Baton Rouge needs this
Office chair racing is a Japan thing that should be replicated on Third Street
Somewhere in Japan, a grown adult in a helmet and knee pads is crouched over an office chair, legs churning, eyes locked on the horizon, racing.
Not metaphorically. Actually racing.
The ISU-1 Grand Prix—Isu meaning "chair" in Japanese, because of course it does—has been sending teams of three through city streets since 2009, when a man named Tsuyoshi Tahara decided the best way to revitalize a local shopping arcade was to block off the road and let office workers go full Le Mans on wheeled desk chairs. Top finishers cover 20-plus kilometers in two hours. The prize is 90 kilograms of rice. In Tokyo, it's five kilograms of tuna. Toyota fields a team. This is real life.
And all we could think was: Third Street. April. A brass band. Local companies trash-talk each other in the sponsor tent. Someone from a tech startup shows up with a gaming chair and gets disqualified on the spot while the crowd erupts.
Baton Rouge has a Fat Boy 5K. It has a Mardi Gras Mambo 10-K. It has a crawfish-eating contest, a gumbo cook-off and roughly 40 festivals that all somehow feel like the same festival. What it does not have is something delightfully, defiantly stupid—the kind of event that makes young professionals feel like this city belongs to them.
The RedEye Races. Third Street. April. Someone make the call.
