the Hydrant -

12:05 am

So I'm on my way to catch the 10:05 showing of "The Men Who Stare at Goats" at Edwards Aliso 20, and I'm running a tad behind but still not enough to miss any of the actual movie, just the previews.  Suddenly there are cars backed up for blocks, and traffic cones closing off two of the three lanes of traffic.  An accident?  Nope, a CHP sobriety checkpoint.

Thanks to the fact that I'm allergic to beer and seldom have a dinner fancy enough to require wine, I usually have no reason to be frustrated by these.  As I'm running a little late for my movie, the fact that I'm suddenly behind six blocks' worth of bumper-to-bumper traffic, for no reason other than the lordly whims of law enforcement, I'm a bit miffed.  Sure, it's a Friday night, but it's not even ten o'clock, and it's not even a holiday weekend.  How many drunk drivers are they expecting to catch?  Yeah, it's Laguna Hills, and the trap is set up in front of a shopping plaza popular with the local Hispanic community, but it's also right around the corner from Leisure World.  Why this particular location, at this particular time of evening?

The traffic crawls at geological pace toward the bright lights and the giant black-and-white truck, which but for its color could pass for one of the riot-control bulldozers in "Soylent Green". Finally I'm close enough to see a few of the checkpoint workers, who look like school-crossing guards in their yellow overalls and green vests as they stand on the landscaped median directing the flow (slow as it is) of traffic.  One of them holds a camera for mug shots and vehicle identification.  Two middle-aged Caucasian guys finish briefly talking to the driver of the pickup in front of me.  I look at the one nearest me, who holds one of those shiny red directional signal thingies that airport ground crews use.  No sooner do I look his way than he says "You can actually just drive on through. "  A bit surprised, I thank him and move on into the universe of vehicle-free road ahead.

OK, so that was quick.  I _might_ even get to the movie on time.   Two things puzzle me.  WHY was the traffic so glacially slow until I got there, and how was the guy who waved me through so sure I wasn't intoxicated?  Usually, pro forma, they ask you if (or if they're feeling particularly cocky, how much) you've been drinking that evening.  This guy didn't even do that.  He was too far away to see my eyes; I doubt he could even see far enough into my car to know whether my seat belt was fastened.  The lady with the camera had turned the camera's floodlight off, so my face wasn't brilliantly lit enough to see what my eyes were doing. There really wasn't much he could notice of me in so little time except...the color of my skin.

Now, if this had been the Border Patrol checkpoint in San Onofre, I could understand.  It's not 100% accurate, but having a pasty Anglo complexion corrrelates highly enough with U.S. origin that, given the volume of traffic on I-5, most ICE employees aren't going to ask for a green card if you look like Conan O'Brien without the tan :)   In a suburban area of south Orange County,  zoned primarily residential, this logic wouldn't seem to apply, and especially not to blood alcohol content.  I certainly don't object to being waved through after the unnecessarily long wait in traffic, but I'd hate to think that my WASPy features had anything to do with it.  Were some equally sober drivers ahead of or behind me delayed further just because they appeared to be more likely to be descended from Aztecs than Vikings?  Just what is the relationship of DUI arrests in Orange County to ethnicity when broken down as white/Asian/Latino?  Are we talking the talk when lambasting the LAPD for their recurrent problems with racism, when the local CHP units might be just as bad on this side of the Orange Curtain?