Reference: Paige and I's race team is the librarians
February 4, 2007
Brooklyn Up Close
Olympics for Hipsters: The Indy 500 It’s Not
By JAKE MOONEY
Nobody was supposed to show up for the Idiotarod, the annual absurdist shopping cart race, until 1 p.m. last Saturday. The race’s starting point was a closely guarded secret until the day before, and the Carts of Brooklyn Racing Association, its sponsor, had urged people gathering for the 1:30 start time to keep a low profile.
At 12:45, though, spectators were already milling around the starting point, at the entrance to McCarren Park on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, and they had company: uniformed police officers at every gate, officers in unmarked cars quietly circling, and even officers mounting horses on the other side of the park. Minutes later, the squad cars converged on the park, and then a helicopter appeared overhead and the officers started saying the race was canceled.
But too many shopping carts had been customized and too many costumes assembled for the hundreds of participants to go home quietly. In what was either an act of canny improvisation or the endgame of a planned ruse, race organizers led the whole motley assemblage 15 blocks northward to the “real” starting line, on Commercial Street at the edge of Greenpoint.
The police were there, too, helicopter and all, but officers put out the word that if racers behaved as pedestrians and didn’t block the streets, they would be left alone.
Meanwhile, the five-member teams kept arriving: one team dressed as the Village People, another as five versions of the 1980s Domino’s Pizza mascot, the Noid. One team wore ugly sweaters and Bill Cosby masks; another group was dressed as librarians and pushed a cart full of books. The eventual winner was a team called Colonel Angus.
As some teenagers who had gathered on a stoop on Franklin Street took a long look at an all-female team in short shorts and fishnet stockings, Mary Skinner, an actor and chef who lives upstairs, leaned out her window to check out the commotion.
“The police flying overhead, I can’t hear my movie,” she said with a shrug. “We moved here for quiet. But the neighborhood is changing quite a bit.”
The Idiotarod organizers encourage racers to sabotage their opponents, and up the street, a 25-year-old teacher named Garland English was circulating with a hand-lettered sign that read, “Official Starting Point Relocated to Park Slope.”
Mr. English denied having any malicious intent. “I don’t want people to miss out on the information,” he said. “It’s important that we all start fair and square at the same point. In Park Slope.”
As the race started and racers headed off on a course that eventually would lead them over the Pulaski Bridge into Long Island City, a man named Gilbert Ortega, who had wandered into the midst of it all, stood watching with a huge smile.
“I came to visit my brother,” he said. “I didn’t know what was happening. I thought it was Halloween or something.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
