Every September, the people assigned to event planning at various city agencies get ready for the West Indian Day Parade, which usually occurs during Labor Day weekend. Calling the event a parade is like calling the Grand Prix a drive around town. It’s more of an all-day event with the parade ending into a street fair atmosphere of food stands, music, and partying. It draws a huge crowd every year making it a function requiring dedicated resources and planning. A major thoroughfare is closed down for the parade and after-party. With all its beautiful pageantry, music, and its famous Caribbean food stands, the festival brings people in from all over the city to join in the Carnivale-like atmosphere. But for a time, there was a far more exciting event that coincided with the West Indian Day festivities: the Gator 2000.

Along with sanitation and police, EMS dedicates personnel specifically to the event, scouting out people looking to work the event on overtime. One of the positions that EMTs can sign up for is the ‘gator’. Gators are specialty units that resemble golf carts. They are put in areas where getting a full sized ambulance through would be problematic. Gators are used at all major events now. They have also evolved to becoming semi-permanent beach response units in the summer, patrolling the boardwalks of Coney Island and the other city beaches, as their wide tires and lighter body make them ideal for reaching beach-goers on the sand.

As part of the planning for the West Indian Day parade, the Brooklyn Borough command center would deliver four or six gator vehicles to our station, as it was the closest the event. They would be parked in a narrow, fenced-in alley next to our building with the keys locked in the lieutenant office. The morning of the parade they were supposed to be picked up by the EMTs who had volunteered for the overtime and driven over to the parade. After the event they would directly return to wherever it is they’re stored the rest of the year.

The first time the Brooklyn division command came up with this sequence of events, placing the gators at our station for easy pick up, the tour one (overnight shift) lieutenants rationalized that it would be terrible if one or more of the gators weren’t operational when the EMTs came to get them in the morning. It was probably only an infinitesimal chance that something would cause the gators to fail on the morning of the event, given that they had probably been driven and tested out before arriving at our station. But gators are subject to the same mechanical maladies that other motorized vehicles are prone to-power issues, tire problems, etc. If one of them were deficient in some way there could be possible negative repercussions. So being diligent, proactive managers, they felt that a road race would be the ideal way to test out these little used vehicles. By putting them through a rigorous, obstacle laden test they would surely be able to handle the mundane driving done at an event where thousands of pedestrians limited their motion. So thanks to some brilliant, forward thinking supervisors, who were probably overlooked time and time again as assets to this service, the first Gator 2000 was inaugurated.

Our race was a true test of operator skill and vehicle mechanics. The course was a quick set around the four blocks that surrounded our station. Two gators would face off with the winner taking on the next challenger until an overall winner was crowned. It was a prestigious title, with personnel who had been later reassigned to other stations, coming back for one big night to defend their title.

Comparisons have been made to NASCAR rallies, but these comparisons are, of course, ridiculous. The Gator 2000 is a far superior race. Professional race cars going around in unobstructed circles along a smooth, well-maintained track is for pansies who can somehow find the redundancy fulfilling. Throw a few random potholes and several mindlessly wandering pedestrians into the mix for a real test of driver prowess.

The streets around the station weren’t usually wide enough to accommodate two gators side by side so the operators had to use their wits, skill, and creativity to pass the lead vehicle, sometimes even cutting across corners. When some do-gooders petitioned to have all the potholes filled and the streets paved one year, we feared our race may fall to the mundane oblivion of our NASCAR cousins. Thankfully, additional obstacles were created, in the form of safety cones randomly placed around the course. It was, however, allowed for the cones to be smashed over, usually. The rules were very fluid and were guidelines mostly, agreed upon by whomever came to work that evening. Things that had been acceptable the year before were often abandoned the next.

Gators have very severe speed restrictions, which were another challenge that a skilled motorist needed to make up for. The talent and ingenuity of the driver was highlighted at the Gator 2000, not a suped-up engine maintained by a mechanical crew on stand-by.

The start of the race had two drivers making an immediate right turn. They went down a long street with a playground on the right. One year an intrepid driver tried to use that area to cut across the field. Had he been successful it would not have breached any kind of ethical code. He would have been celebrated as a smart innovator. But sadly, the playground did not extend to the next block and the delay created a disadvantage he could not recover from.

The next block was a somewhat busy main road during the day. But even at 2 am you might have to compete with drivers of more conventional vehicles who didn’t know they were in a race.

The block after that was again fairly quiet. It was really the last and only place to overtake a gator with an established lead. The next corner led to last lap which involved a very established thoroughfare at all hours. There was only a short drive to the finish but that short drive was the longest part of the race as traffic had to be contended with.

As another credit to the incredible skills displayed at our short-lived event, no accidents or collisions ever occurred, with great surprise. No vehicles were ever damaged either, however the equipment that had been loaded into the gators sometimes became dislodged and toppled to the ground. It was quickly picked up by the excited spectators and replaced in the same arrangement as it had been put on, usually.

NASCAR, and the West Indian Day Parade for that matter, could only dream of being this exciting. Sadly, something this wonderful couldn’t last forever and after only three or four events it was retired when it’s inevitable popularity grew. Some of the higher ups in the Brooklyn division had gotten wind of our vehicular testing methods and decided to curtail innovative system of gator pre-gaming. The winners of our Gator Grand Prix were now legendary for time immortal.