Chiditarod
The force is strong with this cart.
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More than a schmaltzy piece of clichéd dreck with Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, and Sean Hayes, the bucket list is a giant to-do list of things we all vow to do someday, maybe, or at least when friends from out of town stop by and crash on our air mattress. Sensing our own mortality, The A.V. Club gets the jump on death and vows to check out every “you’ve never seen ____?!” in town, determining whether it was worth the wait or worth dying having not experienced it. This outing, we check out the Chiditarod, a Wicker Park shopping-cart race.
Chiditarod isn’t the easiest event to explain. Simply, it’s just a food drive and shopping-cart race through Wicker Park. But the details that get omitted are what make the race worth attending: The teams wear shamelessly goofy costumes, push outfitted shopping carts, and make pit stops at bars along the way. I had wanted to check out the event since I first saw videos of it a few years ago and wondered, "How do hundreds of people manage to push shopping carts for miles during the tail end of winter while sucking down beer like water?" It sounded pretty terrible—fantastically so.
Rather than plan a theme and raise the 40 pounds of food required to register for this year's event, I embedded myself. I tagged along with Action Squad, a veteran Chiditarod team that has devised its carts and costumes more intricately every year. This year, the team built an elaborately detailed and built-to-scale AT-AT walker from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, complete with fake snow beneath the AT-AT’s feet, a rebel snowspeeder suspended between its legs, and two mini-kegs in its back. Costumes were Hoth-based as well—I was hanging out with Han, Luke, Leia, General Veers, and Major Bren Derlin.
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An hour before noon, 600 people crammed into an empty lot on the corner of Hubbard and Wolcott, checking out each other’s carts, eating pancakes, and drinking before the race began. As soon as Action Squad removed the tarp from the AT-AT, I knew I’d made the right choice. Every team that walked past us towards registration immediately flinched, hunching over their carts in a spasm of embarrassment. “I’m gonna make my cart look just like that,” one guy said. “Just give me an hour.” Anywhere else, this kind of dedication would be regarded as unforgivable nerdiness. But here, for the first time in my life, I was being envied for associating with total geeks.
A wide range of themes adorned the 120 carts, from pop-culture references like Anchorman and Animal House to more abstract ones like ninjas or bedazzled vaginas. The best teams devoted as much energy to their carts as they did their clothes, like “Best In Show” winner Mt. Attack Kill, which turned its cart into an army tank and dressed with a gurney of ammunition, Black & Milds cigars dangling from each member’s mouth. Some devotees stayed in character throughout the day. This wasn’t always a good idea. One member of the Super Troopers team chugged an entire bottle of maple syrup and consequently did not finish the race.
Once the teams were suitably intoxicated and the Journey sing-a-longs reached record levels, the race began. Running alongside Action Squad down Division was like being part of a celebrity’s entourage. Drivers honked in approval, people stopped to take pictures, children gawked and chased after us. I figured at first that going to Chiditarod as a writer rather than a participant would save me the embarrassment of running down public roads drunk and in costume. But as the day wore on and the crowd’s constant fascination continued, I started to consider turning my coat inside out so that the brown fabric would make me look like a Wookie.
SLIDESHOW: CHIDITAROD 2010
The cart included some film-accurate details, like a Snowspeeder flying in between the AT-AT's legs...
Since the AT-AT was so big, coming in first place seemed an unlikely prospect for Action Squad. That was fine: Running your cart from start to finish is only a small, transitory part of Chiditarod. The checkpoints, where teams woo judges with drinks and performances, are much more important. At the first bar, Action Squad performed the Imperial March on kazoos; at the second, they recited a haiku from the AT-AT’s perspective. At another, General Veers did a pole dance.
The race ended at Bottom Lounge, where Action Squad joined its competition on the second floor deck to smoke cigars, drink tallboys, and compliment each other on another successful year. Soon Action Squad took four prizes (none relating to the team’s speed) in the awards ceremony before a dance party broke out for the half-dozen people who still had the strength to move. I sat fascinated by a woman dressed in a cow costume grinding her fake, inflated utters on her teammate.
Chiditarod can hardly be called a race—it’s a traveling spectacle, a costume party on wheels with pit stops to drink more and embarrass yourself. The only downside to the event is its growing size. Traffic isn’t blocked off, so it’s incredible that 600 drunks can run around Wicker Park for hours—often in the streets—without being killed. That said, if more participants means having to wait for a bar bathroom behind Doc Brown and a Ninja Turtle, I'm willing to make the compromise.
