First, one blogger I will not name asked "Who cares about the Bay to Breakers? Well, I do. But it must be noted that the bloggers and old media-types who are making snide remarks and complaints about San Francisco's giant running-excuse-to-party, this time sponsored by Zazzle.com, are all too out of shape, or just too unhappy to do the damn thing, anyway.
One thing I'm totally tired of are people who whine about that not worth whining about, and pay no attention to that worth whining about - like racism.
But I digress.
The Bay To Breakers is supposed to be a celebration of life in San Francisco, all based around not just running, but more important, congregation. What's happened to the event has only, if you will, plagued it, for the last four years - that leaves 96 years of Bay To Breakers that has went very well.
The Bay To Breakers is that one day not just San Franciscans, or people in the Bay Area, but people from around the country, look to that is quintessentially San Francisco: fun, unconventional, loopy, but at the same time smart and hip. It's this cultural stew, and that has produced much of the fabric of American pop culture, from Levi's Jeans to Jefferson Starship, to Google, and to Apple Computer, which gave us the Mac, the iPhone, and the iPad.
Now for those who jump at the bait and say "That's Silicon Valley," the bottom line is the first and most dense urban area that defines "The Valley," and the place it goes to party, and to get some of its venture capital money, is San Francisco.
As Paul Kantner, Jefferson Starship singer-guitarist said "I like to think of it as the city on the edge of Western Civilization. It's a very nutritious environment for people looking to get away and follow their own ideas and goals, and it has been ever since the Gold Rush. Had I not been brought up in San Francisco, I probably would have been executed by now."
For me, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and the Bay Area, are really all one place. I call the San Francisco - Oakland region, connected by the Bay Bridge and the BART Tube under it, the Inner Bay Area, with all other cities, the Outer Bay Area. But San Francisco sits at its cultural center, and the Bay to Breakers has long come to be an expression of The City.
So what has happened?
For the Bay To Breakers, a few have tried to mess it up for many, efficiently communicated to the World via New Media. And that's the difference; the fact is property crime rates have decreased dramatically in America since 1996, as well as for theft and for burglary, but from the way crime events are distributed via text and video, it's no wonder many have the impression something's socially wrong.
It's not that something's wrong, but that we emphasize that which is wrong, and not that which is right. Viral videos generally fall into two categories: adults doing bad, and kids doing cute and funny.
Thus, any adult doing bad is fuel for a million unique views on YouTube, and if that adult is 'doing bad' at the Bay to Breakers, the run event becomes defined by those images, even if it's not the real story.
Want proof? Visit YouTube and, as of this writing, search for "Bay To Breakers" using the filter "view count." The results are Bay To Breakers 2007 - Nudity at it's Fastest!, and four places down, "Public Micturition (or Pissing) at the 2010 Bay to Breakers, then "Bay To Breakers Boys in a Thong," and more, including "Bay to Breakers 2009 - People Behaving Badly," and its sibling "Bay to Breakers 2010 - People Behaving Badly."
Here:
This goes on, and on, and becomes instant media for the World, when the best videos are of people having harmless fun:
And of the race itself:
But because this society has become so hardwired to like seeing people do bad things, what gets seen the most is, well, people doing bad things. And because our society seems to have lost the capacity for critical thinking, and the bad is repeated again and again in the media, many can't conceive of what the Bay to Breakers really is.
So the message got lost.
The best way to get it back is to stop holding talks about the bad, and simply tell us about the good. To make sure that viral videos are created that show the best of the Bay to Breakers, and, yes, to counter our primal tendency to want to see the worst of the Bay To Breakers.
In short, if the Bay To Breakers is to survive, it's organizers have to fight new media fire with new media fire. It's the only way to reclaim The Bay To Breakers for another 100 years.
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