sideshow

noun

1. A minor attraction at a larger event such as a circus, fair or music festival.

   “1999 November 8, Frank Hayes, The Back Page: The main event, Computerworld, page 86, And IT people dismiss IT′s impact because, hey, we like being a sideshow to the real action.”

   “1999, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Year Book, Australia, Number 81, page 349, Other recreation services, including amusement parks or arcades, sideshows, circuses and agricultural shows, accounted for another 666 businesses. These businesses employed 10,318 persons and a further 3,518 volunteers.”

   “In Australia he busked (singing on street corners), steeplejacked, was a drover and sheep shearer, did motor bike stunts in sideshows and even painted the Sydney Harbor^([sic]) Bridge.”

   “They taught the twins to play saxophone and transferred them from the sideshow to vaudeville.”

   “Entertainment features and sideshows enhanced attendance.”

2. (figuratively)An incidental spectacle that diverts attention from a larger concern.

   “Far from learning from the failures of ‘economic rationalism,’ the Liberals want us to swallow more of the snake oil medicine while diverting our attention to the consumption tax sideshow.”

   “Even the reality shows focused on addiction, like “Intervention,” “Rehab With Dr. Drew” (thankfully canceled) or that show where people have bizarre addictions like eating chalk or scouring powder, have done almost nothing to educate Americans. All they’ve really achieved is keeping addiction an oddity, a sideshow.”

   “An emergency brake to limit in-work benefits for EU migrants is a “sideshow” that will fail to reduce the number of arrivals to the UK, Alan Johnson has said.”

3. (US, slang)An incident in which drivers block traffic to perform stunts like donuts and burnouts for an extended period of time.

   “The spontaneous street party is the center of Oakland's recently developing Hyphy culture, but has a long history in Oakland car culture and hip hop. A sideshow is essentially a spontaneous street party in which one might “ghostride the whip” (get out while driving), “gas brake dip,” or even “scrape” (spin donuts in the middle of the street).”

   “On July 3, 2016, at 10:35pm, Sergeant Cleveland and Officer Henderson (“the Officers”) were on patrol near Fullerton, California looking for illegal street racing and “sideshows,” events where streets are blocked off for drivers to perform unlawful maneuvers like burnouts and donuts. […] During their patrol, the Officers found an approximately twenty-car sideshow taking place in the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet parking lot.”

   “Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed a law in October threatening a six-month suspension of a driver’s license for participating in a sideshow, even as a spectator. […] Since the emergence of sideshows in Oakland in the late 1980s, successive mayors have railed against them.”

   “But a bodega owner in the area said that crime seemed to be rising, and that at night, the neighborhood became a backdrop for drug use and occasional sideshows.”