All you need to know about the Bay Area's newest fad

By Kate Macmillan

When the University of California's football team defeated Washington in a stunning 31-24 overtime thriller last fall, All-American running back Marshawn Lynch felt the need to celebrate.

How does Marshawn Lynch celebrates a victory? By ghost riding the team's injury cart (or at least attempting to) through Memorial Stadium. Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

Normally shy and stoic, Lynch didn't just clap his hands or whoop with joy. Instead, he hopped into a vacant injury cart and maniacally drove around the turf as players, coaches and refs jumped out of his zigzagging path. Meanwhile, the sold out crowd roared with delight. Lynch's stunt made for national news, and became a staple in year-end college football montages.

Following the exhibition, Lynch clarified his intentions:

"That's how we do it here in Oaktown," he told SI's Michael Silver after the game.

"I was gonna ghost ride it for a minute at the end, but it ain't got no neutral, so it would've just kept rollin'. So I just did that move."

"Ghost riding the whip," which originated in Lynch's native Oakland and is sweeping the west coast, normally involves the driver of a car walking or dancing alongside - or even on top of - the rolling vehicle. Whether Marshawn Lynch is responsible for introducing ghost riding into the American consciousness is debatable, but the trend has undeniably blossomed since that warm October day.

Ghost Riding is a manifestation of hyphy culture, a Bay Area movement that sprang from the uptempo rap music of artists like Mac Dre, E-40, and Keak da Sneak. "Getting hyphy" or "going dumb" is a general state of getting drunk, crazy, or even just goofy.

Hyphy culture has its own vocabulary, its own style of dress (stunna shades are a must; Marshawn was never without them at Cal media events), and its own pastimes, most notably ghost riding. Lately, it's been cropping up in the most unusual of places.

From the videogame for Pimp My Ride to the Playboy Mansion to the posh Oakland Hills and everywhere in between, ghost riding displays are rife in that great black hole of college time-wasting, YouTube. Ghost riding has all the key ingredients for a great YouTube clip: it's short, it's funny, it's dangerous and, since it sometimes involves car crashes, you just can't take your eyes off it.

"I remember searching for ghost riding clips on youtube [last year] just to see what it was all about, and seeing the one of that dude crashing his pickup ... hilarious," recalls Oakland native Ben Rosenberg, a youtube megastar in his own rite. Last November Rosenberg and high school friend Nate Houghteling were just hanging out at home after graduating from the University of Colorado and Harvard, respectively, when fate intervened.

"When we heard about the Oakland A's impending move to the wasteland of Fremont, California, we were both profoundly disturbed by the news and decided that something had to be done," Houghteling explains solemnly. "I thought that ghost riding would be a good way to channel our angst, since it's a very typically Oakland thing to do and would demonstrate for the whole country that our town is just too sweet to be without a baseball team."

The result: the legendary YouTube clip "Ghostride the Volvo." Says Rosenberg: "It was something to put on youtube and show our friends, but at the same time poke fun at the fact that we are two upper-middle-class white kids from the suburbs who are ghost riding a freaking Volvo."