Runners love Bay To Breakers for the race. They pay the fee to get in, start at the Embarcadero, and maybe manage to run all seven-and-a-half miles to the beach.
Everyone else loves Bay To Breakers for the costumed mobile dance party. They simply walk through a gap in the fence, join the festivities wherever they want, and maybe manage to stumble the rest of the way to the beach.
Both methods are pure San Francisco.
“Bay To Breakers is everything that is great about San Francisco,” said Conor Johnston, a former aide for ex-Mayor London Breed, as he looked out onto Fell Street near the Panhandle, which was full of bodies on a gorgeous, cloudless Sunday morning.
Johnston was dressed like a “sexy paramedic,” he said, smoking a joint. Fell Street, where he was standing, was filled with people. Most weren’t even walking. Instead, they were jumping up and down to house music played out of onlooking victorians.
Waldos, bumblebees, popes, Spongebob characters, Greek gods, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, crabs, bridge toll signs, makeshift Muni buses, Minions, and The Lorax blurred together in a sea of fun.
“This is how my parents described San Francisco,” said Sophia Lindsay, a 23-year-old project manager.
Lindsay and others at the parade were sentimental about the festivities, egged on by the drink in their hand and the several they had been drinking prior. The city, they said, was finally back to being one of a kind.
Not only had it survived the pandemic from five years ago, but also the just-passing-through “tech bro” who maybe didn’t understand how things are supposed to work in these parts.
“One of the roots of all evil in San Francisco has been the conformity and lack of soul,” said Alison Schwartz, a 24-year-old who works in advertising. She, like Lindsay, was dressed as people in a Zoom meeting: business on top, party down low.
They also noted that other major events in the city, like the Pride Parade, are ruled by the allegedly pink-washing corporations that sponsor them, while this event is more NFSW, less sanitized.
When people see — in full view of cops — naked men wearing only backpacks wandering aimlessly mere yards from a playground, they know they get to be themselves. All you have to do is let the people of San Francisco loose and they will make their own party.
“People come here who are not used to being weird,” said Michelle Montoya, 38, who has been going to Bay To Breakers for 25 years. “You have to embrace the culture, and the culture is this.”
Montoya and her friends dressed up as Lady Liberty from the film Miss Congeniality. Renee Petton, 40, dressed as the pageant contestant from South Carolina, said the day was an opportunity to express oneself, the greatest of all pleasures.
“There’s so much pain in the world,” she said. “People want to make art.”
