100th Zazzle Bay to Breakers: A Perspective from the Back of the Pack

By Elias Asch, Special for LetsRun.com
May 23, 2011

My Sunday morning was fairly typical of someone in San Francisco this past weekend: I woke up at 6:15am on a friend’s futon, went to the friend’s fridge and opened a beer, sat back down on the futon and drank the beer, and then went back to the fridge to grab two more before waking up Jake, my horribly hung-over host. Jake then pulled out a couple of peanut costumes he had from Halloween a couple years ago (we were going to be “Just a couple of nuts”—I would get a lot of mileage out of that horrible joke throughout the day) and we put them on while downing half our beers. He filled his flask and then we dumped the dregs of our drink down the drain—I’m usually a “waste not, want not” kind of guy, but this was going to be a long day—and then we headed out to hop on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to the start line of the 100^th running of Bay to Breakers.

Bay to Breakers is the third-oldest running race in America, behind only the Boston Marathon and Dipsea (another Bay Area race). Part elite road race—the 2009 race saw Sammy Kitwara run a world best-tying 33:31 and Lineth Chepkurui ran a women’s world best in 2010—and part “only-in-San-Francisco” free-spirited seven-mile street festival, it has become somewhat controversial over the last few years, in large part due to public drunkenness, nudity, and urination.

Former title sponsor ING chose not to renew for this year’s race despite the impending milestone anniversary, and some thought that the future of the race was in jeopardy. Area-based custom clothing and accessory company Zazzle picked up the event, forming a seemingly-odd partnership signing a two-year title sponsorship deal.¹

The Serious, The Masses and the Drunks

Over the last several years a sort of tension has existed between race organizers AEG, neighborhoods, and police—all of whom have attempted to ban nudity, alcohol, and floats²—and the many participants who view the race as of secondary importance to the nudity, alcohol, and floats it enables. This tension is personified by the last two—and primarily the final one—of the three types of participants at this year’s Bay to Breakers, who can be broadly grouped (and roughly estimated to exist in certain quantities) as follows:

1. The Serious Runner (1% of the field) — the elites, sub-elites, and competitive age-groupers who registered for the race, started in the first two corrals, took the race seriously, and were uniformly sober (assumedly);

2. The Costumed Masses (90% of the field) — costumed (or entirely naked) and festive folks (mostly registered, but some bandits) who were there to participate in the spectacle and go out for a morning jog or brisk walk and had maybe two or three beers beforehand or made a mimosa stop along the way;

3. The Drunks (10% of the field) — people who were carrying large amounts of alcohol, often as a part of an elaborate costume, mostly did not register, and were there not to run but rather to get wasted while walking through San Francisco for a couple hours. Not all of them are causing trouble, but none of them are necessarily that interested in “following the rules” either.

I—a bit more sober than Jake, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt under my costume, and with an actual paid-for race bib—fell clearly into Group 2, “The Costumed Masses”. Jake—who carried his flask, took a vomit-break, was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt under his costume, and was banditing—fell clearly into Group 3 (“The Drunks”). It would be kind of hard to write a narrative about what we saw on race day, so what follows is a list of highlights and lowlights—the good, the bad, and a whole lot of the ugly—from our day at the back of the pack at the Zazzle Bay to Breakers:

--When we got on BART at 16^th and Mission about a third of the people were in costume. Those not in costumes seemed unperturbed. The ratio of costumed BART-riders to non-costumed BART riders only increased throughout our four-stop ride.

--Where’s Waldos and Bee Girls (the one from that Blind Melon song “No Rain”) were probably the two most common costumes of the day. Some sort of San Francisco Giants uniform or “Fear the beard!” costume came in a distant third.

--Throwing tortillas is a thing at the start of Bay to Breakers, for some reason (probably because they fly like Frisbees but are a whole lot kinder when they hit unsuspecting bystanders in the head). Sections of Mission Street on the way into the starting corrals were literally paved with tortillas.

--Favorite Costume of the Day—Honorable Mention: A couple of people in full-body PBR cans.

--There was, in theory, a crackdown on bandits this year. However, Jake had no problem getting into the staring area or across the finish line without a bib. In the back of the pack the ratio of bandits to bib-wearing participants was probably one-to-one.

Salmon, Centipedes and Aggies

--A group of about three-dozen runners dressed as salmon ran the whole course backward. We ran into them about a kilometer from the finish. One of them yelled “Spawn!” and the whole group fell on the ground and started gyrating.

--Three cheers for the LinkedIn centipede. This team—featuring Mark Matusak, Stephen Shay, and the Ghebrays, among others—not only set the course and world records (37:01), but also ran the whole course backward as a cooldown to take in the spectacle. We saw them pretty near the start, around when we saw the spawning salmon.

--Another three cheers for the Asics Aggies, who finished second in the Centipede race, also ran sub-38, and did it solely with members of the club.

--There are a lot of naked people at Bay to Breakers. We saw 23: 22 men, and 1 women.

--There are not a lot of attractive naked people at Bay to Breakers. We counted zero.

--Favorite Costume of the Day—Dishonorable Mention: A guy who was wearing a cape and a long black wig and was otherwise totally naked except for the googly eyes on his junk.

--The Hayes Street Hill really is a beast (click the box below the map to view the elevation profile), and seriously backed up at the back of the pack. Maybe that’s because of people like me and Jake who decided to buy a beer at a convenience store at the bottom of the hill and then walk up it?

-- Favorite Costume of the Day—Honorable Mention #2: A gold golf cart which, while seemingly not an alcohol-bearing float, did have the Heineken logo on the front.

--The zero-tolerance policy on floats seemed to be mostly enforced. Although we did see some wheeled vehicles, none seemed to be constructed around kegs.

--The zero-tolerance policy on alcohol was a joke. While there were a reported 17 arrests for public intoxication (and 25 arrests total), most of the people at the back of the pack were drinking something, often in plain site of on-course security and/or police.

-- Favorite Costume of the Day—Honorable Mention #3: Captain Crunch carrying an eight-foot beer bong.

-- Captain may have been makin’ it happen in the middle of the street (“it” being beer-bonging), but as I walked by a policeman with my PBR tall boy in a brown paper bag, he stuck out his hand and said, “Here.” I gave it to him, he dumped it out, and I walked on. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining as this seems like a perfectly reasonable action for a cop to take—it’s just that the rules almost have to be inconsistently enforced when there are tens of thousands of people with open containers.)

--On the other hand, some nice people we met in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park were no more buzzed then we were and were carrying a tequila gun. Two mounted police were monitoring that section of the course, and one of them hollered something like, “Hey, you—with the booze!” (which was basically like yelling, “Hey, you—with the face!”), then rode onto the course, cut off our new friends cattle roundup style, and pulled them off the course and began lecturing them and writing a ticket (sorry we didn’t stick around, guys!).

--Favorite Costume of the Day—Honorable Mention #4: A guy wearing a full bandolier made of 30 or so beer cans taped together (about 6 were empty when I saw him around Mile 3. I wonder what the mounted police thought of him!

--Despite the complaints from some neighborhoods, the majority of people who live along the race course seem to really enjoy it. There were tons of porch, fire escape, and rooftop parties along all the course’s residential sections.

--3^rd-Favorite Costume of the Day: The aforementioned spawning salmon.

--Somewhere around Mile 4 a house party was blasting “Thriller.” About fifty event participants had stopped and were doing a poorly-choreographed but spirited group performance of the zombie dance (scroll to about 9 minutes in if you live under a rock and don’t know what I’m talking about).

--While almost all of the back-of-the-packers were drinking something, the proportion of excessively drunk people was smaller than you’ll see at the bars on a weekend night at, oh, 11pm or so. (It’s hard even to walk seven miles when you’re too drunk to stand!)

--If you do the back-of-the-pack thing prepared to be messed with. About five miles in some guy running the wrong way up the course sprayed me with silly string. Some other folks were carrying water balloons and throwing them at random folks.

--2^nd-Favorite Costume of the Day: a human wash that you could walk through and get scrubbed down in.

--Kitwara and Chepkurui’s record runs here are really impressive. Even after the Hayes Street Hill there is still two-plus miles of gradual climbing before the two-mile downhill to the finish. (It’s a point-to-point course—was there a tailwind those years?)

--The finishing stretch would be a fun one to kick down—there’s a ninety-degree turn about two-hundred yards from the finish, and from there you’re running parallel to the beach and the Pacific Ocean which is maybe fifty yards to your right.

--Favorite Costume of the Day: The mock sobriety tent that a group of (drunk) runners carried the length of the course.

Some Advice

Ultimately, if I were to do Bay to Breakers again I would want to actually race it. It may not be a PR course, but I (like many people) have never seriously raced a 12k, and major road races are a fun experience from nearer to the front of the pack, too. Also, the sub-elite corral only requires a sub-18 5k for Open Men (or an equivalent performance for other groups), so most LetsRunners would be able to race without logistical hassle. (If you’re not able to hit the sub-elite standard, I recommend registering early, because the corrals are self-seeded, and earlier registrants get the first shot at the A and B corrals which go off at the same time as the elites.)

And after you race, if you want the best of both worlds—the race and the spectacle—you can do like the LinkedIn centipede and run the course backward for your cooldown (this will save you the trouble of taking a shuttle or overcrowded public transit from the finish line festival, too).

As for the back-of-the-pack experience, it was fun as a one-time thing, but I’m not sure it’s worth the registration fee ($44 for early registrants but $75 for late-comers like me). If I ever want to back-of-the-pack it again—and I don’t think I will any time soon—I probably won’t register (and will carry my own water along with my booze if it’s a hot day). The road closures can easily accommodate the tens of thousands of bandits, and while I’m generally against banditing, it’s part of what makes Bay to Breakers what it is so in this case I would make an exception.

For race-owners AEG (the Anschutz Entertainment Group), you have to wonder whether this event is a winning proposition—they claimed to be losing money even while ING was the title sponsor, and Zazzle’s title agreement only lasts one more year (although they could renew). And even though the general consensus was that this year’s event was tamer than in years past, the San Francisco race’s ethos still isn’t exactly in line with the personal beliefs of Philip Anschutz (the A in AEG), and one has to think that could lead to further conflicts as organizers continue trying to make the race more family-friendly. Someone like Competitor Group might be a better fit as an owner—although the free-spirited nature of the race seems to lend itself best to the ‘80s road racing scene, when most major events were put on by running clubs and there was never a shortage of beer at the finish.

Ultimately, running the 100^th Bay to Breakers felt a little bit like going to a party in high school at a friend’s house where the parents told the kids “don’t drink” but knew some would and still hosted the party anyway: it was still a party, and it was still fun, and if you want to drink you could still find a way without too much effort, but there was something about the experience that put a slight damper on it. Maybe it was the fact hanging over your head that, at either the party or the race, if something went slightly wrong—an idiot friend got wasted, the cop who caught you was having a bad day—you could end up spending the night in the drunk tank; or maybe it’s that even if you feel you’re not doing anything wrong you know someone else who isn’t entirely unreasonable disagrees (and disapproves) and just that knowledge that you’re disappointing them is a bit of a downer. Those are just a couple of ideas—who really knows? But here’s the thing—even if the situation isn’t perfect, and even if there’s that tiny chance that something goes wrong and you end up spending 24 hours in the detox . . . don’t you still want to go to the party?

Author Elias Asch “ran” his first Bay to Breakers in just under 3 hours this year. He works in the road race management industry and can be reached at eliasbasch@gmail.com. He is shamelessly unapologetic for the length of this article.

*More Photos here

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