This Week in the Mercury
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Bikes Tweeting the World's Largest Naked Bike Ride
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 1:00 PM
Well that was a thrill. Last night, thousands of naked, semi-naked and body paint-slathered Portlanders gathered under the Hawthorne Bridge for the city's seventh annual World Naked Bike Ride.
One volunteer estimated the crowd at 13,000 but that sounds way too high to me—it felt to me like there were about as many people at the start point as there were last year, putting the number of riders at more like 5,000. Either way, the ride is very likely the world's largest naked bike ride and took 30 to 40 minutes to pass the cheering throngs gathered along the nine mile route that snaked through Old Town, Broadway and Southeast bar scenes on 28th, Belmont and Hawthorne.
Like last year, the Portland Police escorted the ride, blocking intersections for the entire route. That, plus the sheer mass of cheering people, kept altercations to a minimum and (from my perspective at least) the ride seemed very safe.
One person was hit by a car on Hawthorne, but reports from the scene say the injury wasn't very bad. An ambulance was at the crash very quickly.
The only questionable part, in my mind, was the Pervo Gauntlet at the beginning of the ride, where a handful guys set up their zoom lenses along the first part of the route. But the percentage of pervos among cheering fans (some of whom stripped in solidarity while exiting bars or cars) was a tiny fraction. Some participants have already uploaded photos of the ride, which you can check out on Flickr.
Anyway, I rounded up some other Portlanders' thoughts from the Twitters this morning. Here's what people are saying about the ride:
Below the cut: not everyone likes the naked bike ride! Check out an anonymous protest sign found on a North Portland telephone pole bearing the phrase, "Naked bike riding shows how much you need to reprent and turn to the Lord Jesus." I'll get right on that. After I shake this hangover.
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Naked road rash - OUCH!!!! If there was a significant chance I'd fall, I'd not only wear clothes, but probably motorcycle leathers...
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Also, I think there were a hell of a lot of pervy dudes with cameras. It totally creeped me out.
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Now if only the proud message approver had remembered to leave his name--kinda effs up the "proud" bit. Whoopsie!
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http://vimeo.com/12729995
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can't prove Portland's naked bike ride is the largest in the world nor can event organizers make optimum planning decisions for the ride.
The need for an reliable and accurate head count is what prompted my
efforts to get a tally for this year's ride. That talley resulted in
an estimate of about 13,000 participants. The estimate was not made
without reservations and accuracy concerns remain (see the link to the nerdy and wordy breakdown of how the estimate was derived). However, it is my
hope that the snags in this year's approach can be worked out so that
next year's ride can have a formal, accurate and reliable count that
allows Portland to officially claim the title as having the world's
largest naked bike ride.
For details on how the estimate was derived, please refer to:
http://www.vanvoice.com/blogentry/21105-da…
Finding a way to get a highly accurate count of the thousands of WNBR
participants is proving to slippery.
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