Potrero Hill's 24th Big Wheel Race Draws 600-Plus Riders on Easter

The 24th annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel race filled Vermont Street with costumed riders, cheering families, and carnival noise on Easter Sunday, as more than 600 pre-registered participants streamed down Potrero Hill's steep serpentine curves on plastic tricycles and toy vehicles, with additional riders signing up on the day itself.

Organizer Frog Gilmore confirmed the online registration figure ahead of the April 6 event. The race is free to watch and run entirely by volunteers, with riders asked to contribute a suggested $10 to $20 donation to cover the city permit, hay bales lining the course, and portable toilets. It accepts no corporate sponsorship and is advertised primarily by word of mouth.

The afternoon ran on a structured schedule: children 12 and under raced from 2 to 3 p.m., followed by adults from 3 to 5 p.m. Costumes have long been as central to the event as the riding itself. Previous years have brought an inflatable T-Rex, a human-sized BART train, Easter bunnies, Rocky Balboa in boxing gloves, and two riders dressed as police officers in high-speed pursuit, sirens included.

The race was founded in 2000 by John Brumit, who rode a plastic-wheeled toy down Lombard Street solo on Easter Sunday, drawing spectators but no fellow racers. The event grew slowly until 2006, when a video posted online caused participation to explode. By 2008, a combination of surging crowds and complaints from Lombard Street residents pushed organizers to relocate to Vermont Street, where it has been held every Easter since. Gilmore herself got her start as a rider and volunteer when the race was still on Lombard.

Vermont Street, which curves sharply between 20th and 22nd Streets alongside McKinley Square Park, offers Potrero Hill residents a long-standing counterargument to Lombard's famous billing. Vermont's seven turns sit on a 14.3 percent grade with tighter turning radii, making it technically more crooked than Lombard's eight turns despite drawing only a fraction of the tourist traffic. The street's distinctive curves were built in the 1930s as a Works Progress Administration project, roughly a decade after Lombard Street's famous section was constructed in 1922. In 1962, some 40 Hill residents spent three weekends planting more than 200 trees and plants along Vermont Street, hoping to bring it the recognition Lombard commands.

Lombard Street, by contrast, draws approximately two million tourists per year and has spent years at the center of contentious policy fights that Vermont has quietly sidestepped. San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted 11-0 to impose a toll on Lombard Street traffic; Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure in October 2019, citing social equity concerns.

Safety at the BYOBW race is enforced through both volunteer oversight and firm equipment rules: rubber wheels, metal frames, and exposed metal spokes are prohibited, and all participants must sign a liability waiver. Helmets and elbow pads are strongly recommended.

Vermont Street's 24-year run as the race's home is itself a layered story: a WPA construction project from the 1930s, beautified by neighbors in the 1960s, and now the site of an Easter tradition that grew from one person on a toy tricycle into one of Potrero Hill's most reliably joyful afternoons.