#idiotarod

Idiotarod 2017: Make America Fun Again

New York City's most ridiculous, unsanctioned sporting event of the year: the 13th annual Idiotarod "race"!  (Brooklyn, NYC)

More photo: Idiotarod, Random Strangers

Full gallery available on my website

On Saturday, January 31, 2026, the 23rd edition of Idiotarod returned to the streets of New York City. The racers met at the first location, Cooper Park in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and moved on to three checkpoints before reaching the finale at The Deep End in Ridgewood, Queens. During this year’s Idiotarod, I got to witness a chicken literally cross a road.

This year about 30 teams competed in a race on the streets of New York City with a secret route for prizes, glory, and fun. Each team creates a team theme, a game, bribes, and food and drink items, and some teams engage in sabotage (I was a victim of two separate sabotage incidents; a strap of my tote bag was zip tied by a member of Cryptid Ziptids, and someone tied rope around my feet as I was explaining Idiotarod’s whole deal to a friend who attended her very first Idiotarod.

On Saturday morning, the starting location of Cooper Park was announced, which was the same starting place as last year. The teams gathered surrounded by snow and ice at Cooper Park and departed the park to head to Emblem, the first checkpoint, also located in East Williamsburg. Due to last weekend’s snow storm, traveling with large carts was difficult and many teams opted to push their creative carts in the street with traffic as many of the sidewalks were still covered in snow and ice and only small paths were cleared. The cold weather was wildly different than 2025, where it was warm enough for one team to have wrestling as their game. In 2026, one team turned their cart into a sauna (The Finnish Line), and another converted theirs to a Hot Tub (Hot Tub Crime Machine), incorporating heat into their theme which was a brilliant decision and made their carts very popular with other participants and judges, with The Finnish Line winning Best Cart and Hot Tub Crime Machine being awarded Best Hospitality. There was a team who referenced the troubled venue Brooklyn Mirage, which will be demolished soon, with one of their members acting as the venue’s security, and others acting as construction crew. The winners of Best in Show, Mighty Morphing Party Rangers, combined their carts to make a giant structure at each location, and also changed themselves each time too (at the start, they were the party rangers, then at checkpoint one, they became flower orphans, offering handmade paper flowers to people and feared being beaten physically).

The second checkpoint was in Bushwick at Fine Time. From there, the teams headed to the third checkpoint, Bar Cornelia in the same neighborhood. The finale was hosted by The Deep End, where the winners were announced, all teams were celebrated, and all carts were destroyed (and cleaned up afterwards).

As I did last year, I left the race early to head home (since the first two locations were in my neighborhood, I opted to walk home and warm up) but I loved my time spent at Idiotarod again, despite the very cold weather. I shot a few images on 35mm film and those will be added to the gallery once I get the scans back from the lab.

This year’s edition was graced by the presence of Tom Kramer, who was given the title of Celebrity Judge, as he is the co-founder of the Urban Iditarod, which began in San Francisco 30 years ago. It was his first time visiting NYC for our Idiotarod and was impressed by the participating team’s creativity and joy it brought to all involved and those who happened to witness the race on the streets, even though some people thought there was a costume party going on.

Full gallery available on my website here.

On Saturday, January 27, 2024, the 21st edition of Idiotarod returned to the streets of New York City. Now that the race has been around for over two decades, it’s finally old enough to legally enter its own checkpoints that are bars. Nearly 20 registered teams competed in a race with a secret route for prizes, glory, or infamy. Each team came up with a theme, games, bribes, and food and drink items. The night before, the starting location was revealed to be at Grand Army Plaza at noon. Once the teams gathered at Grand Army Plaza, an announcement was made by Anney Fresh which revealed that the first checkpoint was 99Rogers, with racers on the move shortly after 1PM. The second checkpoint was Wonderville, in Bushwick, but the Idiotarod Instagram account initially posted the incorrect location. The stories post told people to head to Bar Cornelia for checkpoint 2 which was actually the third one. A correction was eventually posted but I imagine some people following the race online headed to the wrong place prematurely and possibly caused confusion among others (hence, this checkpoint winning the Best Sabotage award instead of a team). The race’s finale was at The Deep End, where carts were destroyed after the awards ceremony. The Gimp My Ride team took home Best in Show which meant that the same team won the big prize for a second consecutive year (they were Mad Max: Furry Road in 2023).

I left the race before the racers departed for checkpoint 3 since I had to head to The Museum of Modern Art in the evening. The gallery above covers from 12-4PM before I made my way home before going to Manhattan. I’m so happy that Idiotarod is still going after all these years and I am looking forward to Idiotarod XXII in 2025, which makes it the 20th anniversary of attending my very first Idiotarod race.

Results of Idiotarod XXI on Saturday, January 27, 2024 BEST IN SHOW: Gimp My Ride BEST COSTUMES: Orcapy Whale Street BEST CART DESIGN: Hurtz Gold Member BEST BRIBERY: Hot Cucumber BEST SABOTAGE: Checkpoint 3 THE FUTURE OF AMERICA: Dance Dance Revolutionaries BEST PRESCRIPTION DELIVERY SERVICE: Dr. Who’s Line Is It Anyways? PAVLOVIAN CHILD TRAP: One Fell Scoop BEST BACKROOM CASINO: Clam’s Casino TIN FOIL HAT AWARD: Space Junk BEST FINISH LINE: The Deep End LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Anney Fresh

Idiotarod 2011 NYC

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"It was lonely on the hill, and cold. And all you could do was keep going. You could scream, cry, and stamp your feet, but apart from making you feel warmer, it wouldn’t do any good. You could say it was unfair, and that was true, but the universe didn’t care because it didn’t know what “fair” meant. That was the big problem about being a witch. It was up to you. It was always up to you.” 

— Terry Pratchett (Wintersmith)

On Saturday, January 25, 2020, the 17th edition of Idiotarod took place in New York City (although it’s technically the 16th as last year was Idiotarod XV). The annual race began in the rain in Fort Greene Brooklyn and came to an end in Ridgewood, Queens.

BY TOD SEELIE

“For the 17th consecutive year, groups of bizarrely costumed, self-proclaimed “Idiots” assembled on a winter Saturday with elaborately decorated shopping carts in tow. The Idiotarod (named in homage of the famous Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska) started out cold and damp at Fort Greene Park this past weekend, and things only got soggier from there. That didn’t stop 14 teams from racing—well, walking sort of quickly—through various levels of cold rain from one checkpoint to the next, eventually traversing five miles to finish in Ridgewood seven hours later.

At each checkpoint, the teams had to complete a variety of strange challenges, which ranged from arcade games to bizarre quizzes to acting out their own erotica involving President Warren G. Harding or Calvin Coolidge (the two presidents of the previous ’20s). The checkpoints were each housed inside a different bar along the route, as in years past, so a bar crawl aspect has essentially become baked into the event. Since the challenges emerge in barely controlled mayhem, one team managed to set up their own, which the other teams dutifully completed without realizing it was unofficial: having their own “Dick pic” taken with a Polaroid. In this case, the shots were referred to by their formal name, “Richard pictures,” and the options included masks of Dick Cheney, Richard Nixon, and Little Richard, among others.”