Since 2010, a few times a year at an undisclosed location and a time and date so secret you must check social media to discover it, a gathering of rogue, fun-loving bicyclists participate in an underground, unsanctioned, and arguably illegal bike race known as the SLO Little 500.
Once there, each team of four riders shares the same 700cc, single speed, dropped-handlebars bicycle quipped with only a coaster brake, each team member riding a maximum of two laps before they’re required to pass the bike to a different teammate. The race is timed, between 20 to 30 minutes, and whichever team completes the most laps in the allotted time celebrates under a shower of beer spray before having to haul off a monstrosity of a trophy and return it to the next race with something added to it.
Oh, and the looping dirt track has a “beer shortcut,” where a racer can stop, chug a beer, and bypass part of the loop. Did I mention all racers have to chug a beer when the race begins and then run to a pile of the various teams’ bikes and extracting their own before taking off down the track? Teams conjure up themes and costumes, making the event a real spectacle.
Genesis
The race can trace its origins to two dudes, Tim and Kyle (we’re using first names only to protect the guilty), who both used to work at Cambria Bicycle Outfitters.
“You know the movie Breaking Away?” Tim asked over a nonalcoholic beer (Thanks, dry January!). “That’s where this comes from.”
A coming-of-age comedy, Breaking Away (1979) starred Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, and Jackie Earle Haley as the “cutters,” four working-class Bloomington teenagers who are treated poorly by the rich college kids attending Indiana University. After a dustup between some frat boys and the cutters (so named for stonecutters at the nearby rock quarry that supplied much of the stone for the university), the school president invites the cutters to field a local team to compete in the university’s annual Little 500 race. It’s a real underdog story.
“I thought, ‘Man, that seems like it’d be fun to do a relay race, but I don’t want it to be a competitive thing,’” Tim recalled. “‘In fact, I wish there could be a way to punish people for being too fast.’ Kyle and I started brainstorming, and we were like, ‘What if there’s a beer shortcut?’ If you drank more than the fast guys, you could [skip part of the loop].”
According to Tim, Kyle—who’s since moved out of town—knew a perfect place “up on the hill.”
“We try not to put the location, time, and date all in one place, but it’s on Instagram,” Tim said, “so it’s pretty public now. People know that it happens.”
That’s part of the fun. Seek and ye shall find the info for the upcoming race, readers!
Equipment check
To stay true to the film and make their race as fair as possible, Tim and Kyle decided all participants must ride the same kind of bike that was used in Breaking Away, but with all the new technology and materials—even 15 years ago when the race started, those kinds of heavy, steel-framed one-speeds with coaster brakes no longer existed.
“Kyle said, ‘We work in a bike shop. We can just make ’em,’” Tim recalled. “So we just made a bunch of bikes, and they were terrible. That’s the other thing. The bikes are always terrible. They’re always falling apart. They’d make it through the race, and then we’d take them back, have a bike build party, and fix them.”
The SLO Little 500 maintains anywhere between seven and 10 bikes that they loan out, but at any given time there’re also about five to seven bikes “out in the world,” Tim added, “so there are teams that have their own bikes.”
No one will ever know
Despite its dubious legality, the race has endured for years.
“There’s such a great local bike culture,” Tim explained. “I like to say this race exists because we stand on the shoulder of giants like the Bike Happening [a bike flashmob that forms on Thursdays in downtown SLO after the farmers market], which was kind of the grandfather bike event in town. I don’t think I would have said, ‘Yes, we can totally do this,’ if it wasn’t for the bike culture in town. There’s also a rebellious element of the bike world that I’m sure we drew upon.”
The race takes a lot of pride in its ethos.
“There’s a really strong ‘leave no trace, take care of everybody, respectful vibe’ about the race,” Tim said. “We’ve heard stories about city officials going up after the race and being like, ‘Oh, this is cleaner than it normally is.’ Sometimes [during cleanup] it’s like we’re [a search party] walking a grid in a field looking for pieces of a downed plane, and I’m like, ‘Hey guys, there was probably some garbage up here before we got here.’”
The danger zone
So let’s get this straight: a bunch of beer-buzzed cyclists ride in a loop on a dirt track, passing each other, taking a beer shortcut, switching off the bike from one rider to another … what could go wrong, right? Any injuries?
“Nothing that we were like, ‘Oh, that’s really scary.’ There’ve been some collisions, a broken thumb, a broken toe. I don’t think there’s ever been any stitches-worthy thing. Basically, people are bumped and scraped up. The blood rarely reaches the sock,” Tim joked. “We always tell people safety third, but we do think about safety. It’s in the top five!”
Rule 1, have fun. Rule 2, do whatever you’re doing to have fun. Rule 3, be safe. So, what about four and five?
“There’s no four and five,” Tim joked. “There’s a little concrete geology marker up there, and I remember us thinking, ‘That looks dangerous,’ and putting a cone on it. I look back on that and I go, that is the least of our problems. There’s a tree and a bench. People are throwing sticks in people’s spokes. We’re constantly saying, ‘You can have this much fun, but not too much fun.’
“There, beer shortcut guys say, ‘It’s hinder, not harm,’” Tim continued. “You can jostle people around, but you can’t try to knock them off their bike or break anything. There was a guy who was throwing beer cans—empty beer cars—but overhand, you know? And I was like, ‘Hey, man. Just throw them underhand.’ And he said, ‘I’m not going to hurt anybody.’ And I was like, ‘It looks … it feels … just don’t.’”
Does this beer shortcut actually save time?
“It’s slower nine times out of 10,” Tim admitted. “I think it’s hard to go through the beer shortcut and drink the beer quickly, but the younger guys, they can do it. They’re like … [pantomimes shot-gunning a beer can].
“One year we went up there and there was mustard weed growing overhead, so we pushed down the mustard weed into a spiral [maze], and if you didn’t take the beer shortcut, we made people go into the spiral, which was so punishing that people were like, ‘I can’t drink any more beer, but I really don’t want to go in there.’ It was awesome. People were just disappearing into the grass.”
Organization? Nah
Tim describes the entire event as very organic. The organization is, let’s say, loose.
“People are like, ‘What’s the theme this time?’ And I’m like, ‘I dunno. Come have fun?’ Actually, costumes were never part of the original scheme,” he said. “We decided to do the [race], and the very first time people showed up in costumes. We were like, ‘Oh, OK!’”
They’ve had live music at the event. Someone sewed up a flag once with the “Safety Third” motto, but they spelled safety wrong, “so now our favorite thing is the ‘safty third’ flag,” Tim laughed.
Why does Tim think people—both the racers and spectators—keep coming back for more?
“It’s just another funky little thing in SLO. I think people look at San Luis Obispo and go, ‘It’s a nice little town, but there’s not much happening here.’ But there are pockets of funkiness that people are trying to keep alive. The race is one of them but there are others. Jason out at There Does Not Exist [taproom] does a bike rodeo once in a while,” he said.
After the bike happening, Central Coast Brewing used to have bike sumo contests. Despite a lot of complaints about SLO building too many bike lanes and catering to bicyclists too much, there’s unquestionably a strong bike culture here, and the SLO Little 500 is emblematic of that.
“I wish I knew why it works,” Tim pondered. “I don’t know. We just did it. That would be our message. Just do something. Just do it and people will show up. We just did it, and people started showing up and having fun, and then we did it again.”
Get weird and don’t expect answers
It all feels a little illicit, a little dangerous without actually being dangerous, and it appeals to people who aren’t afraid to play.
“It’s a place that you come and be just a little outside of your normal self,” Tim explained. “It’s like dressing up for Halloween. It’s outside up the hill. You might get a little hurt but not too hurt. Even people organizing the event don’t know what’s going to happen at any given moment. My favorite thing to tell people who run up and ask me what’s happening next is, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘How much longer is the race going to go?’ ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure. Are you tired?’ Sometimes a random person will come up and ask, ‘Hey, when’s the next race going to be?’ ‘I Don’t know. When are you free?’ ‘I’m free on this date.’ ‘Great, let me see if that works for everybody.’ It’s been planned that way before.”
This whole seat-of-the-pants vibe has worked for 15 years. Someone suggested the race supply a first aid kit.
“No,” Tim said. “People need to be responsible for their own safety.”
Someone else suggested the race organizer supply a repair kit.
“So, the next race I brought up a broken crescent wrench I didn’t like and said, ‘Here’s your repair kit,’” Tim said with a laugh.
It’s a college town, and in Breaking Away, the Town vs. Gown vibe was paramount. Do the college students participate?
“Yes! We welcome them,” Tim said. “The college kids are great. They’re great, and they’re generally super respectful.”
In one case, a team of four college kids damaged the bike they’d been loaned, so they went and bought a gift certificate from Foothill Cyclery as a gesture of apology.
“They said, ‘Thanks. That was the most fun we ever had. We’re going to come back again next time,’” Tim recalled.
Meet a racer
Willy is a current member of the Trash Turtles, always the slowest team in the race and frequent recipient of the DFL trophy (Dead ‘fill-in-the-blank’ Last).
“I found out about the Little 500 through the big, green house I moved into about 11 years ago called the Establishment,” Willy said. “Early in my time living there, one of our 19 housemates rallied as many people as could be found around the house to walk up the hill for the event. I watched in amazement as dozens of strangely dressed adults with varying degrees of sobriety mounted strange bicycles and rode in circles as fast as they could. I was hooked. I’ve been a part of the Little 500 on and off for seven or eight years I’d guess.”
Willy wasn’t always on the slowest team.
“I participated in the race with a few teams over the years but most recently established the ‘Trash Turtles,’” Willy explained. “I wanted to form a team that went against the grain, that showed people how to not just participate in the race, but how to enjoy the race. We never rush—we’re along for the ride, and we understand that it’s about the journey, not the destination. You can find us lounging in the grass by the beer shortcut, soaking in the sunlight, mounting our beloved bicycle steed only when the moment feels right. Tired? Take a sit. Feeling uninspired? Parallel park that bike across the racetrack and chat with your neighbors! Bored of the route? Zigzag across the track at whatever pace suits you. Hell, go backwards!”
I guess the beer shortcut is right up the Turtles’ alley.
“Partaking in the beer shortcut is a personal decision for each Turtle, but in the end, why not take a break and enjoy a Tecate Light in the sunshine? And if it wasn’t already clear, a true Turtle would never shotgun a beer. It’s simply too … rushed,” Willy said. “The Little 500 is one of those beautiful—and sometimes hard to come by—opportunities to get real weird, real creative, and put it on display for all to see. I see it kind of as a big participatory performance art piece. Every town should have one—or like, 20 of them.”
How the dinosaur went extinct
“You asked about injuries,” Tim said. “I asked some guys if they had any words of wisdom about the race that I should include? Dylan said, ‘Hot sauce is why dinosaurs are extinct.’”
Cryptic! It’s a kind of disgusting story, so read on at your own peril.
“One of our buddies went up there. He always dresses as a dinosaur,” Tim said. “My buddy Connor filled a cup with about this much beer and the rest was the hottest hot sauce he could find, and he told the winning team, ‘OK, you won, so you must drink this,’ but he meant for each person to take a sip, but dinosaur man drank the whole thing. He was on the floor, puking.”
That’s one version of the episode. Here’s another from Team Celery riders Sean and Craig (aka dinosaur man). First, you should know Team Celery is the most hated team in SLO Little 500 history, according to Tim, because they win too often. Sean and Craig take slight umbrage at this notion.
“Everybody is trying to ride their bike and stay on it and drink beer, have fun, but we just happened to do it faster than everybody else,” Sean explained. “I’ve never approached this as anything other than to have a good time. That’s the whole point of the race: be silly and have fun.”
So what’s this about extinct dinosaurs? Craig used to dress in a dinosaur costume when he raced, so was he hurt?
“Emotionally hurt, definitely,” Sean joked.
“My wife was pregnant with our first child, so seven years ago exactly Team Celery was in this particular race, and we won, and the post-race celebration was occurring,” Craig recalled.
Sean explained that somebody—presumably Connor—handed Craig a cup of beer and told him he had to drink, and drink he did, about two-thirds of it before passing it to Sean who finished it off, and then in sort of a delayed reaction, they both realized there was something off about the beer. It had been spiked with super-hot ghost pepper sauce.
“I experienced the most pain in my life,” Craig recalled. “The hot sauce did something terrible inside my stomach. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t throw up. I just was incapacitated.”
He had to be carried off the mountain, thrown in the back of Connor’s van on a mattress, where he finally ralphed and was rolling and writhing in his own hot sauce-laced vomit.
“I don’t know if it was stomach acid or hot sauce, but it was burning my skin.”
He ended up being hosed off in his underwear in the front yard of his house and then rubbing yogurt over his skin to stop the burning.
“I’m apologizing to my wife, smearing yogurt over my naked body,” Craig said with a laugh.
Was that his last race?
“Yeah,” Craig said sheepishly. “Those things have consequences.”
“So [the injury] it had nothing to do with the cycling itself,” Tim noted, “but afterward his wife said, ‘You can’t do that race anymore.’”
And that’s how the dinosaur went extinct.
Learn more about the SLO Little 500 at their Facebook and Instagram pages.
This article appears in Get Outside – Winter/Spring 2025.