As far as wacky races go, this one clean tickled the funny bone.
Bathtubs on wheels — one of ’em even rigged with torpedo tubes and the Stars and Stripes — were the madcap Maseratis of choice when the Greenpoint Lions Club held its annual tub race in McGorlick Park last Saturday, transforming the playpen into a kooky autobahn for the hootin’ and hollerin’ set lookin’ to squeeze every last drop of fun out of summer.
“I don’t think anyone cared who won or lost,” said Lion George Mueller, who organized the second annual cement sail, consisting of 17 three-person teams — two people inside the bathtub “row” with plungers while one poor sod shoves from behind.
The hardest part was trying not to totter off the 80-yard track inside the park’s Driggs Avenue-Russell Street side while trying to soak the competition with water balloons and screeching up a storm, said Mueller, owner and operator of the neighborhood Stobierski Gardenview Funeral Home. Mueller provided the cast-iron bathtubs — loot he found at a dumpsite on Long Island and remodeled with frames, a lick o’ paint and caster wheels.
“They rotate at 360 degrees so it’s hard to have the tub go straight, which makes it more fun,” he gassed.
The rambunctious racers included teams from Redd’s Tavern and Grandma Rose’s, both of whom won trophies, and the office of Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D–Williamsburg), which lost but received a rubber-duckie as a booby prize. All, however, willingly surrendered their self-respect to raise money for charity.
