You Can't Have Idiotarod Without Idiot

Despite winter being upon us, the hipsters of New York took to the streets yesterday with strange, creative outfits and shopping carts in this year's Idiotarod. What's the Idiotarod, you ask? It's like the annual Iditarod from Nome to Anchorage except with teams of human idiots replacing dogs. Some of the more creative costumes we noticed: Wonderwoman, the Noid (think Domino's Pizza campaign), the McDonald's mascots, the Cosbys, Ghostbusters with the Stay Puft Marshmallow man, the Baseball Furies, and a team of male strippers. Also following the race was a penis canon.

Most of the players were young professionals, artists and technology enthusiasts. News of the games spread online, mostly on blog sites such as What's Up: NYC and digg.com just days before the festival. Locations and game details were kept quiet, too; they were sent via text message only to participants.

Big games are generally on the scale of city blocks rather than pixels or board game squares. There is a philosophy to setting the games in tight urban places that leads to talk among enthusiasts, such as New York University professor Frank Lantz, who teaches a class on the subject, of "altering the urban landscape" and "putting public space in play."

"Everyone pontificates about the theory behind all this, and how it changes urban space, yadda, yadda," said Greg Trefry, one of the festival's organizers, who studied under Lantz. "But what hooked me is running down the street jumping over garbage cans. I thought, 'Wow, this is just the highest-resolution game you'll ever play, and this is really fun.' "