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J is a psychology student on my course. When I saw him on the eve of the race he was busy shaving off large quantities of his housemates’ hair in order to craft spectacular Mohicans and mullets. One of J’s housemates is a handsome man with delicate features and plentiful dark hair, much like Jim Morrison before the rock'n'roll lifestyle took its toll. After being shorn, J’s mulleted flatmate looked like a mid western redneck noodler – the crazy people who pull catfish from their lairs by encouraging the fish to swallow the their hand. Anyway, when I asked J’s friend why he wanted to look like that, he said it was to get into the spirit of Bay-to-Breakers.
A NoodlerVery few people actually run the race. For the vast majority it is an opportunity to dress up, to drink alcohol in public (usually illegal), and to walk the 7 miles from the Bay Bridge in the east to ocean beach – the breakers – on the far western edge of the city. Streets are closed to traffic and music is pumped out from houses and ghetto blasters and garage bands and huge speakers wheeled along in shopping trolleys.
I arrived at the Ferry Building at 7.45am, a quarter of an hour before the race was due to start. It was a bright, sunny morning and the weather forecast predicted temperatures in the 90s, unusual in San Francisco. On J’s advice I was carrying a backpack full of beer and tequila. The crowd at the Ferry building was so dense that it was impossible to make out where the race started. Adding to the general confusion were the thousands of soft tacos which were whizzing through the air, don’t ask me why. If you got hit by one it was easily recycled – you just picked it up and sent it spinning on its way towards the next victim.
Around 8 o’clock the huge crowd started shuffling forward. Progress was slow but this allowed plenty of time to observe people’s fancy dress. Flying pigs were a big theme this year. I also saw ten or fifteen totally naked older men, another legal transgression to which the authorities turn a blind eye on this day. There was a team of walking vaginas but my favourite were the fifty individuals dressed as fish who walked in the opposite direction to the rest of the parade – salmon swimming upstream. In previous years there have apparently been teams dressed as bears who attack the salmon as they pass.
After half an hour the heat was already intense. I met up with J and his housemates. By this stage everyone was already swigging from cans of beer. We walked alongside a few larger floats for a while. However, even the biggest of these were DIY jobs, usually pushed along using man power. The big corporate sponsorship which is a feature of both the Notting Hill and the Rio carnivals was absent. Also absent was any sense of threat; no one seemed worried about being mugged or stabbed and people put their bags and rucksacks down very casually when they wanted to dance.
As the parade made its way westwards we occasionally stopped off in the apartments of friends who lived along the route. Rejoining the throng on Fell street, I could see nothing but brightly dressed revellers stretching away for a number of miles ahead of me. I had still not seen a single runner. Personally, I found myself reveling in San Francisco’s attitude: a running race with all the excitement and fanfare and cheering of a marathon, but without the actual running.
The sun had risen higher into the sky and the incline up Fell Street proved quite taxing. The air was windless and perspiration was plentiful. Some homeowners stood in front of their houses with garden hoses and sprayed cooling jets of water over anyone that requested it (and over a few that didn’t). The Ghostbusters float overtook me, followed by at least a hundred people dancing to the famous feel good theme tune.
Cooling OffReaching the top of the hill on Fell Street, we sat down on the lush grass of Alamo square, overlooking the city. A stranger placed a bong into my hand and passed me his lighter. There was a cooling breeze coming from the distant ocean, still far out of sight. I was struck by how many young, beautiful people I could see. I know that is the image which the rest of the world has of California, but up until now it has not been borne out by my experience. The cooling breeze ruffled the girls' hair which could not have been shinier in the bright clear sunlight. They have clean hair, these American girls. And throughout the day I repeatedly noticed how many of them smelled of vanilla. It is the same smell as peppermint tictacs which, apparently, are coated with vanilla.
Alamo SquareAfter a while I rejoined the throng. I thought to myself that in many ways the event resembled a music festival with fancy dress. However, personally I have never been a fan of music festivals. I find them slightly aimless. After an hour or two I tire of seeking my own gratification. I think that one of the things that appealed to me so much about Bay-to-Breakers was that I had a sense of purpose: to get to the ocean. The end of land. What a wonderful, simple, manageable goal.
I often find myself talking about the importance of living in the moment, but very rarely do I actually do so. I am usually too busy looking forward to something, or thinking back to something else. Even on a holiday I have been looking forward to, I often find myself, once there, looking forward to how relaxed and well I will feel by the end of the holiday. Bay-to-Breakers was different. I was never not in the moment. And really, isn't that a big part of the secret of happiness? To exist fully in the moment in relation to whatever you are doing.
There was a period of an hour or so when all the various factors came together to create a genuine sense of euphoria. The effects of alcohol and pot must be acknowledged. The effects of the intense heat too: heat like that breaks down the boundaries between people. It makes the limits of our individualities seem more fluid. Interactions occur which would be unimaginable between people on a frosty day, wrapped up in overcoats and hats and scarves. And nor can I deny the positive effect of pretty, scantily clad girls in bikinis and cowboy boots, and those little shorts worn by college athletes.
I found myself tracing a proud lineage back to San Francisco’s Summer Of Love and the hippie movement. Usually I am skeptical of hippies with their conspiracy theories and holier-than-thou attitudes and nebulous thinking. However, something about the universal positivity, the bonhomie, and the absence of any sense of menace at Bay-to-Breakers made me reevaluate my usual attitude. Maybe humans are more capable of creating their own reality than I generally acknowledge, and maybe unregulated human life need not be Hobbesian - i.e. ‘nasty, brutish and short.’
In retrospect, I must clarify that I am not suggesting that the global economy could be run on the principles of free love, or even that a single country could function without regulation and organization on some level. However, I am left thinking that there are a lot of nice people in San Francisco. English teachers the world over would have their red pens poised over the word ‘nice’, but that is really what I mean. What I take away from Bay-to-Breakers is that, under certain conditions, it is possible for people to express their essential niceness. No matter how unusual those conditions, it is nevertheless heartening to experience that.
For the last few miles through the Golden Gate park I attached myself to the ragged end of the parade. In the distance I could see the sparkling ocean. I chatted to various stragglers, including an American Austro-phile clad in Lederhosen which he had purchased on EBay. Around four in the afternoon I reached the wide windy sand of Ocean Beach. I continued walking and dove into the icy breakers. The water’s restorative embrace constituted the perfect coda.
