Bay to Breakers is a frat party. It is San Francisco's straight pride. It is a drinking event that mistook itself for a race; and it is, quite often, a really good time.
The event on Sunday was its typical kaleidoscope of bears, bees, butterflies, and bananas; naked chefs; a blue man group running into another blue man group; pink crabs sidling past even more pink cowboys; pageant queens dressed as the literal lyrics of Kelly Clarkson's "Miss Independent"; and Mayor Daniel Lurie jogging out front next to a 92-year-old named Gerd Rosenblatt.
More than 30,000 registered participants made the "run," and that made this the biggest turnout Bay to Breakers has seen in a decade.
I quite gleefully skipped this year. Ever since about age 35, giving up alcohol, and ever-increasing years of neck pain for no reason, I regard Bay to Breakers in much the same way I think Willow Pill would.
FYI for loyal readers: I come from an OG reporting background, with a journalism master's and 20 years doing the thing. So I will hardly ever bring you something I did not attend, assign someone to cover, or report in some other way. The only glimpse I caught of this year's B2B, however, was during a haircut in Outer Sunset. And from those ~30 minutes watching Gen Z gaggle around our crosswalks, I'll note that I fucking love a costume party. But some of the tattered tutus and banana costumes from Spirit Halloween really need to be retired.
Listen Debra, you didn't even iron the poor thing; just unwrapped it from SHEIN, and off you went to throw up on the Panhandle.
This is San Francisco, the city that brought you the Cockettes. We brought you Beach Blanket Babylon. And we brought you the Cacophony Society, which spawned other such notables like freaking Burning Man, SantaCon, and Brides of March. So yes, I am always optimistic about our costume game!
Bay to Breakers is older than your grandmother. It first ran in 1912 as the Cross City Race, dreamed up to lift San Francisco out of its post-1906 funk and to build hype for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition three years out. A women's division of the race wasn't officially on the books until 1971.
In 1986, with 110,000 participants, it set the Guinness world record for the biggest footrace on the planet. Centipede teams, those bungeed-together pelotons of 13 to 15 runners, joined in 1978 and remain the only part of the race anyone takes seriously. By the early 1960s, just 15 people had bothered to register before a local paper took over the sponsorship, renamed the thing, and quietly turned it into the city's annual costumed binge.
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Alec Scott
The event on Sunday was produced by Motiv Sports, with Silverback CEO Kyle Meyers serving as race director and Motiv's Phyllis Blanchard fronting operations. Weather mostly behaved: sunny, breezy, and cool enough that no one appears to have died of heatstroke in a banana costume. The surf, on the other hand, ran ten feet at Ocean Beach, and the National Weather Service had to formally instruct participants not to swim in the actual breakers at the finish line. BART ran four special early trains to drop runners downtown by 7 a.m. SurveyMonkey signed on as the "Official Curiosity Partner," which is the kind of sponsorship sentence only Bay to Breakers could produce.
Along Fell Street north of the Panhandle, DJs and bands set up on the front steps of Victorians, and the asphalt below turned into something between a dance floor and a moshpit. The tortillas still flew at the start; the Hayes Hill climb still ate everyone's quads. In the men's 12K, 22-year-old Nolan Hosbein took the title in 37:16; Tamara Jewett, 36, won the women's in 40:46; David Elk, 29, won the nonbinary division in 41:47.
The finish festival, relocated this year from the Ocean Beach parking lot to MLK Drive in Golden Gate Park near the Murphy Windmill, drew another 30,000 and wrapped at 1 p.m.
Looking at the photos now, I think I might have actually had fun. The good costumes here are still mostly handmade. Below, as you'll see: someone glued a cable car together out of cardboard, complete with a "Three Standees Only" sign. There is a mime troupe in real grease paint.
OK Debra: your tutu can stay. And maybe you'll see me next year.
Saul Sugarman is editor-in-chief and owner of The Bold Italic.
The Bold Italic is a not-for-profit media organization, and we publish first-person perspectives about San Francisco and the Bay Area. We operate under a fiscal sponsorship of a 501(c)(3).
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A special thanks to PR person David Perry for catching up over coffee today, which led me to have access to these amazing photos taken by Ryan Bethke / RWB.
