June 18, 2007

Booyah Hill

Recent events have made me realize that a Booyah Hill account was in order. What's a "Booyah Hill?" Well, as you turn right into our school parking lot, there is a huge/massive/immense hill in front of you. It's known as Booyah Hill because when you go down it on a skateboard (if you're an idiot) there's really nothing you can yell but "BOOOOOOOYAH!" *crunch!*

Any skateboard attempt usually results in either smacking into a car, the ground, or a tree. Hey, at least there are options!
In 1997 a tradition amongst Sprague High School seniors began. Towards the end of each year, the Sprague seniors sneak onto the hill at night and paint the year of their graduation in huge letters. Every year since then you could expect to see some type of orange and yellow artwork on the street. It’s so big that satellites can see it when they do imaging for Google Maps.



As you can see, the class of 2000 is located higher up on the hill and the class of 2005 is located in bigger writing about midway down the hill. As you look even closer, below the class of 2005 is the mark from the class of 2002. It’s a tradition at our school, senior love to do it. Unfortunately, there was an issue last year (class of 2006). It seems that instead of just adding to the previous years, they decided to start with a clean slate. By clean slate I mean they painted the entire street white. All white. With Latex-based paint. Bad!!!



Everything in that rectangle was painted white, and the paint was slow-drying and slick. Drivers started to complain about sliding down the hill and paint flecking off the street and hitting their cars. Members of the class of 2006 were caught on another night finishing the painting and arrested. They were forced to pay to repave the road and were made examples for the rest of us. From then on out, during every senior assembly we were threatened upon pain of death not to paint the road. We were threatened with fines, felonies, and diploma withholding. We pretty much gave up on Booyah hill. Then, all of a sudden, the following newspaper article got published:

Click here for the article.

Wow, that was fun to talk about the next day! We spent a good part of the day trying to figure out who this anonymous 17 year old girl was, but rest assured that we did figure out who it was. Her story was slightly more detailed than the article, but I think I’ll keep it to myself because that’s not the most important part of the story. The most important part is what happened next. On June 11th, this article appeared in the newspaper:

Click here for the article.

HA!



After all the hype of the car chase and the felony, the cops let down their guard and some Sprague seniors still managed to paint the hill. The cops are, as to be suspected, perturbed. Luckily, everybody has their bases covered. The school can say they didn’t condone it, the cops caught the student who instigated it, and the rest of the kids who finished, well, their identities are a secret. I could tell you who it was, but then I’d have to kill you! Oh, and a quick side-note, you’ll notice the chunk of road that’s newly paved. That’s the entire area that was painted white. Yeah, it was a lot of white paint. Also, you’ll note in the caption of the picture in the article they define “Booyah”. The newspaper doesn’t seem to know exactly why it says “Booyah”, but now you do!

So, that’s the story behind Booyah Hill. A tradition that is becoming more and more epic as the years progress!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

They paved over that this morning...depressing, they are going to have to do it again next year too!

Anonymous said...

My favorite part is that the Statesmen actually described the word "booyah"! Good grief... we got the paper the day that article was published and I pretty much just laughed when I read it.