 This past Sunday, as they do every third Sunday in May here, my new city of San Francisco put on a citywide, errr, "run."
At least, that's how Bay to Breakers started. An approximately 7-mile run from one end of SF to the other, where the city meets the Pacific Ocean. It was a great event. Then somebody thought to bring a flask. This seemed like an even better event. And since then it has... evolved.
Just like any city-sponsored event, the roads were blockaded from traffic. Local law enforcement agents were stationed regularly along the route. Area newspapers and members of the media brought out the cameras and microphones.
Unlike most other events of this nature, flimsy rules about indecent
exposure and public intoxication flew decisively out the window.
Welcome to San Fran, folks. Take off your pants.
Okay, so I wasn't actually one of the nudists, in this drunken
run-turned-stumble through the city streets. But I made lots of naked
friends. And they were exceedingly generous. Amazing, how these people
demand to be unencumbered by things like, oh, underwear - but are
perfectly happy to haul around a wagon cart full of kegs. Or, like another group that unwittingly nearly ran me over, a speedboat full of kegs.
That's visionary, people. That's dedicating yourself to a cause.
And of course, there were the chaste and pure of us who simply wore
costumes and facepaint and blew our whistles enthusiastically at every
opportunity, whilst scampering between giraffe floats and yet another
guy (girl?) in a gorilla suit.
It's not difficult to make friends at Bay to Breakers. Even if your
exuberant whistle-blowing would render most people insane. There's a
sort of haze of acceptance that rolls in over this crowd, not unlike
the evening fog. Perhaps they're pumping the city full of valium with
that fog, some sort of Gotham City Joker-gas.
I liked this alternate state of reality, that much I knew. When my
roommates and I left our house, bright and early at 7:30 a.m., I
self-consciously hid my champagne bottle from the local cops. But when
we entered the sea of shrieking, dancing, tortilla-throwing lunatics (a
traditional tortilla-toss kicks things off downtown, paving the street
with delicious varieties of corn and flour. Of course.), I simply
suspended disbelief, uncorked the bubbly, and joined in.
Don't get me wrong. My loyalty remains with the East coast, and with home-away-from-home Austin, Texas.
However. Anytime a hairy-chested man in a ballerina costume and an
electric blue afro Pada-Bu-Rae's past me with an open bottle of
Jagermeister - in plain sight of the local police - it softens me.
I like to think that San Francisco and the 60,000 people
(!!!) who participated in Bay to Breakers planned it as a humble
welcome-to-the-city gesture for yours truly. And I gotta say, it felt a
little like home.
If this is hard to believe, read more here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/18/BAFE10OMG3.DTL
Cheers. Now, put some clothes on.
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Quirkee Voices 
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