The Undie 500's in town.

The Essays of Doom are finished and turned in at last. That's a weight off my back.

More interestingly, I have discovered Dunedin's equivalent of the OSU-Michigan game: the Undie 500. The event actually begins in Christchurch, with the Canterbury University's engineering club. The challenge is to get a car functional for under $500 and drive it to Dunedin and back. (The name is a riff on the Indy 500 and the price limit -- no underwear involved.) The contestants put a lot of love into those cars, making them not just roadworthy but also fun: they paint them in wild colors, add wacky accessories, even get themselves into appropriate (and often perfectly matching!) costume for the drive.

Once it gets to Dunedin, though, things get ugly. The rally ends in a pub crawl, which apparently descends each year into a drunken mess of couch-burnings in the street. The revelers throw bottles at the police in riot gear who respond to any call, and even at firefighters or paramedics. Arrests follow, usually of Otago students. It's hooliganism, frankly.

Oh, and it's happening this weekend.

The cars arrived Friday afternoon or evening (I was out), and since then Leith and Castle Streets have been a mess. I've stayed well clear of it, of course -- the upside to it is that Dunedin's too small for it to spread over the whole campus area like the OSU flap does -- but I smelled smoke and heard yelling on my way home tonight.

The Dunedin government is not happy. Mayor Chin, who sang to us at the international students' introduction, has been trying to have the event banned entirely; City Council issued a temporary liquor ban for this weekend, and has been pressuring local businesses not to have anything to do with the Undie. Last night the news ran a story on it all, at the end of which the mayor and the president of the Canterbury engineering club appeared for a brief moderated discussion. The mayor was practically incoherent with rage, insisting that the event must be banned and that it was nothing but "a pub crawl", in a tone that suggested the students couldn't possibly be doing anything more despicable.

On the one hand, I can understand his outrage. As I said, it's hooliganism -- it's disruptive and destructive, and could very well end in injury. On the other hand, the event was banned last year, but it happened anyway, unofficially, and was much worse than when it was official. An official Undie 500 can lock up the cars for the night and engage venues for constructive partying; in short, it can keep the mess contained and subdued. Banning the event pulls out all the safeguards. As usual, Prohibition makes things worse.

So what's to be done? Frankly, I haven't a clue. I'll just stay in this weekend, appreciate the cars I do see, and mercilessly mock anyone who shows up to class hung over. It should be instructive.