The wild saga of San Francisco's weirdest soapbox-derby contest
When someone tells you they were riding down a San Francisco hill in a car shaped like an old sea-captain’s sweater, you might assume they’re describing a weird dream they had. But that’s exactly what Katherine Ross Ward and her friends will be doing this weekend, as she competes in SFMOMA’s first soapbox-derby race since the 1970s.
Ward got involved initially as a joke. “I heard about it through the grapevine and thought, ‘Oh my god, obviously someone should make a cardigan.’ A CAR-digan. What else would you do?”
Her first job in Texas was sewing clothing destined for George W. Bush’s White House, so with her skills she decided to knit a soft sculpture. “It’s a giant fisherman-style sweater/cardigan, and we’re using giant knitting needles to make it,” she explains.
On April 10, her group will join more than 50 teams to coast in weird, gravity-powered cars — a whale skull, a giant pencil, a grassy fungus — down a hill in San Francisco’s McLaren Park. It’s a re-creation of famous soapbox derbies in 1975 and 1978 in which SFMOMA commissioned roughly 200 artists to create bespoke racing cars. The competition is being resurrected this year in conjunction with the museum’s Art Bash fundraiser on April 8 to cast a ray of light in our pandemic darkness.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/05/the-wild-saga-of-san-franciscos-weirdest-soapbox-derby-contest/