This article is part of SF Throwbacks, a feature series that tells historic stories of San Francisco to teach us all more about our city’s past. It’s also an excerpt from Alec Scott’s book, Oldest San Francisco.
The latest Bay to Breakers was May 19, 2024, and we reported on it here.
For many years, Bay to Breakers was a small event with a no-nonsense name, the Cross-City Race. First run on New Year’s Day, 1912, the race was won by Bobby Vlught, a student at the East Bay college St. Mary’s. He managed to get from the edge of the San Francisco Bay to the breakers at Ocean Beach in just over 44 minutes.
The times have come down since then — Kenyan runner Sammy Kitwara completed it in 2009 in the record time of 33 minutes, 31 seconds — and the character of the event has shifted.
Officially open to men only until 1971, there was some excitement when a top competitor’s girlfriend, Barbara Burke, ran the race in 1941, outwitting the registrar by entering as Bobby. But mainly, for its first half century, the race was a quiet, little event. In 1963, a mere 25 runners competed. In the next two decades, it benefited from a new name, the San Francisco Examiner’s publicity, and the growing mass obsession with jogging. A whopping 110,000 ran the 1986 race, setting a Guinness Book-certified world record.
But it was more than just the event’s size and name that changed. As one recent writer commented: “The race took on … kookier qualities, a reputation for being more of a frat party walk-a-thon and excuse for very early day drinking.”
Costumes have long been a key part of the kookiness. The first recorded runner to sport one was a 1940 competitor who dressed as Captain Kidd — and finished last. Many have followed where this buccaneer led, transforming it into an athletic-themed Mardi Gras. When I ran it recently, I had some conspicuously fit men dressed as mermaids near me at the start. One mermaid worried aloud about getting into an exclusive post-run party, and his friend scoffed, “Dude, we’re mermaids, we’re getting in.”
My running companion and I lost the quick-stepping mermaids on the Hayes Street Hill, but there were still some good costumes nearby. At the hilltop, I saw an octet of roller-skaters in sequin-spangled purple bodysuits, dressed to look like the pop singer, Prince, who had just died.
I also saw three runners impersonating David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust period, lightning bolts across their faces, red hair bolt upright. One group, though, does not vary its costume from year to year. They dress as salmon and run against the race’s flow, swimming upstream. This contrariness seems very San Francisco — as do those runners who dress in nothing but their sneakers.
For many years, as at the actual Mardi Gras, the booze flowed freely during Bay to Breakers, with open house parties lining the route. Some blamed the alcohol, in part, for two deaths, one a spectator who fell from a rooftop party, the other killed in a brawl between a group dressed as trolls and another in ‘49ers gear.
Whether it’s been the crackdowns by organizers or the rise of a new, more abstemious generation, there’s been markedly less drunk and disorderly behavior at Bay to Breakers lately.
For me, Bay to Breakers becomes more race than fiesta at a certain point. When, in Golden Gate Park, I get the first whiff of salty ocean air, my competitive juices start to flow. I start to think I’ll be damned if I’m finishing after that coastal redwood — think how much extra weight he’s got to lug with that six-foot model tree on his shoulders. Those two brides up ahead are flagging — if I bear down, maybe I can catch them. But, beware, that eggplant behind is coming on.
Alec Scott is an award-winning journalist, with features in The New York Times, Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, Los Angeles Times and Sunset.
Learn more about Oldest San Francisco, his latest book with stories of the institutions that helped make San Francisco the place it is today.
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