Arts and Culture

Don’t Trip on the Spawning Salmon

by Rixie

If the ING Bay to Breakers race were a person, it would be a 97-year-old grande dame with spiked, multi-colored hair, wearing a dragon suit and dragging a beer keg in a little red wagon. This annual 12-kilometer footrace in San Francisco, California, is renowned for its crazy costumes and universal “party on” atmosphere.

Started in 1912 as the San Francisco Cross City Race, the Bay to Breakers was originally intended to shore up the spirits of a city that only a few years before had nearly been destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire. The first race had a modest roster of 150 runners, but since then, it has grown into one of the largest footraces in the world, drawing an estimated 65,000 runners from all over the world and qualifying for the unofficial title of Largest Moving Celebration with a Sports Theme.

Elite or seeded runners, the only ones eligible for prizes, start first. The Back of the Pack – the ones that most of the 100,000 spectators come to see – follow behind and bring the party with them. Literally. Before new rules prohibiting kegs and glass bottles went into effect in 2009, groups of runners routinely wheeled their alcohol supply along with them in everything from baby carriages to shopping carts. Unfazed by the new restrictions, one enterprising young man in this year’s race ran as a hospital patient, his plastic IV bag containing a suspiciously frothy liquid.
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