Crossposted to .
I had a VAST lot of fun Friday night. I went to my first ever Alleykat, and it was madness! This one wasn’t a distance pick-and-drop course, nor a scavenger hunt. This was drag racing. We had two-block one-on-one sprints. It was also drag races in the sense that men wore dresses/skirts/lots of gaudy accessories, and women were encouraged to sport some kind of facial hair, and look as macho as possible.
That’s me, being macho!
They had classes for multi-speed, single-speed, fixed, and “open class” which was mostly vintage beach cruisers and art bikes. I rode my Burley so I ran in the Women’s multi-speed class, but they ran out of women with multi-speed bikes, so I was run against this chick on a SS and I told her I’d level the field and not shift. I started out in too low of a gear, so I crossed the finish line, spinning like a maniac, my front wheel about 6″ behind hers.
Then, for the fuck of it, I ran against the champion fixed-gear girl. Damn, that little chica had some pistons. She beat me by about a bike-length. Respect to Tiffany!
Here are my photographic impressions of the night. I mostly took pictures early on in the evening, and stowed my camera and rode around and shot the shit with people and raced and said “yaaaarrrr” a lot under the influence of my moustache and goatee. Another guy who was there took a lot more comprehensive set of photos. including quite a few of actual races in progress. I copied his photo of me in the ‘stache and saved it to my own site because I didn’t have any photos of myself with the makeup.
I’ll be going to another Alleykat on the 30th, this one being Night of the Living Dead. The women organizing it haven’t said what the race/event will be for sure, but a general costume party and pizza feast are part of the grand plan. Their last alleykat was a scavenger hunt. I’ll be riding my fixer-upper Schwinn, and wearing a full-rigged 1890s bloomer suit, complete with enormous leg-o-mutton sleeves. I’m about to go build those sleeves in just a few.
