Baltimore recently celebrated the bicentennial of "The Star Spangled Banner," the poem that became the United States's national anthem when set to the tune of a drinking song. But one big party a month is not nearly enough for Charm City, so last weekend another Baltimore-born tradition with a somewhat less historic provenance had its turn—the annual Hampden Toilet Races.

The Toilet Race is part of Hampdenfest, an annual one-day street festival named for the historic, once primarily blue-collar neighborhood made semi-infamous by John Waters' 1998 film Pecker (Waters still collects his fan mail via the neighborhood's Atomic Books). A combination of backyard engineering, performance art, and hipster Soap Box Derby, the race pits unpowered vehicles against each other in downhill drag races on Hampden's Chestnut Street. The "racers" must meet six simple requirements:

1. All racers must include at least one clean human defecation device.

2. All racers must be gravity-powered, and may not have any other power or propulsion source

3. The dimensions of a racer may not exceed 5 feet wide, 12 feet long, and 13 feet tall.

4. There are no minimum dimensions for a racer, but it must carry at least one pilot during the race.

5. The racer must be capable of steering both left and right.

6. The racer must have a brake and be capable of stopping without damaging the street

This year's entrants ran the gamut from a pedal-less bicycle with a bedpan welded to its frame to a rolling tiki bar fronted by urinals. The winner, "Stool Pigeon," was a fine-tuned speed machine piloted from a traditional porcelain throne.