Can I be the first to ask...
....WTF is "Knock Down Ginger?"
Cops taser naked doorbell-ringing giant
A 6ft 7in San Fransisco man who decided to indulge in some light knock down ginger while wearing only tennis shoes ended up at the receiving end of a Taser, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Two residents of the Woodside and Portola Valley area, south of Redwood City, reported that Peter Allen Steele, 38, was "standing …
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Friday 14th August 2009 12:42 GMT Matt D 3
Knock Down Ginger.
Just as a helpful explanation for anyone who may be unaware, Knock Down Ginger is the name of a childish game in which the participant(s) go to the door of a house, knock loudly on it and then run away and hide. There is usually more than one participant and they will take turns, often running back to join their hiding friends and giggle when the house occupant opens the door to find no-one there.
Extra kudos can be gained for knocking repeatedly on the same door several times in succession, co-ordinated multiple efforts in which several doors are knocked at the same time, and ultra-elaborate linked attempts, in which door knockers are connected to neighbouring doors with fishing line, causing a pleasing cascade effect in which the opening of the first door by the occupant will cause a knock on the next door, then the next and so on.
Don't ask me how I know all this.
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Friday 14th August 2009 13:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Knock Down Ginger
If you are unsure of the details of the game check the particularly funny wikipedia page. I like the variants - especially, "Ding Dong Sack Whack". A variant that we played at school involved a paper bag and a pile of dog shit. You scoop up with dog shit with the bag, and set fire to it on someone's doorstep whilst ringing the bell. The hope is that the victim stamps on the bag to put it out...
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Friday 14th August 2009 15:13 GMT Rob Dobs
@ MAtt D 3
Thank you for the explanation, I did assume that this is basically the game we called "ding dong doorbell ditch" which though maybe more descriptive, sounds just as stupid when saying/typing it. I am curious though where the origin of the actual phrase comes from. ( I have images of the name being borrowed from a game meant to floor the Irish, or red headed step childs :-) )
Can anyone shed light on the origin of this one?
Also Matt re: the fishing line tied to each knocker......Brilliant absolutely brilliant. This however is so good, I could see it being used to start physical fights between two neighbors. Best to not pass around information like this :-)
(ahem... "kids" in my neighborhood growing up loved to play the trick of grabbing a persons lawn ornaments or x-mas decorations and moving them to another neighbors yard (best if it the yard is visible from the original owners house.... always hillarious results.... ranks up there with hiding in back yards and surfing to channel 666 with the same identical cable remote that everyone in town has. There is also a evil trick involving lifesavers that is just too malicious to put into print.....)
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Monday 17th August 2009 09:34 GMT jake
@sun_god
Woodside is on the bay side of "The Penninsula", where everything is spendy. From Palo Alto and Los Altos to San Francisco (and across the bridge in Marin, for that matter) housing is ridiculously expensive. Some would include Sunnyvale & Cupertino in that.
Last I knew, Jobs lived Palo Alto, near the boarder with Menlo Park, just around the corner from my house at the time. This was ten years ago, he may have moved.
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Monday 17th August 2009 09:41 GMT maxpowers43
another name for it...
used by some in the american south is (insert racial slur beginning with "N") Knocking. probably another version of the same sick inside joke as blaming all negative or criminal behavior on same group, often to the investigating police. children's introduction to false flag terrorism?
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Monday 17th August 2009 09:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Ah, childhood days
I remember we started playing Knock-down ginger as a tyke, back in the 70s, before we graduated to more advanced activities, like:
-Rocking roofs (a handful of gravel tossed onto a tin roof makes a hell of a racket!);
-Egging houses;
-Blowing up peoples' letterboxes with homemade bombs;
-Sticking dogshit under car door handles;
-Chocking car wheels with empty beer bottles;
-Starting bushfires in the nearby paddocks and watching the fire trucks come and put them out.
Said paddocks were then developed as a new housing estate, which opened up more possibilites, such as:
- Emptying the contents of a concrete truck over a new road while the workers were at lunch;
- Setting fire to stacks of timber on building sites;
- Smashing the windows of half-built houses;
- Bulldozing a transportable construction-site office with a front-end loader we nicked from a nearby compound;
- Shifting every single survey marker for a stretch of upcoming road construction (and yes, the idiots actually built the road in the wrong place!)
But I consider our crowning achievement was stealing the blue lights off the top of a police car while the coppers were in the house talking to the residents!
And... we never got busted for any of it!
Ahem... I think I'll make this one anonymous... yes it was 35 years ago and I was a minor, but you never know...
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Monday 17th August 2009 09:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
A title is required
@ sun_god "Woodside Is one of the most expensive zip codes in the United States"
Woodside isn't all that exclusive... it's still got a listed ZIP Code. The City of Hillsborough, near Burlingame, CA used to be so exclusive it wasn't even listed in the USPS National ZIP Code directory. That changed a few years ago though, it's now listed, but the ZIP Code belongs to Burlingame.
My coat's the one with the jury duty badge on it.
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Monday 17th August 2009 13:14 GMT jake
@AC 06:12
"The City of Hillsborough, near Burlingame, CA used to be so exclusive it wasn't even listed in the USPS National ZIP Code directory. That changed a few years ago though, it's now listed, but the ZIP Code belongs to Burlingame."
That is because Hillsborough is no more a separate entity than Barron Park, Palo Verde or Fairmeadow. Shit, even Docktown is more of a city unto it's own than Hillsborough!
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Monday 17th August 2009 13:16 GMT Ted Treen
I'm baffled...
'Steele earlier this week pleaded not guilty in San Mateo County Superior Court to charges "that he rang doorbells while naked"'...
What kind of legislative weirdo would actually make it an offense "to ring doorbells while naked"?
I'd like to think it was just Merkins, but then I look at our own collection of Millibands, Balls, Harridan Harperson, the Prince of Darkness, etc., and I'm now wondering if there IS a legislator (anywhere) who isn't a 28 carat, one hundred percent weirdo..
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Monday 17th August 2009 23:22 GMT Jesthar
@ By The Indomitable Gall
"Tazers save lives because they're used where the alternative would be lethal firearms. Like when you're chasing a flasher. With no weapon. And clearly nowhere to conceal one."
*ahem*
A starkers Captain Jack Harkness would beg to differ (Dr Who: Bad Wolf episode)
Trine-E: "But that's a compact laser delux"
Zu-Zana: "Where were you hiding that!?"
Jack: "You *really* don't wanna know"
;)
(Big Brother because of where the Doctor ended up - and, yes, I *KNOW* it's probably all fiction really... ;) )
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Friday 21st August 2009 10:42 GMT Damien Thorn
knock down ginger
In london uk ive always known it as "knock down ginger"
Its always nice to laugh at our neighbours across the pond doing these ridiculous stunts and getting themselves arrested.
The germans have a word for it: Schadenfreude.
Anyway if it was a woman we would want pics, but you never ever do requests for playmobile reconstructions, c'mon lets have a reconstruction roflmao
paris, because once you ring her bell you usually sell the video then run.
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