The 107th running of the iconic Bay to Breakers is tomorrow. If you don’t like San Francisco and its frequently overweening need to be different and fun and zany, you probably don’t like Bay to Breakers, no matter what.
I fall into this camp at times. How many days per year do people need to dress (or cross-dress) in public as a jellyfish or Super Mario or S&M Melania Trump? Don’t Halloween, SantaCon, the Folsom Street Festival, your birthday, Pride weekend, and Burning Man with all its satellite “decompressions” provide enough venues to prove our otherness to the world? (I’m sure I’m missing a few occasions there.)
At the Bay to Breakers, once the lithe Kenyans and other elite runners have sped past, getting weird has frequently devolved into getting trashed, frat-house style — something that Seattle, epicenter of naked (and far more counterculture) bike-riding festivals, seems to have avoided.
The 12-kilometer race hit rock bottom in 2009, when the piss, vomit, garbage, and overall public drunkenness provoked a raft of new rules and an armada of port-a-potties along the route.
But since then, Bay to Breakers has reined it in. Part of it is enforced, since the race is now under vigilant patrol and surveillance. The SFPD says it spot-checks house parties along the Panhandle; goes undercover to nab drunkards and the liquor stores that sell to them; and patrols the route on bikes and golf carts.
It’s too bad that hordes of grown-up children can’t do the right thing without a police presence. Unfortunately it seems we’re about to learn the same lesson in Dolores Park.
The race is also firmly under corporate sponsorship, which would have pissed me off when I was younger but now is mostly amusing, seeing how Alaska Airlines (this year’s top sponsor) is fine associating its brand with body-painted full frontals and sweaty ass cracks. This means taxpayers don’t have to pay for the extra security and bathrooms and trash pickup, which makes me happy.
If indeed Bay to Breakers and its participants have gotten it together, and residents along the route have little else but noise to complain about, then I say this: We need Bay to Breakers more than ever. Not because we need more opportunities to wear New Balance butt-naked, or start drinking at 8 a.m., or pretend to be a giant wedge of cheese. We don’t want adolescent barf-fests.
But we do need public gatherings where people cheer each other on and make each other laugh.
Hell, we gotta get out and exercise, too. Part of the modern equation too is the ever-present dread of attack upon a dense crowd, as we’ve seen in recent years in Boston, London, Nice, Paris … For that alone, I applaud people taking to the streets en masse to brandish body parts and dorky costumes.
What’s more, we need the revenue. The artisan messenger-bag industry won’t be turning our local economic crank anytime soon. San Francisco’s dozens of outdoor events and festivals are a huge boon, especially for restaurants and hotels. The city’s Office of Economic Analysis reported in 2015 that 3.3 million attendees spent nearly $300 million at 79 events in 2014, and the ripple impact could be nearly four times higher. Bay to Breakers is a drop in that bucket, but unless the social costs and aggravation start to weigh more heavily again, it’s a welcome drop.
Curmudgeons like me will continue to watch for backsliding, but for now Bay to Breakers should party on. If you’re doing it, go out and run. Walk. Git nekkid. Even drink. Just don’t leave your piss and vomit and garbage behind.
Alex Lash is the founder and editor in chief of The Frisc.
All photos via Creative Commons.
