By snoadmin
One pushcart team will be named the winner of the Push Cart Grand Prix at the Cal State Long Beach Kaleidoscope Festival and Open House on Saturday, which has been a tradition on campus since 2001.
The Push Cart Grand Prix will be held on campus in Lot 3 behind Brotman Hall. The races will run from noon to 3 p.m. and because it is a bracketed event, the time is split up into different heats for the preliminaries, quarterfinals, semifinals and the finals for the remaining two teams left to race. Each team is competing to win the fastest time, and the winner will be awarded the speed prize.
Other awards that will be given out are the spirit prize, which will be voted on aspects such as the team with the most chants or which is the most crowd-pleasing. The theme prize will be given to the team that is the most creative, and one that demonstrates the most effort into the theme. There will be three judges voting for all of these prizes.
John-David Minjares, Kaleidoscope coordinator, said that the prizes that will awarded to each team will benefit its organization in some way.
All participants are from student clubs and organizations and various departments from CSULB.
Last year marked the return of the pushcart races after it had been off the scene for a couple of years due to funding problems. Leland Vail, a professor in the music department and an undergraduate adviser, is the director of Kaleidoscope and said the idea for the pushcart races had been around a long time. He said it actually first started as a Be Tobacco-Free Campaign, with related paraphernalia to promote being tobacco-free.
After the pushcart races being gone for so many years, it finally came back in 2007 and is now a huge event, where sponsors such as the Division of Student Services, Saturday Night Magazine, Geico Auto Insurance and Crunk!!! energy drink are contributing sponsors.
Saturday Night Magazine has signed on bands for the day such as Bill Boy on Poison and After Midnight.
