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About a month ago, a coworker here in Michigan approached me and said, “Hey, my buddy Max wants me to come to Seattle and participate in this wild, unsanctioned downhill bike race and afterparty. Do you want to come?” After an evening of neglecting my bartending duties and researching the annual Dead Baby Downhill race, I discovered that this self dubbed “greatest party known to humankind” would be an event I’d be a fool to miss.

Luckily for me, Max is the kind of dude who has three bikes at his place in Seattle and is happy to loan them out to friends… and friends of friends. Once I took a day to settle in, we met up to bike around the city and get used to the lay of the land while on our borrowed steeds. Now, something you need to know about me is that I’m not a necessarily tall person, so when I mounted my lightweight road bike and found that while tippy-toeing on the pedals the saddle was creeping uncomfortably close to being inside of my ass I found that this particular bike was set up for someone maybe a couple inches taller than my current corporeal form. While exhilarating and sometimes uncomfortable I found that bombing the massive hills of Seattle while sitting higher than my handlebars was just as terrifying as it was difficult to drag my body up the same hills on this single speed loaner. Regardless of these minor tribulations I had an excellent time navigating the city with my newfound friend and guide. 

After a day spent pedaling and pouring sweat, we finally arrived at the meeting point and registration table for the 29th official Dead Baby Downhill Race. Luckily for all degenerates involved, this meeting point was a watering hole by the name of “Flight Path” and this spacious venue supplied copious amounts of Rainier beer (of which I found my experience would have no shortage of) and tequila shots. I heard that they had a full kitchen as well, but any true athlete knows that eating a meal right before a proper race will only slow you down. So, we avoided any sustenance that wasn’t liquid and collected our commemorative t-shirt and water bottle (more on the water bottle later) and prepared for the most important race of our lives. Like any good photojournalist might do, I left the pre-party a bit early to scope out the race route for the best spot to plant myself and capture the sights of this iconic event. 

Just as I was beginning to second guess whether I took the wrong route down, the silence was broken by a raucous symphony of spokes and sprockets bearing down on me around the bend. I found myself a suitable spot to hunker down and attempt to capture the sights of nearly 1,000 cyclists barreling through busy intersections on bicycles as eclectic as the racers themselves. I witnessed everything from your standard single speed cruisers to custom fabricated monstrosities as tall as two bikes stacked together. In fact, I think they were just two bikes welded together. One rider that really stood out to me was a gentleman on a pseudo penny farthing (think big wheel/little wheel) yelling “NO BRAKES.” To this day, I can’t figure out if that was a warning in regards to his rig or a command to the riders around him. Once the parade of pedalers was nearly past I decided that I couldn’t miss out on the experience of joining in on the high-speed fun with all of the other adrenaline junkies. So I strapped my camera in, mounted up, and joined what felt like a school of salmon in an asphalt stream towards Dead Baby HQ. 

Once the hill was sufficiently bombed, I joined in on a leisurely cruise with the rest of the racers through the South Park neighborhood towards the industrial park that would be the backdrop to one of the wildest parties I’ve witnessed in my time here on earth. As I mentioned before when I registered, I received a t-shirt and a water bottle. Sadly, in the midst of my pursuit for speed, that sick t-shirt that I had foolishly hung around my sling bag was whisked away by the downhill winds. As much as I wanted to stop and retrieve it, I would have been a mangled mess with handlebars through my neck if I stopped in the middle of the ride. Most importantly however, I held on to my water bottle. The incentive for this staying on your person and making it to the end of the ride was – believe it or not – UNLIMITED BEER. As long as you brought that bottle to the beer tent, they’d fill it as many times as you’d like. The tip jar was all being donated to The People’s Harm Reduction Alliance, a local non-profit, so we all felt a little better about how many trips we were making to the big red tent with the Rainier “R” printed on the front.

When we got a few Rainiers in us, we decided to walk around the party and check out what all these fellow weirdos were up to. From the moment we were all greeted upon arrival by a local party marching band there was no downtime for the senses. We witnessed high flying dare-devilry at the BMX expo (my favorite to photograph), leisurely yet competitive games of bicycle polo, live music, and when the sun went down the industrial park was graced by multiple fire dancers lighting up the crowd all while being encircled by couples on tandem bicycles. After spending some time in the play pen of custom built wonky bikes, some of which were too tall, others too short, hinged in the middle, and backward pedals we took in what I think was the main attraction of the party, the head-to-head games. Right off the rip we saw a vigorous opening of “save the baby/kill the baby” where a doll is propped up between two contestants facing each other riding at full speed to get there first and it’s one’s job to save the baby, and the other…well you can probably guess. Whoever gets there first has to do their job accordingly. The very first round resulted in what everyone in the crowd assumed to be a concussion or at least a hefty bonk, so from then on helmets were required. Other games included a tug of war where contestants had a length of bike tubes strapped around their shoulders and biked away from each other until there was a clear winner, and the night culminated in the main event of tall bike jousting. Fun for the whole family, really. 

Once I split from my main group, who were feeling sleepy and ready to call it a night, I spent a little more time enjoying the sights and sounds and found myself in a nearby neighborhood bar with an old childhood friend of mine from Michigan who moved to the city seven  years ago. We spent the rest of the night catching up and probably had a few too many drinks for me to actually take any good notes from the day’s events, so I hope I’ve properly transcribed the vibe of The Dead Baby Downhill 2025.