Scenes from Saturday’s wild 20th annual running of the Idiotarod  

By Scott Lynch

Team Venus in Furs (Scott Lynch)

What is the Idiotarod? An elaborate bar crawl with dumb games at each stop? A 10-hour piece of mobile performance art? A gathering of creative types? An excuse to day drink with friends and strangers and run around the streets of Brooklyn in ridiculous outfits? A sporting event rife with bribes and sabotage? A fake shopping cart race run by idiots, full of sound and silliness, signifying nothing?

Well, yes.

On Saturday, the 20th annual Idiotarod was held mostly in Brooklyn, starting in Fort Greene Park, from which some 22 teams and at least 100 costumed idiots took off under unseasonably warm, sunny skies, and ending some 10 hours later in the dark, on a dead end in Ridgewood, with the ritualistic smashing of shopping carts. It was, by all accounts, a race for the ages.

“This is epic,” said Christie Marie, an East Harlem resident running with team Cheese Whizards for her first ever Idiotarod. “This is just, like, beyond absurdity, in the best way possible. I had such a great day, and such an amazing time building this gigantic piece of swiss cheese.”

The Cheese Whizards, led by the day’s Most Idiotic Person, ‘Martyn With a Y’ (Scott Lynch)

The competition part of the race is about style rather than speed, as determined by a panel of judges led by Anney Fresh, an Emmy Award-winning puppet designer for Sesame Street. The coveted Best In Show trophy, and $200 cash, went to the insane Mad Max: Furry Road team, which was basically like the movie Fury Road, complete with extremely loud electric guitar, but staged by furries.

Best In Show winners Max Max: Furry Road (Scott Lynch)

Team Mystery Meat Machine — a Scooby Doo-clad crew passing around strange meats all day — took home the Most Awesome Finish Line Party award and $100.

‘Velma’ serving mystery meat (Scott Lynch)

Best Costume (and $100) went to the Open House gang, who all dressed as various shitty NYC apartment cliches, and the Design trophy was won by the Honey I Shrunk the Cart team.

Honey I Shrunk the Cart won the Best Cart Design (Scott Lynch)

Bribes to judges (alcohol, food, drugs, “experiences,” trinkets), and sabotage are not only allowed, but encouraged. The Es-CART-Go team of snails squeezed slime over everyone who got in their way to win Best Sabotage, and Princess and the Pea Pee took home Best Bribes.

Two snails from team Es-CART-Go commit award-winning sabotage by blocking the route (Scott Lynch)

Kostume Kult’s Lust Bunnies, whose cart was turned into a working “Rabbit” vibrator, won Sexiest team, and long-time racer “Martyn With a Y” won Most Idiotic Person, a lifetime achievement award of sorts and truly an honor.

The structure of the day goes something like this: all teams gather in a location announced the night before the race — in this case the eastern edge of Fort Greene Park — then head off with their carts, causing a spectacle on streets and sidewalks, when the first checkpoint is revealed.

There are four checkpoints in all, all of which were bars. In this case Singers in Bed-Stuy did the hosting honors, then Wonderville on the Bushwick border, then Talon Bar in Bushwick, and, for the presentation of trophies, The Deep End in Ridgewood. At each checkpoint there are ridiculous games and challenges each team must complete (“decorate a cookie to look like one of your teammates” was just one of dozens) and much socializing and camaraderie.

A ‘Throw the Hoop on the Penis’ contest, naturally (Scott Lynch)

And at the end of the night, the carts were smashed on a dead end street near the Deep End. In years past contraptions such as catapults and guillotines were wheeled out for this part of the revels, but on Saturday the teams relied on gravity (stringing up their carts and dropping them onto the street), jousting, and bashing with makeshift clubs to destroy their handiwork. When an NYPD patrol car showed up, your Brooklyn Magazine Idiotarod correspondent headed home.

Destroying of the carts (Scott Lynch)