Running of the Bull, American Style (i.e., Tame)

(by Frank Bruni nytimes.com 7-12-98)

 

Pumped up by the sort of foolishness that flourishes at bachelor parties as nowhere else, Jim Hamill and several buddies interrupted their weekend-long debauchery in Las Vegas to drive about an hour northeast to a dusty ranch here for what they expected to be the wildest, craziest adventure imaginable.

Along with more than 600 other people, they entered a long, narrow pen this morning to be chased by, and run with, massive bulls weighing up to 1,500 pounds, an event meant to evoke the violent, sometimes lethal rampage every July in the streets of Pamplona, Spain. Mr. Hamill said he had figured it would be good for a flood of sweet adrenaline. But he was forced to make do with a trickle.

''It wasn't exactly what I expected,'' Mr. Hamill, a Los Angeles police officer, conceded moments after his brush with the bulls was over. ''One minute the bulls were behind us, then they were gone. You couldn't really even see them through the dust.''

After all the chest thumping by promoters and hand wringing by animal welfare advocates, all the swaggering by those who planned to participate and gawking by those who stormed the sidelines to watch, the first ''Running of the Bulls'' in the United States was a relatively tame spectacle, less bloody rampage than bizarre promenade.

Twice from 10:30 to 11:30 A.M., over a dozen bulls were let loose at the start of a fenced, curving track of powder-dry land, their quarter-mile path to a snack of alfalfa blocked by hundreds of whooping, hollering thrill seekers with red sashes tied around their heads or waists.

 

And twice the bulls rushed by them in a matter of seconds, kicking up clouds of dirt but exhibiting little interest in anything other than the meal at the end of the line. Many participants were left to saunter through a brown fog as they listened to the murmur of distant hoof beats.

''It wasn't running with the bulls -- it was walking with the cows,'' groused Chris Carroll, a Las Vegas police officer.

The temperature was more than 100 degrees, but Mr. Carroll had barely broken a sweat.

''I was going out of my way to try to get bull contact and I couldn't even get near one,'' he said. ''This is a disappointment bordering on heartbreak.''

That assessment seemed a bit harsh. Orderly as most of the bulls were, one did press a horn into the back of a man. He had a perfectly round hole in his T-shirt and a thick red abrasion between his shoulder blades to show for it.

''I got gored,'' Justin Hayes, a writer for Las Vegas Weekly, said in a disbelieving voice as he held his tattered shirt in his hands. ''I guess I'm the only one."

 

Mr. Hayes, who was planning to write a first-person account of his participation in the event, did not even need stitches. Another man who was knocked down and run over by either a bull or the crowd was bruised and taken to a nearby medical clinic for X-rays, which showed no broken bones nor other serious injuries.

More than a dozen other participants and spectators were treated at the scene for heat exhaustion and other minor injuries, according to Dr. Philip Hartwell, the chief medical officer on the scene.

The principal organizer of the Running of the Bulls, a Phoenix rodeo promoter named Phil Immordino, had shopped the idea around to cities like Phoenix and Long Beach before finally finding a taker in Mesquite, a desert outpost of 10,000 people, several golf courses and a few enormous casinos.

Many Mesquite officials said that they wanted to advertise their city and put it on the map, while others countered that this particular strategy was imprudent and reckless.

 

State officials concurred, denying Mr. Immordino the use of Mesquite Boulevard, a state road running through the center of town. The event was moved three miles east to a private ranch on the Arizona border.

But that did nothing to address the concerns of animal welfare advocates, who said it was cruel to incite bulls into a panicked run simply for human entertainment. These advocates said they distrusted Mr. Immordino's assurance that the bulls would not be poked, prodded or pinched into a frenzy.

Although it was difficult to get a clear look at the bulls in the starting pen, they seemed to have been set off by nothing more than the movements of men on horseback herding them toward the participants.

The majority of these people were men between the ages of 20 and 40, with more tattoos and better physiques than any random sampling of the male population. They each paid $50, signed liability waivers and perused a sheet of tips on preparation that began, ''Check your health insurance.''

 

Many said they loved taking risks. Many said they were drawn by the superlatives surrounding the event -- the first, the only -- and the bragging rights it would give them.

Many simply relished the nuttiness of it all. One man wore his own set of plastic horns; another had made a T-shirt with targets painted on the front and back and the legend: ''Give beef a chance.''

Dan Sullivan, a waiter in a Mexican restaurant in Las Vegas, said he might have tempted fate with all the sizzling beef fajitas he had served.

''I'm going to put a little note on my back saying I'm a vegetarian,'' Mr. Sullivan said before the event.

After, he pronounced himself duly exhilarated by the nearness of the dread beasts, saying: ''Remember how I told you I wanted to feel that thumping of the heart that people in Pamplona talked about? Well, I felt it: boom, boom, boom.''

 

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https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/12/us/running-of-the-bull-american-style-ie-tame.html?scp=1&sq=Running%20of%20the%20Bull,%20American%20Style%20%28i.e.,%20Tame%29%20&st=cse