Photos: Giant ‘Dune’ Sandworm Wins the Day at Bay to Breakers, Amidst Many Other Hilarious Costumes

The San Francisco Sunday morning tradition of Bay to Breakers reared its drunken head again for the 113th annual running of the race, with Dune, Barbie, and Tesla Cybertruck-themed costumed ridiculousness packing the streets.

A Magnificent May morning greeted the runners, drinkers, and hooligans of Sunday’s Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco. KTVU estimates that “more than 20,000 runners” turned out for the seven-plus mile footrace from the Embarcadero to Ocean Beach.

While it was a largely intoxicated crowd, we are not yet seeing any reports of arrests at press time Monday morning. Compare that to ten years ago, when there were 24 arrests at Bay to Breakers, including a guy who ran naked into Golden Gate Park’s bison field.

The day’s most memorable group costume may have been this giant Dune sandworm, which really spiced things up on a Sunday morning.

A gang of Tesla Cybertrucks had license plates like “DUSHBG” and “CMPNS8,” and they even earned themselves an SFGate profile of their costumes. “We built these yesterday, but we’ve been talking about this for six months,” alleged Cybertruck costume ringleader Anh Nguyen told SFGate (there were actually nine people in this consumed group). But sigh, it turns out that two of them are actual Tesla owners.

Should you care, KGO reports on the actual race winners. San Francisco resident Colin Bennie won the men’s category for the second year in a row with a time of 37:02, Julia Vasquez-Giguere took top honors in the women’s category with a 43:49 finishing time, SF’s Cal Calamia won the nonbinary category for the third year in a row with a time of 44:26.

But the costumes and whimsy are the real story here. Those runners who managed to make it over Hayes Hill were treated to a full “Statler and Waldorf” show.

There was of course a disproportionate number of cows and Mario/Nintendo-themed outfits.

But even youngsters were able to get in on these games.

And as you would expect, there were a fair number of Barbies in the mix.

Yes, there were security guards right by Alamo Square Park again, catching people with booze and making them dump it out. This also brought out some recyclable gleaners, and that young lady in leopard print who’s giving those security guards the business about something or other.

But not far from those security guards, people were guzzling beer bongs and doing keg stands with impunity.

The hot dog stands that kids are setting up along the fenced areas of Fell Street and getting more and more professional, calling into question the degree to which adults are helping the kids run these increasingly ambitious operations.

The “Mission(ary) burritos” stand seen below also got an SFGate writeup, and the Mormon missionary-themed burrito pop-up had Dalton Thomas, previously a chef at Michelin-starred restaurants, serving 24-hour marinated al pastor in the burritos. They were quite the hit, and those teens serving the burritos were kept so busy they did not have time to save any souls.

A few actual religious nuts showed up to tsk-tsk everyone that they will be going straight to hell. Yet the nudists seemed happy to hold court in their areas, further aggravating the Jesus freaks.

We also saw some good San Francisco homage costumes, like the wild parrots and the fog seen below.

And according to KTVU, a team of “structural engineers” made the Painted Ladies seen below, structures in which they did run the race wearing.

This lobster party was probably the largest theme-costume group, and treated themselves to a little rave in the park after their run.

The whole thing went quite smoothly, in large part because sponsor Zappos really put the effort into supplying enough porta-potties and water for race registrants and crashers alike. There may have been some Dixie Cups and tortillas left strewn on the streets for a bit, but it was a peaceful crowd that did not seem to trash anything. If you weren’t able to attend, or just want to relive Sunday’s nutty lunacy, there are a bunch more Bay to Breakers 2024 pictures below.