When Paul Cesewski whizzes down a winding hill in his welded metal go-cart, some call him an outlaw.
"I used to have a catapult attached to my car," boasts the burly 28-year-old tradesman at the starting line of the so-called Bernal Heights Speedway in San Francisco. "One year I shot potatoes into the crowd and knocked a woman out. The next year I used tomatoes because I figured they were softer, but I still broke someone's nose." This year Cesewski left the catapult at home, but he's still raring to rebel. And at the sound of a bicycle horn, he joins a posse of homemade racing machines that includes a car with a working suspension, another built from a shopping cart, and even one that looks like a giant hypodermic syringe.
It's hardly a scene from a Norman Rockwell soapbox derby. There are no clean-cut Boy Scouts showing off their mechanical prowess, and no tight-ass officials from the Rotary Club weighing cars or measuring race distances. Instead, the monthly races of the San Francisco Illegal Soap Box Society (SFISBS) attract an eclectic crowd of tattooed artists, pierced bicycle messengers, and multimedia dilettantes who swill beer in the sun as racers fly around curves with reckless abandon. The San Francisco police say the races are against the law, but no one can seem to find the ordinance that says why.
SFISBS charter member Marty Crosley began racing in 1992 after he found a documentary film about San Francisco artists who raced soapbox cars in the early '70s. Today, nearly 30 cars participate in three racing classes: air tire, hardwheel, and lollipop (a new class of cars built from kiddie pedalcarts).
"Traditionally, soapbox derbies have been about whose dad has the best tools and the most money," Crosley laments. "But these races are more about creativity and artistic skills." The competition can get stiff, but the SFISBSraces are less about winning and more about strutting your mechanical stuff. Adds racer Steve Timble, "Our only rule is that you have to have a beer holder in your car."
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Gravity-Fueled Outlaws
