Same old story.

As I'm sure most of you have heard by now (or not), the masterminds behind the 100th anniversary of the Bay to Breakers Footrace (read: clusterfuck/awesome time) came out today with their "zero tolerance" for booze at next year's event. See the "whole" story at sfgate.com

Now I know what you're thinking. Haven't they said this EVERY year for the last half-decade? Yeah, they pretty much have. Supposedly though, the antics at this past year's race were just a "Wee" bit much for residents along the route - specifically in the Panhandle. Hmm, I wonder why...Here is a breakdown from a 2008 blog that no longer exists, courtesy of sfist.com:

"Both the starting and finishing stretches of the Bay to Breakers race course are badly barren of liquor stores, with a healthy abundant patch in the middle. The course's first liquor store open on a Sunday morning doesn't materialize until past the 1.5 mile marker, Go Go Market at the Ninth Street turn. Shocking, huh? They've been open since 6. From there on it's solid coverage through Hayes Valley, up Hayes Hill, and Western Addition. Special attention should be paid to jumping off course in the middle of the Panhandle to visit Lucky Supermarket at Fulton & Masonic. You'll get supermarket discounts on beer and hard liquor, and this is your last chance to get liquor until painfully-way-more-off-course options up at 11th and 19th Avenues far along into Golden Gate Park."

It has always been funny to me how people who live along the route and in the NOPA/Alamo Square Area love to drink on the streets and walk with open containers during the middle of the day, everyday, but complain when ONE day out of the year shit gets a little (ok, a LOT) crazy. Try shutting down the centennial B2B, and not only will the citizens be outraged, but the City will undoubtedly end up spending egregious amounts of money on police personnel overtime that, say, could go to putting a couple hundred more porta-potties on the course route and hopefully alleviating people from pissing on the streets - or your car.

Photo courtesy sfist.com

Even still, the police don't want to sit there and write out a thousand tickets, most of which will be appealed, and half thrown out for whatever reason. The cleanup costs will probably be half as much as the payment for overtime costs. I mean, this is what we pay for anyway:

photo courtesy sfcitizen.com
Something tells me she isn't getting hauled off to jail either...

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Again, we are still 10 months away. If nothing else, I'll at least have the Flipadelphia Memories: