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Screw Alaska: New York’s 10th Annual Idiotarod


January 27, 2014 | Scott Lynch

This was the 10th Annual Idiotarod — a dogsled street race, but with people instead of dogs and shopping carts instead of sleds — now known as Idiotarodorama or Desistarod because of morons in Alaska who issued a cease and desist (read below). No one called it by the new name or talked law Saturday. They were all busy having fun, drinking lots of booze (at the checkpoint bars via discrete flasks), running like… well… idiots through the streets of Greenpoint and Williamsburg in crazy costumes, pushing tricked-out shopping carts, and acting drunk and sexy.

At each bar — Red Star on Greenpoint, Berry Park on Berry, East Rive Bar on South 6th — there were games of skill and contests to teams to complete and get their card punched. At East River, there seemed to be some kind of quasi-medical experiments going on.

It snowed for most of the day. It was freezing cold. But the 100 or so participants — 12 teams, with at least five people on each, plus a big crew of judges, testers, and hangers-on, like me — didn’t seem to mind. Talk of the NYPD giving out tickets turned out to just be a rumor. I saw zero police all day.

Let’s hear it for the teams: Juggalos; Release the Bukkakracken; Futards; Manifest Destiny; Vultures, Skulleaters; Wizard of Ozzie; Aliennated; Los Cartnales; Macho Man Randy Savages; Santa Con Artists; CDC Bird Flu from Flux Flocktory.

(Photos: Scott Lynch/ANIMALNewYork)

Idiotarod NYC Cease and Desist by Ani Mal