Harriers Hit the Pavement and the Sauce

There is a time for fresh air and the company of athletes, and there is a time for a dark, air-conditioned bar and the company of exotic dancers.

For members of a running group called the Hash House Harriers, those times can be one and the same, as they were on a recent sweltering Sunday afternoon in the San Fernando Valley.

The Hash House Harriers--H3, as aficionados know the group in about 1,500 chapters worldwide--are perhaps the only organization anywhere dedicated to jogging, mild public outrages and beer--or, if you choose, none of the above.

The group likes to call itself “a drinking club with a running problem.” But if a Hasher prefers a brisk walk to a slow trot, or bottled water to Bud, well, what the hey. To each his own.

Since its founding in 1938 by British expatriates in what was then Malaya, the Hash has encouraged jovial eccentricity. Feel like racing through malls in running togs, dashing through the lobbies of posh hotels or scrambling through city sewers? Have a yen to join a horde of middle-aged men and women loping city streets in lacy underthings?

That’s just what the Long Beach Hash group does every summer. The annual lingerie Hash draws up to 110 men and women eager to run a loopy five-mile course in their most expressive come-hither wear.

A week before this year’s run, Dick Ames, 50, an automotive engineering manager, wasn’t sure he could top the fishnet body stocking he wore a few years back. He knew, though, that he’d come up with something appropriate.

“This is a big social occasion on the calendar,” said Ames, a leader of the Hash, which was run this year in Huntington Beach. “This gives you the opportunity to set the weight of the world aside for a few hours. It gives you the opportunity to have a second personality.”

So, too, do more workaday Hashes. While huge affairs like San Diego’s annual red-dress run can draw nearly 1,000 participants, Hashers set out in groups as small as a few dozen, week in and week out, across the Southland. Anyone with a pair of old running shoes and a few dollars to cover expenses can join the party. A listing of events is available at https://www.hash.org.

A recent Sunday Hash in Canoga Park started with runners limbering up in a supermarket parking lot. As at other Hashes, the idea was to follow a trail blazed by a “hare,” who sets out 15 minutes before the pack. Toting a sack of flour, the hare marks his path with white splotches on trees, curbs, pavement and patches of grass. The first one to finish is just that--a finisher. In Hashes, there are no winners or losers.

Through the streets, sweating joggers sought the floury blazes, blowing whistles and shouting, “On-on!” whenever one was found.

The trail ran through shaded subdivisions, over fences (“No Trespassing” signs read like welcome mats to Hashers), along the sloping concrete channel of the Los Angeles River. It wound through Pierce College, up a seemingly endless set of stairs, outside a campus theater featuring “The Wizard of Oz,” into an overgrown citrus grove.

Wendy Lascher, a 51-year-old appellate attorney from Ventura, kept up a respectable pace.

“You see places you never knew existed,” she said. “I’ve been in all the storm drains of Ventura.”

Her first taste of Hashing came as she was training for a marathon on the back roads of Ojai. “These two people came out of a creek holding a bag of flour and wearing bunny ears,” she said. “‘Why don’t you come on over?’ they said. “We’ve got some beer in the orchard.”’

Hashers--so named because the founders dubbed their Kuala Lumpur hotel the “hash house”--are a varied lot. In addition to attorneys, the group plodding through the Valley included a school counselor, a professional rose grower, a computer engineer and a management consultant. Many knew each other only by their Hash handles--names often raunchier than those of any porn star.

One man in his 50s, who volunteered only that he was “in corporate finance,” had become the stuff of Hash legend. Picked up for indecent exposure after a Hashers’ hot-tub party at a desert resort, he had to spend a night in jail. His Hashing buddies, not knowing his real name, couldn’t bail him out.

On this baking Sunday in the Valley, he and the other Hashers followed the hare’s trail to a strip club on Winnetka Avenue. Some stayed outside, drinking soda. Paul Stimson sat at the bar, watching a topless dancer who had the faraway look of a woman doing complex equations in her head.

“Got here 40 minutes ago,” said Stimson, a 59-year-old retired fireman, explaining to an exhausted fellow Hasher how he had scrambled out of a ditch and found the bar through street smarts and good luck. “Where have you been?”

Like other Hashes, this one ended with a party--a barbecue featuring zany awards, copious drinks and bawdy songs--the kind sung in summer camp until some counselor rushes in to make the older kids knock it off.

A relentlessly good time was had by all, but Hashing does have its problems. More than one Hasher has been cited for drunk driving on the way home. Although the group makes no apologies for its profound interest in beer, several Hashers said they’ve had to hide car keys from those who have drunk too much.

Even the use of flour has gotten some Hashers in trouble. Two years ago, police in Kansas closed off downtown Wichita during morning rush hour to investigate what they feared was a glob of anthrax-laced powder. It was a thoroughly nontoxic remnant from the previous night’s Hash.

“Because of the excesses of some groups, some communities don’t like Hashers,” said Larry McDowell, the Alabama-based publisher of a Hashing magazine.

“Asia has never had these problems,” he said. “In Okinawa, we once actually ran 50 or 60 Hashers through someone’s house. In places like Singapore and Thailand, Hashing is so popular you have to get on a waiting list. In Indonesia, they draw a weekly crowd of 800. I have no idea how they handle the beer.”