Lin Zagorski grew up hearing from her dad about a fabled battle between North and South Austin. She wanted to know if there was ever a tug-of-war between the two sides in the 1980s. So she asked our ATXplained project. Here's the story from maasdinero.
Your curiosity is the source of these stories. So send us your questions about Austin's people, places and culture.The event was the brainchild of Charlie Gandy, who currently does bicycle and pedestrian advocacy and consulting in Seattle."And [I] smoke a little weed.”Tug of Honor organizer Charlie Gandy in Lady Bird Lake in 2018. Proceeds from the event supported the construction of the youth hostel that still stands on the south shores of the lake.
“We started looking at different ways to raise money, and having gone to college here, every weekend there was another bicycle ride or run,” he says. “10Ks were popular then and century rides, and I said, ‘We don’t need to compete against that. Let’s do something different.'”“Have a tug-of-war, North versus South Austin, Bubbas versus Yuppies,” Gandy says.It was a great idea, but there were logistical challenges.
But these are in fairly controlled settings where the force generated does not exceed the rope’s capacity to sustain it.Participants get ready for the Tug of Honor, a 1,000-person tug-of-war contest. Accountant Richard Viktorin was helping the fundraising efforts by monitoring the bottom line. He could only guess a similar catastrophe at Town Lake would sink the youth hostel efforts. They had to find someone who could make it safe — or at least safer.
“We were going to have Bubbas on the South with beer and barbecue and a band,” Gandy said. “On the Northside, for the Yuppies, we were going to have a band also, but we were going to have wine and quiche, and all the signs were going to be in French.” The tug-of-war was considered over when the first 200 people were pulled into the water. There would be a brief rest and then another tug. The first side to win two pulls got bragging rights for the year.
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