Sandon acted as race official, wearing a hydrant red suit with decorative flames, twirling
and wheeling on garage sale rollerblades like a reject from Stars on Ice. He shouted directions into a megaphone, ordering the heats and working the crowd, which streamed steadily into the parking lot, trickling from the belly of the delicious-smelling BTB Party Bus shuttle running every 10 minutes.

News of the event spread online and by word of mouth. In its first year and with $400 in prize money up for grabs ($200 from Shadow Art Fair and $200 from Spur Studios) no one was quite sure what to expect.

“I had the bike, so …,” Sebastian Rataezyk trails off, creator of Cobbled Together. Rataezyk was familiar with kinetic art sculpture races, referencing an event in Port Townsend, Wash.,
which is in its 27th year of existence. “I used to live in Seattle and the Port Townsend races are massive. I’m excited to see the different designs here.” Rataezyk’s creation is made of recycled materials clamped to a three-wheeled bicycle, the main feature of which is a giant two-toned “horn”  protruding five feet in front of the machine. “It’s an, um, horn,” says Rataezyk.

John Lennon (“I know, I know, that’s why I usually go by Johnny Lennon,” he says after he introducing himself) learned about the Art Race from good old fashioned eavesdropping. He parlayed his keen hearing into a slot in the Art Race, entering a 14-foot-wide beast fresh out of one of da Vinci’s lesser-known sketchbooks. The master bicycle has an intricate series of smaller bicycle parts welded to it, forming a pair of six-foot wings, festooned with black feathery fabric. Lennon’s pedaling turned the gears and wheels that drove the wings up and down, simulating the flight of an intoxicated avian. The contraption consists of parts of seven bicycles in all, including a piece of a bed frame. Lennon’s creation broke after the opening heats, but he had the foresight to bring along a borrowed MIG welder, which came in handy for on the spot repairs.

Rick C. read about the race on MarkMaynard.com (“You should mention his blog!”) and entered an existing creation, You Are Video Head, a life-size wire humanoid with a touch-screen monitor in its face and LED lights running throughout its body. “I take it to events like Top of the Park and play appropriate music and video,” says Rick. For the Art Race, he chose songs by jazz instrumentalist Rahssan Roland Kirk and some disconcerting sci-fi bleeps and bloops.

The full field consisted of a lurching orange alien, a banana with its potassium thunder pointing closer to 12:15 than high noon, a chicken, Cobbled Together, You Are Video Head and the da Vinci Cycle, as well as a young man dressed in full Roman regalia who crouched in the median of the parking lot looking up to no good. At Sandon’s signal, the racers sped through the parking lot, rounding the median and barreling toward the nice-sized crowd and the finish. The da Vinci Cycle struggled in the tight space, the alien lurched in last place and the banana’s gyrations creeped out even fans who’d seen "Human Centipede." Twice.

In the end, the race was less about the first to the finish and more about the spectacle of the competition. (Author’s note: I admit, I was too busy taking pictures to see who won the close race. I think it was Cobbled Together or Banana. Maybe I need an assistant. Anyone willing to work for sage advice and rides in my Volvo sedan?) The Roman sprang from behind his tree and decapitated the chicken, which kicked into overdrive, completing the race with a feathery flurry and giving up the ghost behind the finish line. Prizes of $50 were awarded to the alien and the chicken, while You Are Video Head, Cobbled Together and the da Vinci Cycle each took home $100.

“This wasn’t about speed,” says Sandon. “All these weird creatures, these interesting people and their interesting contraptions, that’s what we’re about.”