Bay to Breakers is a public event in San Francisco, and if SF does not want the million$ it makes on having all these 50-80,000 people in town, i am sure the public can find another venue ,like Pacifica(outside SF county) to Half Moon Bay on the coast road highway 1,,,or Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and Tiburon, with ferries back to SF,,,
This year there was some race organizer who thought this was a formal, full of rules, you can't run naked one day out of the year, no beer kegger shopping carts, no garden hoses blasting cooling water on the runners from peoples front yards, no loud speakers hanging out of Victorians with different music every block encouraging those of us who don't flaggelate ourselves everyday but just once or twice a year(Wharf to Wharf in Santa Cruz), and no unauthorized bands every few blocks for one day out of the entire stinking year,no x-rated costumes,,, some kind of closet drill instructor. What a buzz-killer !! Do we really need or want more unnecessary-rules-fascists in the world ?? SF is full of 'nimbys' and neighborhoods claiming and getting special favors ,if you have never lived there like i have. It is such a messed up , disorganized, poorly designed(streets that go straight up hills for horse carriages in the late 1800s before cars, so lots of broken hores legs, market street is the clashing of 2 grids that don't even mesh just look at a map!, and originally they were too lazy to name the streets so had 3 sets of numbered streets and 2 sets of lettered streets, oh, and the idiot who laid out the city set all lots at the same size of 25ft on the sidewalk,,,more? take a tour) and poorly run (the SFPD does not do parking or traffic enforcement and usually are not polite or helpful or smiling-friendly as they should be to the #1 city biz of tourists, and controlled all the illegal rackets in Prohibition, like prostitution,booze,drugs,,,,so where is all that illegal gain money, coppers??, and the public health department with 3000 restaurants is a joke of weak enforcement,,,and the 2 state highways thru town ,1 and 101 , are no longer timed stoplights to the speed limit, and and and,,,) but we still LOVE it, as just another unique fraudulent illegal corrupt historic westcoast town like LA , Portland, and Seattle.
I ran, jogged, walked the B2B for years in the 70s and 80s and it is a 'fun run', a rite of Spring, a chance for the masses to celebrate life under terrible current economic circumstances caused by the rich and powerful few and suffered disproportionately by the many of us, a chance to enjoy the 42-43 hills of SF all under 1000 ft tall and the views before the chilly summer fog starts rolling in, and a chance to be with each other outside work and the daily grind for one day out of the entire year to thumb our noses at convention and wear a costume, or walk the whole course with the baby carriage, or have a beer at every bar we pass before we pass out on riptide dangerous Ocean Beach or the shabby grass of the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park.
This event is not not not about some corporate sponsor, or one man and one woman winning the race, or who did or did not register and pay the fee to get the t-shirt ,,,as some wrongly think. This is an event for the public, the masses, the common man/woman, anyone and everyone can walk it or wheelchair it, and look forward to it every year. Lord knows, we poor bastards by the Congress and banker's hand need something to look forward to !!
So thank you to channel 7 for the live, 2 jabbers, fed,,,and thank you to all the volunteers who make this event/gathering possible, like the free concert every year in Golden Gate Park in the first week of October, and thank you to the bumbling bungling stumbling city of San Francisco that provides such a great canvas for this public participatory 'fun' ,leave your buzzkiller at home, famous festivity !!
