Have you ever seen a fluffy, 15-foot-tall, pink French poodle racing on Pratt Street? A 2-ton platypus paddling in the water off Canton? How about “Gandhi” riding a mud-splaying elephant through an obstacle course in Patterson Park?
It was all just a part of the action Saturday at the American Visionary Art Museum?s eighth annual Kinetic Sculpture Race.
With 31 entrants, including the Beatles? Yellow Submarine, a Cadillac convertible driven by Elvis impersonators, and a 20-foot Chinese dragon pedaled by One Less Car and Velocipede Bike Project members, the 15-mile chase across town is not so much Lance Armstrong as John Waters.
Thousands came out to watch the seven-hour test of stamina and art.
“It?s our annual love song to Baltimore,” said Visionary Arts founder Rebecca Hoffberger. “It?s open to anybody ? students, housewives, doctors, engineers, mechanics and artists thrown together.”
“We call it a race, but ?race? is probably too strong,” said the museum?s Mark Hilsee.
“Parade” might be better, though with costumed fans tagging along on bicycles, in-line skates ? or pushing strollers ? the line between competitors and audience often blurred.
Deborah Carrey and her son went to Federal Hill to escort her husband, William Amland, with the Two Goats Meet on a Bridge squad.
“We?re originally from New Orleans, and this reminds me of Mardi Gras,” Carrey said. “That?s the only thing I can compare it to.”
The amphibious sculptures, tandem-bicycle-powered vehicles on land and pontoon-floated paddle machines in water, took off at 10 a.m., startling late risers in local neighborhoods before sprinting past stunned Inner Harbor tourists.
Hundreds camped on the rocks and underneath shade trees at Canton, cheering wildly as the artful crafts flew down the boat launch and embarked on a preposterous trip around the dock.
Last May, three vessels capsized, but none sank this weekend ? though several came close.
Who says Baltimore isn?t making progress?
At Patterson Park, throngs of families witnessed the sculptures traversing treacherous sand and mud pits, jumping in to push, too, when the pit crews, sometimes German milkmaids or Dr. Seuss extras, couldn?t get the job done.
“Friends asked me if this was going to be fun,” Karin Olsen said of the “Wizard of Oz”-inspired Hillbilly House and Kansas Twister sculptures with colleagues from EA Engineers in Timonium. “I said it?s insane and ridiculous, and it?s going to be hysterical ? which it was.”
Hunk A Hunk of Burnin Love won the coveted Grand East Coast National Mediocre Championship title, given to the sculpture and pilot finishing exactly in the middle.
