European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 28, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Above a Herder with a stick keeps four hulls on the move runners May use Only rolled up newspapers to swat the animals. At right a Man who fell beneath the bulls hooves sports his Quot red badge of  the a Mac of the by Vince Crawley Niernberg Bureau by the third Day of the san Ferrin festival the Spanish City of Pamplona smells like an open sewer a town of a half million drunks and too few toilets. The reason people Stampede to Pamplona for the annual festival july 7-14 this year is of course the event known As the running of the bulls. With the possible exception of dancing in the new year atop the Berlin Wall running with the bulls in the streets of Pamplona is rumoured to be one of the weirdest wildest parties on the planet. Quot it s like new year s eve for a whole week Quot a londoner named Garth said at last year s festival Quot and i Haven t seen a cop in sight. Anything  is sort of an annual Woodstock for soccer hooligans. Quot anything Quot includes drinking dancing All night leaping from towers into the crowds below brawling playing Mellow guitar. And the bulls. One brochure claims that each of the seven Days of the festival begins promptly at 8 . With the ceremonial Stampede through downtown. This is a lie the morning Bull run signals bedtime for most folks a the end of the events not the beginning. Tickets for the actual bullfights Are sold out years in Advance. So by 9 . Or so the commoners Drift off to sleep holing up in doorways gutters lawns ledges trash heaps intersections. They doze through the hot Day and Wake up sometime in the afternoon when the All night partying resumes. This lifestyle is hard on the system. Quot it starts big then Dies off Quot said Garth who appeared to be about 20. Quot All the tourists get exhausted. By Day seven most tourists Are  Garth said he was in Pamplona Quot looking for  and of course the bulls. Every morning for a week a half dozen bulls and about 1,000 drunks braggart and people like Garth go wind sprinting along a half mile of narrow Cobblestone streets. The path leads from Point a the City Corral to Point a the Bull fighting Arena where at left medics tend to a trampled runner after the bulls have passed. A amps photos by l. Emmett Lewis or fans scale the Arena s outer Wall. A Young Bull with blunted horns sends a Tormentor to the ground inside the Arena. People Jam the Arena a some in the stands some in the ring a before the Young bulls and cows Are released. They Are ritually slaughtered. The bulls that is. The drunks and swagger ers live to run again. Well m a since 1591 the bulls have gored 52 people to death according to one newspaper account. About a Quarter of those runners have died since the mid-1920s, which Means that the suicidal novelist Ernest Hemingway could be held partly a Pon ble. His Book the Sun also rises glorified the la Bent party a gtd put Pamplona on the world map. Veteran runners the Little old Spanish men who Are actually trying to conduct an ancient ritual among All these clamouring Gawker say that the out of towners k in dangerous. They say the visitors panic and bottleneck trampling one another during that instant of madness when they realize that it s for real not just a Page out of a Book. Bull running is a Rush a drug. Some people do it once experimentally. Others get addicted and find themselves returning year after year for the strange thrill of being one unarmed Macho Man pitted against a few tons of 30 Mph Steak. Some women run too. Not Many. When his adrenaline is really pumping a Bull can get from Point a to Point b in just under a minute. Some lose their balance on the cobblestones slipping and sliding into the Bowling pin people around them spectators Are lined up behind double barriers along the narrow streets. Ambulances Are parked strategically along the route. The bulls Stampede past in about four seconds followed by some tired looking cows. Then the medics run out to treat the wounded. By 8 01 . It s Over leaving another 23 hours and 59 minutes for partying. If you want Good seals to watch the bulls pass you need to arrive at about 6 . And Don t sit on the first Barrier it s reserved for press photographers and police forcibly evict All others. The second outer Fence is up for grabs first come first serve. Then you just sit there and wait for two hours for the split second sobering of the bulls. For sheer fascination a madness that you can sit continued on i age it stripes Magazine june 28, 1990 june 28, 1990 stripes Magazine