June 17, 1994

[BitterYoungMatador2]

With the Knicks winning the NBA Championship and the World Cup back in the U.S., the whole summer has a lot of people looking back. ESPN did a great 30 for 30 about all of the happenings that day -- Rangers Stanley Cup parade, Arnold Palmer's last U.S. Open round at Oakmont in Pittsburgh, game 5 of the NBA Finals and all of it was interrupted by the O.J. Simpson chase.

I think we did a thread on this before but maybe we haven't: where were you on that day? I had just graduated from high school two weeks prior and an old high school friend was in town (he was a year older) and we had gone to a jazz club for the night since it was his last night in town. The Balcony was on the third floor and you had to pass a wings restaurant on the first floor to get to the stairs to go to the top level (in hindsight, this place was not ADA compliant at ALL). As we were heading home we saw everyone gathered around the TV at the bar in the wing joint watching the Bronco chase. We stood and stared for a while until we both realized that I was on a junior driver's license and had to get moving. I put on the Jim Bohannon Show on AM radio (the old Larry King Show) and listened to the updates on what was happening.

We were all convinced he was going to kill himself in that Bronco that night. In hindsight, that was the beginning of the weirdest summer, with baseball going completely on strike two months later and the World Series being canceled.

 

[BTExpress]

Sigh. Here we go again.

Coming home from a Marlins game, I was pulled off to the side of the road with a melted cylinder because I happened to drive my overhearing Supra too far in the ONE area in South Florida that did not have a gas station every 100 meters.

Missed everything.

 

[Kato]

I was an adjunct teaching Intro to Mass Media and would show the 30 for 30 about that day to the class. It's probably ancient history to college freshmen in 2026, but I tried to spur discussion of a pre-social-media, barely-into-Internet age time and how news tried to cover it all at the same time -- with some depth.

 

[Batman]

I think I'm one of the few people in America who was barely paying attention. I was working that night in a place with no TVs, so I didn't see the chase. I graduated from high school the following week and was obviously consumed with all of that going on. I saw some of Game 7 of the NBA Finals the night of my graduation, in between the ceremony and an overnight party the school put on. The Rangers winning the week before was much more memorable for me.

The rest of the summer I was also working, or barely at home, while enjoying one of the best summers of my life and getting ready to start college, so all of the O.J. drama and sports stuff was background noise at best.
There are a lot of vivid memories from that summer, but not many that had to do with all of the memorable events unfolding.

 

[MisterCreosote]

That’s not really an “I’ll always remember where I was when…” moment for me, so I have no idea.

Like others, I had just graduated high school two weeks earlier, so I was probably out partying.

 

[MileHigh]

It was also the opening day of the World Cup: Germany-Bolivia at Soldier Field and Spain-South Korea at the Cotton Bowl.

I was still living in SoCal -- and it was the day before I got married. It was a mind-boggling day.

 

[FileNotFound]

I was working the desk at a medium-sized midwestern metro newspaper. We had a tiny TV in the office. One by one, each of us got up from our chairs and gathered around the TV. Nobody had to yell, “hey, come watch this!”; it was just that instinct that news people have when news is happening. Nobody talked or offered opinions or speculated; we just listened to the TV and cared not a whit that we were no longer watching basketball.

 

[garrow]

I too had recently graduated from high school. Had come home from a graduation party and my dad was in his recliner (as usual) and he had on ABC coverage of the Bronco chase.

 

[Bubbler]

Was drinking beer and/or smoking weed with college friends.

We watched it. It was fascinating in the moment, but it didn’t take too long for me to not understand then, and I still don’t understand now, the obsession people had with all of it.

Yeah, a (minor) celebrity involved in a murder, I get that, but I got bored with it very quickly as I would with most things in the public zeitgeist that affected my life not one bit.

It was an embarrassment for the media, a real turning point towards vapidity.

It also made me hate cameras in the courtroom. My university had a professor who was a real advocate for cameras in the courtroom. I used to argue that justice would be played to the cameras not to the judge and jury. To see it play out in real time gave me no satisfaction in being right about it.

The anger the verdict created was also disappointing. Based on the rule of law, it was the correct verdict. Both black and white people invested in it should be embarrassed for turning it into a veritable racial sporting event.

The only good thing that came of it all was the brilliant “O.J.: Made In America” doc. Brilliant on merit, but in my case, also brilliant because it piqued my interest into something I never wanted to revisit again.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

I was home for the summer after my junior year in college and I had just started dating my future wife a few weeks before. She was working at a camp near my parents home and came to visit me on her day off. Only problem was that I was sick as hell with a fever and throwing up.

I have vague feverish memories of sitting on the couch, explaining basketball to her and then watching the Bronco chase and silently rooting for O.J. to off himself.

 

[UNCGrad]

My memory is that it was the actual night of our graduation. I'm probably conflating that, but that's how it is in my mind.

Our tightest friend group - about 8-10 strong - gathered for a thing at a friend's house because as basketball nerds we were going to check on the NBA Finals and then we were going to go out. Then the chase happened, and we were glued to the TV in his living room thinking OJ was going to kill himself. We stayed in and watched.

I believe the night ended with pickup driveway hoops past midnight with Tom Petty's Greatest Hits playing on a CD boom box.

It's not a bad memory.

 

[dixiehack]

Summer after my freshman year. I wasn’t taking classes but stuck around Tuscaloosa to pick up a delivery job at Domino’s. For the only time I can remember I had a delivery to my friends, who had been watching Rockets-Knicks. I think OJ coverage had just started when I got there. About 5-10 minutes later it occurred to me I was on the clock and should drive back to the store.

 

[ChrisLong]

We were at our neighborhood pizza place, which had just put up a TV for the first time. The owner, who I knew, had a strict "no volume" policy. I tried to convince the manager to turn up the volume. I told her this was American history in the making and it was important. She refused. I told her that a customer is insisting on the volume being turned up and I would take full responsibility if she got in trouble with the owner. She finally relented.
Also, where I lived was 5 minutes away from the 405 where it intersects with the 10 in West L.A., so Cowlings and Juice could have exited the freeway at any moment and driven right past where we were.

 

[qtlaw]

IIRC, it was a Friday night and my GF at the time was over. We were watching Gm 5 and had ordered Dominos. It was compelling because there was the hint that OJ would do something drastic.

At the time he was more than a minor celebrity, he had been a major star since the 60’s.

 

[BTExpress]

I think OJ coverage had just started when I got there. About 5-10 minutes later it occurred to me I was on the clock and should drive back to the store.

Lucky for you Amazon didn't exist and you weren't working for them.

"Can you account for your movements between 9:25 p.m. and 9:32 p.m.?"

 

[SixToe]

Was working in downtown Phoenix with a small copy editor/writer biz. The owner had a TV in our outer office lobby and she let us know something was going on in L.A. with Simpson.

Took me about 45 minutes to get home (thanks, traffic!) and by the time I got there things were developing. I usually kept a copy of a daily paper with significant events, but didn't grab the next day's Republic, Gazette or Tribune.

 

[dixiehack]

Lucky for you Amazon didn't exist and you weren't working for them.

"Can you account for your movements between 9:25 p.m. and 9:32 p.m.?"

Ha! We were still tracking our orders by pulling a long carbon paper ribbon off the box label and sticking them in our lockbox. At the end of the night to figure up your runs and tips, you unlocked the box and “pulled your pinks.” And there was no way for them to pay you sub-minimum tipped wage while you were on the road.

 

[brn623cl]

I was helping out at a volunteer fire company carnival and was getting the information from people as they walked by. Then I got a break and went into the bar there and more people were in there watching the bar TV than I ever saw in their bar.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

And ESPN, in a rare act of intelligence, is airing the 30 for 30 at 7 p.m. eastern.

 

[maumann2]

Sitting in the office in Rocky Mount that evening, taking Little League calls and working on pages with the little black and white TV on. Surreal because the news editor was panicking about having to pull the front page back because it was "sports" only in the sense that O.J. had played sports before he killed two people.