arest. Thus ended my academia. Wild stuff….good memories. Unless you have experienced mob mentality you have no idea what it felt like to be caught up in it….a weird mixture of empowerment and the desperation to use it with impunity for a short time. Made you feel above the law like you could do any destruction and be free from consequences. You would be surprised by what you would do if no consequences
Hey Andrew, I also was in the Poly Royal riots (thursday, friday, & saturday), only I was on the receiving end of the rocks, bottles, and fires you and your anonymous mob-buds were sending our way. I must congratulate you on dropping out of college when, under threat of being arrested, you got too scared to accept responsibility for your actions. The pathetic bleeding-heart administrators at Poly and Cuesta didn’t have the nuts to kick out their precious students who rioted. At least you took yourself out.
As you might expect, I don’t exactly categorize my experience as “Wild stuff…Good memories”. The way you phrased your reflections of your involvement in the empowering consequence-free mob makes me wonder if you ever felt remorse and shame for dishonoring and disrespecting your community, your school, and yourself. The tone of your comment leads me to think your moral compass remains in need of calibration.
McTavish, as you may have noticed I trimmed the last half-sentence with the four letter word insult.
Regular readers of this forum know that all viewpoints are encouraged here short of personal insults or threats. Closing off the conversation with a personal attack brings dialog to a halt.
I agree with your point of view, the rioters brought shame on themselves.