Bay to Break-me

The Photos

Bay to Breakers is ridiculous. You might call it a run. You’d be wrong. It’s got running involved. A bunch of eager beavers break out from the East side of town at about 8 in the morning and run to the beach. Some of them are wearing super hero spandex or too-toos. A few are buck nekid. That’s not really Bay to Breakers though. That’s the teaser. The warmup. The apertif, as the French might say (it’s a sweet alcohol drink before evening drink after dinner before desert, very tasty). The real business of the B2B is the slop-fest that happens after the runners are out of the way.

My nippies are chafed and burnt. I’ve got red all over me. It’s the sun. It stings you when you least expect it. Like when you’re stumbling down Lincoln street on your way back from Bay to Breakers with no cabs and no buses in sight. I made it to the beach with Liz and friends finally well into the afternoon after making my start at 8:15 in the morning about six miles from the Ocean on Hayes and Laguna. The original idea was to put on an orange tube dress and some pipe cleaners and go as a carrot in Team Thumper. Lack of organization and a weak spark of inspiration turned that idea into Rick Dickerson, Mr. Emergency: he’s ready for anything. Basically I threw on an orange safety-worker vest, tied an emergency blanket around my waste, put some glitter in my eyebrows, and popped on a Giants hat. It was a bit of a mess, but did the trick.

We met up at a sweet little outdoor bar called Place Pigalle in Hayes Valley. The place is usually pretty swanky I think amidst fancy clothing shops and chocolate stores and such. Not today. There’s nothing swanky about this day. When I arrived decked in glitter and emergency preparedness at 8:15 Mike was wearing a not-so-fancy bathrobe and a plain white t-shirt that said “The Dude Abides”. Jeff had a leather jacket and a dead black ferret as an accessory. Casey, who arrived at 9 from the east bay was wearing a headband and trucker sunglasses. The nihilists were in trouble. Big trouble.

You can’t really describe the scene. Pictures I’m sure can’t really cut it. Sure sure. You can capture a tortilla flying through a crowd of Elvises in a photograph. But then you’re missing the Rocky theme song aspect. If you record the Rocky theme song on video (which I did) alongside a crowd of cheering idiots wearing some kind of red superhero suit and a few hundred sloppy enthusiasts pounding the streets and staring at each other making loud comments and occasionally peeing behind cars, you’re still missing the smell of white Russian on Lebowski’s breath as he slumps his arm around you, plunks a full plastic cup in your hand and blurts, “the Dude abides.” It was a special day. Let’s recap some of the highlights:

9:02 AM, roughly: Careening through the crowd with a group of pretty ladies, I see Rolf wearing baby blue and happy. This would be the first of many many times that I would see someone I know who’s actually running this thing (and by running I mean bouncing at a walkers pace holding onto people like he’s doing the macarena and screaming), get all giddy thinking I can pace them and have a jolly conversation, and end up turning back to take it easy.

9:33 AM, I think: After a good hour and a half hooting at big hair, people dressed as death, and lots and lots of really funky-lookin naked people (including one guy painted to look like he’s the Amazon rainforest), we head up the hill a smidgeon to stand outside one of their friend’s place and hoot some more from their stoop while capping off the white Russians.

9:42 AM we’ll say: My cell phone freaks out. Shannon is on the other line. She’s transcended Alamo Square with a small crew and headed for Fell and Ashbury. A little jealous of her slicker pace, a little unconfident in Lebowski’s ability or interest in winning this Bay to Breakers business, I decide to scamper back home for a fresh pee (this time not behind anybody’s car), ditch my emergency blanket, my aligator pants, my Giants hat, and my sparkly shirt, and make a break for Ashbury Street in my new running shoes, my business socks, my short shorts, my shiny green Irish boxers, my orange emergency vest, my gold chains, my diamond gold chains, my blue santa claus neck tie, and my sparkle-motion hairspray. The running bug has really hit me now. Suddenly the wind is at my back and I’m sprinting down side streets shouting at confused by-standers a block parallel to the B2B mob, “I’m gonna win this thing!”

10:24 AM or something: I catch Shannon and her friends from the East Coast in the Panhandle just in time for some arm-flailing, knee-bending, chest-riveting Justin Timberlake street dancing. Nothing dashes your chances of winning an 8 mile triple marathon like Shannon Morris, gigantic mega-speakers blasting “Sexy Back” (that’s probably not the JT song that was playing, but that’s what I was dancing to), and a line of paper cups in front of some friendly apartment with some free red drink inside of them.

11:04 AM in my head: I’ve lost Shannon, Erika and their crew and gone chasing after Ben and Nicki wearing lifeguard outfits caught in a small plastic kiddy pool. They are the only ones in the crowd actually running at this point. I catch Ben for a brief “Hey, what’s up?” but give up when I realize I’m not in the best condition or mood to be sprinting alongside a mobile pool party just before mile 3 of this 8 mile triple marathon. So, instead, I drop back and make a bit of a pit stop. Having been caught in the jet stream of thousands of costumed nut jobs for a couple hours it was nice to grab a bit of a breather on Haight Street (wew. Never thought I’d say that sentence for serious.). I slipped up to Haight and Cole for a stick of beef jerky, 40 ounces of champaign, and a six of liquid caffeine bull drink. The corner store gave me a large paper bag and some change, which I stashed in the zipper pocket of my short shorts. A few hours earlier, anticipating the events of the day, I’d wisely ditched the wallet back at home for a $20 bill and my license. Now, with my digital camera and my cell phone in my other pockets, about $6.24 and my ID in my zipper pocket, and something like 100 ounces of trouble inside of a paper bag in the two hands held out in front of me, it was time to saunter back to the river of joy and merriment.

11:27 AM sounds good: The updates for this race are absurd. The intention for 99.9% of the people is nowhere near winning the thing. In fact, if it weren’t for the posse of people that continue to trend in that direction, I’m not sure most people would care about moving forward. Still, I’ve got a mission. Speaking of missions, somewhere along the way as I’m heading into Golden Gate Park, where you normally see parents and their kids wearing elbow pads and helmets innocently laughing and playing in the streets but today see these activities and many less innocent ones mostly being done by 23 year old hecklers, 59 year old nudists, 33 year old Double Dare contestants, and thousands of other lunatics, I run into a missionary. He’s walking the wrong direction in this jet stream, just like the 100 or so people dressed like salmon that I saw at 9 AM outside of Place Pigalle. This missionary happens to be my curly haired friend from Global Exchange (who I used to work in the same office as and now I see everywhere but cannot for the life of me think of his name) and he’s carrying a bible, yelling, “Join the church! Give it all up. Be one of the Latter Day Sinners.” This was a very special moment for me. As I’m running to catch up to my housemate Liz, perhaps with 100 oz of liquid naughty (perhaps not. The timing of this memory is fuzzy.), I run into tall curly friend man spouting about my former religion and walking the wrong direction. I manage to tell him that I grew up Mormon for ten years as I float past him into the sea of debauchery. Now as I’m writing this I’m hoping he didn’t think I was offended at his mock bible or something. If so, he should realize that the only mormon vestige for me is a fully inconsistent, borderline-preachy aversion to coffee.

Trying to recap yesterday is like trying to summarize a year spent attempting to become a professional bull rider in Guadalajara. I think that made sense. Anyway, back to the beastly Sunday afternoon.

12:41 PM, vaguely: I catch Liz. The timing in this recap isn’t close to accurate. It didn’t take me an hour and a half to get from the corner store on Haight Street to the moment I dropped the paper bag into Liz’s friend Jonah’s outstretched arms. However, it was the afternoon when this happened, I think. So, right. We’re in the park and Liz is holding the paper bag. Jonah is wearing all pink. Apparently his tight pants and sunglasses have successfully landed him several slaps on the ass throughout the day. Liz has a giant feather boa around her neck and a real big grin. Soon we’re all clunking our feet alongside a dangerously speedy yellow cardboard full-sized racecar. Liz’s friend and his buddies thought it would be a good idea to put some wheels underneath eight feet of cardboard and wood and push the thing for 8 miles. It seems to be working until the pit crew pushing the car screeches their wheels right into a curb. No good. Someone mentions that three tires might have just popped. A perfect opportunity to rest my sun-beaten achy haunches on the grass with some champagne. While two minutes earlier I was still spouting delusional visions of “I’m gonna win this thing!”, now I’m extra happy with my arms over my face and my head resting on the green stuff with Liz and Jonah chatting it up somewhere with the pit crew. For some reason, Liz felt the need to teach me early on in this race, once I caught up to her, to “keep your eyes on me at all times”. This might have had something to do with the fact that my eyes and everything else about me had been bouncing from painted nudists to a glistening pond in the park to tall people with fake afros to the sidewalk to the pretty clouds up high in the sky since about 10 AM. While earlier I’d rocked between the Lebowski troop to the Webster street timberlake dancers to the mobile pool party to hoards of random strangers, now I was set with the team that would take me to the finish line, with victory four miles straight ahead.

1:11 PM, approximately: We’re moving again. The car is truckin’ along behind us, the champagne is in a green can somewhere, we’ve lost a couple Sparks to those wicked shooting spurts of foam that happen when you drop well-shaken carbonated beverages in a can, and we’re flopping down JFK boulevard on a decline. Earlier as we’d walked under an overpass I was able to talk another Elvis down from jumping fairly easily just by yelling that he shouldn’t jump. Pretty high and happy from the experience (leaving open the possibility that there were other factors involved in that state of being), I decided to ask Liz and the gang if they felt like we could win this thing. No doubt. None.

2:10 PM, about: I’m flying down the shallow hill of a road with the beach in sight. In actuality, we are barely walking at this point, but the circumstances make it feel an awful lot like sprinting. We make our way through some reeds, across a highway into the sand. Earlier I’d felt like swimming, but have since forgotten about the ocean that’s splashing a few feet behind me as I look back up toward the highway. At this point, most of the people I’d seen earlier in the day have turned back without finishing. Some are walking in the wrong direction. The only remaining evidence of the Lebowski bunch points to the idea that they still haven’t made it to mile 2 yet, six hours into the race. In fact, if you discount about 30,000 people whom I’ve never met who might have finished the race in under 6:10 but then again, might not have, really the only chance that I was standing their on the beach with Liz, Jonah, and some guy I forget his name (it might be Jon) but have met before, victorious, is the possibility that Ben, Nicki, and the pool party sprinters managed to finish the race before me. Feeling like the prospect of losing out to people stuck to each other in a heap of plastic is too difficult to bear, I decide to anoint myself the winner of the thing. It smelled nice. So nice.

2:93 PM on the dot: You’d think getting to the end of a foolishly sloppy race packed with people dressed as everything from Star Wars storm troopers to giant bananas getting in a fight with a guy in a gorilla suit would be mostly the end of the story. You’d be wrong. Apparently it’s important to plan ahead when you’re running an eight mile race to the beach that involves sauce and a lot of sunny sun hotness on the skin. Well, Liz and her peeps did just that. After we peeled ourselves off the beach, having forgotten the idea of swimming, I followed them into the woods where we found some bicycles that they’d keenly stashed earlier in the day for a moment just like this one. Just like the responsible friend she is, Liz tucks a $20 bill on loan in my hand and tells me to get a cab before riding off into the sunset victorious. Awesome. I’m on 46th Avenue six miles from my house, still happy and wearing my blue necktie. No problem.

4:02 shmore-oh-two: I’ve made it to Big Rec. Not exactly sure how. Lincoln Avenue is not exactly peppered with taxicabs and buses on a Sunday afternoon. I may have noticed a few swaying 20-somethings stumbling into a cab or two along my 40 block journey. No worries. Those taxi drivers’ lack of pro-activity to seek out a classy guy wearing shiny boxer shorts and an emergency vest looking like he’d just returned from six months at Burning Man is water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned. So, there I was, slowly making my way along Lincoln at around 9th street and bam! Frisbee, on the left. What the hell? There I was, lightly toasted and serene from my success in one of the most challenging races of our generation, walking up the Sunset District and popping out of my cell phone are the numbers, “4:02″. I’m just in time for the Sunday pickup game of ultimate frisbee that happens here each week like clockwork. Serendipity. Although I felt like my body had been through a full load in the laundry machine, spin cycle included, nothing could make me miss pickup at this moment. Feeling a little out of step with the rest of the players I decide to leave my blue necktie, my gold chains, and my diamond gold chains in a pile on the grass before I pick up my feet and sprint out to join my team.

5:12 PM: Seventy minutes of running, stopping, jumping and flailing at a white plastic circle was plenty in my condition. I get a call from Erika (it’s possible that I called her, but that memory is also lost in the fuzz) and decide to continue my journey back to the Lower Haight where I left off. Somewhere toward the end of the Panhandle I get the notion that since I’m still wearing my running shoes, I might as well attempt another little joggy-poo. That was not happening. At this point my knees were metallic and my head was 80% helium. The only thing getting me back to my neighborhood at this point was the trusty mental conveyer belt that switches on after an undefined amount of sauce and runs from wherever I am in the city to my front door. It’s gotten me home at four in the morning from the outer mission before. This walk was cake. Six miles of cake.

My nippies are chafed and burnt. I’m red all over. The sun took me to town and bought me muffins yesterday. Now I’m lying in bed with a stomach full of jalapeno and pepperoni pizza that Erika and I got for a post-madness dinner. I slept about five hours tonight starting at 7 PM. That was four hours ago. I think I’m ready to go back for some of that goodness again. As for the details of that eight mile triple marathon I just told you about, let’s keep it between us, okay. Despite the fact that I won the thing hands down, I’m not positive that the how paints the cleanest picture of myself, my team, the other teams, or the city of San Francisco. I just don’t know if the kids are ready to learn about what it takes to be a champion.