Mystery Photo #50: Children racing at Bayfront Park
The fundamentals of what’s happening in this old photo are fairly simple. It’s obviously shot at Bayfront Festival Park in the days of the old yellow canvas tarp-covered stage, prior to the 2001 construction of the 76-foot-tall steel-canopy pavilion that stands today. And clearly the image shows kids running a race.
So the mysteries are: What race is this? Can we zero in on a date or are we limited to the vague guess that it’s the mid 1990s?
It could be Wednesday Night at the Races hosted by the Young Athletes Foundation and Grandma’s Marathon. Wednesday Night at the Races are free races for youth 14 and; under and are held on six consecutive Wednesday evenings in July and August. The race locations switch each week. However, the races are no longer at Bayfront.
I didn’t realize Wednesday Night at the Races had been going on that long, but indeed the series was happening back in the 1990s. So that could be what we’re looking at here.