MADEONEARTH

Illegal Soapbox Derby Races

There are no permits from City Hall, no advance promotions, no schedules, and only one ironclad rule: every car must have a beer can holder. Yet even that edict often falls by the wayside because no one knows who’s in charge of enforcement. And besides, at the Bernal Heights Illegal Soapbox Derby races — held each autumn in San Francisco —the point isn’t to follow the rules, or even to go fast.

Instead, it’s about figuring out how to build a gravity-powered car out of whatever materials you can find, then taking your homebuilt wheels on a white-knuckle ride down a twisty mountain road that overlooks the sprawling city below.

“Some guys want to win more than others, but pretty much it’s all just for fun,” says Scott Strebel, 29, co-creator of a car unofficially known as the Keg Racer. Built over the course of a week by combining the front end of a Quarter Midget go-cart, a few wheels purchased at Orchard Supply, and three old beer kegs he found lying around his garage, Strebel’s vehicle looks like a Homer Simpson-inspired cross between Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder and Anakin

Skywalker’s Pod Racer — though he insists the similarity is purely coincidental.

“We just arranged all the materials on the floor, then figured out what we could build with them,” he says. Other cars on the hill in 2006 included a bullet-shaped streamliner with a fully enclosed cockpit, a four-wheeled surfboard, an unmodified 1960s pedal-car called the Dude Wagon, and a rolling coffin emblazoned with Dale Earnhardt’s signature “ 3” logo.

Soapbox derby races have been taking place atop Bernal Hill since the 1970s, but it’s not entirely clear what makes the event illegal — some say the outlaw tag refers to the unauthorized appropriation of a normally serene city park, while others claim the race is a defiant antidote to the more uptight (read: rule-book) American Soap Box Derby.

Of course, the AASBD doesn’t require each car to have a beer can holder. But then again, at the Bernal Heights Illegal Soapbox Derby Races, no one really does either. —Todd Lappin

Photograph by Telstar Logistics

18 Make: Volume 09