All right, let's be honest here: to call "Bay to Breakers" a "footrace" is a little deceiving. Hardly any of the BtB participants actually race; most meander only a fraction of the course far behind the serious runners, creating a kind of block party crawl up and down the slim, windy streets of San Francisco with as many as 100,000 participants. And you thought Haight-Ashbury was crazy on any other day...

Some race traditions include the "tortilla toss," akin to beach balls at baseball games, and "centipeded racing," wherein at least 13 racers must run in tandem, tied together in a group.

The race was originally started in 1912 as a way to lift the city's spirits after the devastating 1906 earthquake. At 96 years, it is now the oldest consecutively running footrace in the world.

San Francisco's spirits were already pretty high this week: the California Supreme Court overturned a state ban on gay marriage and thousands of students from UC Berkeley and UC Hastings School of Law graduated (sorry, SF State-ers, you have to wait 'til next week -- and we'll still be too hung-over for a rematch).