neighborhood: all over | active since: 2003 | space type: silliness | links: website, wikipedia
This post is a cheat, I know. The Idiotarod is not a space, and it’s not even
always (or only) in Brooklyn. But it is so ludicrous, so fantastically silly,
that I don’t care. There’s so many things like this—Lost Horizon Night Market, Improv Everywhere, Newmindspace, Fluff’s Stuff—silliness and spectacle just for the
sake of it, which is what makes this the best, funnest place to be. It’s part of
the essence of Brooklyn for me.
image via nileguide.com
So what’s the Idiotarod? Well, as their website explains: “The Iditarod is the famous
long-distance race in which yelping dogs tow a sled across Alaska. The Idiotarod
is pretty much the same thing, except that instead of dogs, it’s people,
instead of sleds, it’s shopping carts, and instead of Alaska, it’s
New York City.” How this works is that teams of five people pick a theme,
steal acquire a shopping cart, dress themselves and their cart up
accordingly, and race from checkpoint to checkpoint, usually for about five
miles and over at least one bridge. Sabotage is encouraged, as is throwing food
or snow, and, of course, drinking. No one knows where the race will begin or
end, or where the checkpoints will be, until the last possible minute. Prizes
are awarded at a secret afterparty for things like fastest team, best costumes,
best sabotage, etc.
photo by Colin Colfer
Want to hear more from people who have done it? Check out my interview with Alix and Leila! (That’s them
in the top photo on this page, Alix on the right and Leila on the left, part of
team Andrew W.K.art in Idiotarod 2012.)
picture by pixietart,
via Gothamist
brooklyn spaces: When was your first
race?
Leila: I did it for the first time in 2007,
and our theme was the Cold War Kids. Half of us were dressed as Americans and
half as Russians, and we divided the cart in half, and in one half we had a
vodka bottle and the Communist Manifesto, and in the other we had an old
McDonald’s carton that we found on the street, and then I took a dish towel and
covered it with duct tape and wrote “The Iron Curtain” on it and
hung it on the front. In 2008 I was Jem,
and 2009 we were the Oregon Trail of Death. In 2010 I took off, which I’m glad I
did, because Alix says that was the coldest day of her life. This year we did it
together, and we were Clam Rock.
Alix: I first did it in 2008, and we were
the Boston Tea Party. We had wet teabags to throw at people—there was a lot of
food throwing then. Our cart had a Sam Adams picture on it, and we decorated it
as a boat. In 2009 we were The Price Is Wrong, Bitch! In 2010 we were Gilligan’s
Island. I got my boyfriend to do it, and two other friends. I was like,
“It’s going to be really fun!” And then it was just the coldest day ever. I only
had fingerless gloves on and I could not feel my fingers once we started
running. We’re running, my eyes are tearing and I can’t see, snot is flying. My
friends were like “Why the fuck would you do this? This is not fun at all.”
photo by Tod Seelie, vie
Brooklyn Vegan
brooklyn spaces: Tell me about the actual
mechanics of the race.
Leila: Okay, the mechanics of the race are
stupid, it’s incredibly disorganized. It takes a lot of effort to even figure
out when the race is happening.
Alix: They don’t really have much
information on the website. It used to be run by COBRA, Carts of Brooklyn Racing
Association, and then I guess they “sold” it to Corporation X. Or no, COBRA gave
it to Team Danger Zone, and then they gave it to Corporation X.
Leila: Once you’ve figured out when it is,
you have to figure out how the sign-up works, because the fact that you’ve done
it in the past doesn’t mean they’ll assume you might be interested again and
tell you about it. And they make it really hard for you to sign up. This year we
had to complete an eight-page form filled with stupid questions, which we had to
get notarized—we faked the notary. Then they text or email to say where it’s
going to leave from, and everybody knows it’s a lie. That used to be to mislead
the police, but now it’s just tradition. You have to wait until like 8:00 on the
morning of the race to find out where to go. One year we started in Chinatown,
one year we started in Queens, one year we started at fucking like 63rd and York
or something.
Alix: Every race goes over at least one
bridge, so it’s cross-borough. But this year there was a lot of snow still on
the ground, and I think that they changed it around at the last minute, because
we just stayed in Brooklyn. Anyway, you have to go to four or five checkpoints,
and you have to complete stupid tasks before they tell you where to go next.
Sometimes you can leave early if you bribe the people there, so a lot of people
bring mini bottles of booze for that.
photo from Kotaku
brooklyn spaces: What are some of the
tasks?
Alix: This year, one was you had to blow a
feather and keep it in the air longer than the other team, or there’s races
around the bar, or you have to find someone and have them give you
something.
Leila: Sabotage used to be a big part of
it. One time we were going across the bridge into Queens, and people were
pouring dishwashing soap down the bridge, and everybody started doing the thing
like you see in cartoons, where people are like “Whooooaaaa!” with their
legs.
Alix: There was another sabotage where
someone had a bowling ball they would put it in people’s carts. They put it in
ours and we didn’t notice. We were running, going, “Why is this thing so heavy?”
And with the sabotage, you never know if you’re going to the right place. The
first year I did it there was a fake checkpoint, they just said, “You have to
stand here for twenty minutes, this is the first checkpoint.” Some people were
like, “This is fake, we’re leaving!” and then you’re like, “Well, is
that a sabotage?” You can’t trust anyone.
photo by Colin Colfer
brooklyn spaces: What are some of your
favorite carts that you’ve seen?
Leila: The Roman Chariot was really good.
They had like forty people, including Remus
and Romulus, and there were all these people in matching costumes, and
this triumphant Roman Empire–style music
Alix: My first year there was a team that I
think was called Two Girls One Cart. They had two blowup dolls and this huge tub
of poop-looking stuff, and they were throwing the pudding-poop at people. When
we were running over the Manhattan Bridge, there was this huge goop of pudding
just dripping down the railing of the bridge.
photo by Matthew Bradley
via geekoutnewyork
brooklyn spaces: Does anyone get in
trouble?
Leila: One time when we were outside of a
checkpoint, a cop drove by very slowly, and shouted over his bullhorn, “Please
at least try to not let me see that you are drinking in public!” And
everyone was like “Okay, we’ll try.”
photo by Aaron Short,
via Brooklyn Paper
brooklyn spaces: And so is it the funnest
thing you do all year?
Alix: I love it. If you have a really good
cart design, and other people have really good cart designs, it’s great. Just
looking at the carts is really cool. When you line up at the starting point,
everyone’s checking out all the other carts and taking pictures.
Leila: It’s also a cool way to see
neighborhoods you don’t usually get to see.
Alix: It’s the only time I ever run, too.
It’s like a five-mile run every year. So yeah, it’s fun. And it’s a tradition.
It’s this thing we do every year that we get to amaze our friends with.
***
Like this? Read about more public art spectacle: Lost
Horizon Night Market, Dumpster
Pools, Broken
Angel, Bring to
Light, Cathedral
of Junk
I was strongly encouraged
to get to the Cathedral by Bk Spaces photographer Alix Piorun (read her post
about it here), but when we brought it up to our Austin friends,
everyone said two things: “I think that place got torn down,” and
“It’s really really far away.” Neither of these things are
true. Although the Cathedral has been threatened with dismantlement and cited
for code violation several times, it’s still kicking. And it’s less
than a half hour bus ride from downtown Austin.
The Cathedral is the
project of Vincent Hannemann, a totally lovable curmudgeon who answered the
phone when we called ahead, chided us for not banging the gong hard enough when
we arrived, and then toured us around the Cathedral himself, scolding us for not
being clever enough with our photo poses. He has “JUNK KING”
tattooed on his knuckles, told us stories about a few of the bizarre items in
the Cathedral (“Oh, that one’s really creepy; my ex-wife made
it”), and tolerated our poking around his giant trash statue for a couple
of hours.
Here’s a whole slew
more pix, taken by me and my sis. Enjoy!
