Pre-ride crowd on the Park Blocks in 2013.
(Photo by M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Oregon’s biggest pay-what-you-will bike ride of the year, which also happens to be the largest clothing-optional bike ride in the world, will start rolling June 7 at 8 p.m.

The 2014 edition of Portland’s World Naked Bike Ride will begin in a new location: Normandale Park on NE Halsey between 55th & 57th Avenues. It’s a few blocks northwest of the 60th Avenue Green/Red/Blue MAX stop.

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Photo by Alex Milan Tracy

The official count is in: Portland’s World Naked Bike Ride broke a record this year with an estimated 8,150 participants.

The last two years, ride organizers put the number of riders at 4,500 and 4,200 people respectively — so this is a substantial increase. The count was performed by volunteers who sat down tonight and watched video taken of the ride last Saturday. Ride organizers installed an overhead video camera on SW Jefferson just past the starting point of the route specifically to document the turnout (there has been a bit of controversy in the past about inaccurate counts, especially the inflated numbers that were originally reported for the 2010 edition).
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Something new this year: we’re using Storify, an embeddable social media aggregator, to round up some of our favorite social media chatter about Saturday’s naked ride — including a few from other WNBRS around the world.

Check below the fold for a selection of tweets, videos and photos from the event.

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Photos by Alex Milan Tracy.

In the future, the 2013 World Naked Bike Ride will be remembered as the year things got sophisticated.

Thanks to a permit to gather in the South Park Blocks and a deal with the Portland Art Museum to allow entrance to their bike-design exhibit Cyclepedia for the unique fee of $1 per piece of clothing, this year’s WNBR started with a stiff dose of urban energy and culture.

Check out lots of photos by our photographer Alex Milan Tracy after the jump.
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Photo by Alex Milan Tracy.

It’s safe to say Portland’s never seen a World Naked Bike Ride quite like this.

The ride started in the South Park Blocks, surrounded by Portland’s civic institutions, and it totally transformed the atmosphere before the ride, both for eager riders and curious onlookers. Unlike in past years, when the ride’s begun on the Central Eastside industrial district, the energy was arriving from all directions. Happy people in various states of undress swarmed through the trees of the park blocks and swamped the surrounding streets.

The fact that onlookers knew just where the ride began seemed to slow things down. The first couple of turns for riders became bottlenecks when mostly-well-meaning pedestrians left the curbs to offer high fives.
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(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

1) It’s not about sex. The WNBR is about loving your body, loving low-car or car-free life, demonstrating the power of bikes in mass motion, metaphorically conveying the vulnerability of people on bikes, experiencing the city in a new way and loving the friends and new friends you’ll see before, during and after. And although all of those things are almost certainly good for your sex life, you’ll be surprised how much fun nudity (or near-nudity) is without sex.

2) Nobody cares that your body is not perfect. Nobody’s body is perfect, so for one night, everybody’s body gets to be perfect.

3) Read the fine print. We did a post on Thursday with all the details. I really liked the Mercury’s brief Naked Biking 101 article, too — look for it in their PedalPalooza calendar.

4) It’s okay not to be into naked bike riding. WNBR is not everybody’s thing and you should not feel bad if it’s not your thing. But you definitely shouldn’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

5) This thing is going to be off the chain. The World Naked Bike Ride hasn’t seen this beautiful of weather in years. The crowd is going to be a sight to see.

Have fun, everybody. BikePortland’s coverage begins very early tomorrow morning.

The 2011 naked ride packs Portland’s inner east side. (Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

At least five thousand people are expected to hit the streets on bikes Saturday night in Oregon’s biggest pay-what-you-wish bike ride of the year.

And maybe you’ve heard: Most of us will be mostly naked.

Naked biking and Pedalpalooza have gone together since 2002, when a group of visiting Canadians spliced the bare-as-you-dare tradition into Portland’s DNA. It’s since evolved into the World Naked Bike Ride, one of many happening around the world on Saturday.

This year’s WNBR (which is, for the record, 100 percent legal) will begin on the South Park Blocks in downtown Portland. No registration is required. The pre-ride is being hosted by the Portland Art Museum, which is offering ride participants a truly memorable deal: admission to their bike-design exhibit Cyclepedia for only $1 per article of clothing.

“The barer you are, the cheaper it is,” says ride organizer Meghan Sinnott.

As of Thursday morning, the weather forecast for Saturday night is 68 degrees with zero chance of rain.
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Coming to the South Park Blocks.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

The South Park Blocks, home to Portland’s grand theater venues, museums, and churches, will host the 2013 Portland World Naked Bike Ride on June 8th. Ride organizers have gained the blessing of the Portland Art Museum who will host the ride in the blocks directly in front of their building on SW Park between 9th and 10th avenues.

The Art Museum sees the Naked Bike Ride as a way to heighten awareness for their Cyclepedia: Iconic Bicycle Design exhibition that also happens open on June 8th. Here’s the official word from PAM’s Director of Public Relations Beth Heinrich: (more…)

Still from Bare As You Dare.
(Photo: NW Documentary)

Bare As You Dare, a new documentary that goes behind the scenes of Portland’s annual World Naked Bike Ride will debut at Filmed by Bike later this month. The film was created by Ian McCluskey, Lilah Cady, and Jenn Byrne from NW Documentary, a Portland-based non-profit that teaches the “art of non-fiction storytelling.”

Bare As You Dare is a 17 minute film that features interviews with the volunteers who put on the ride. It also follows several subjects to show the diverse backgrounds of the people that participate. According to a statement from Filmed by Bike, the film, “follows a variety of subjects from a cancer survivor to a reserved homebody, who are surprisingly open in sharing their personal stories and motivation for participation.”
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Rolling across the Hawthorne Bridge.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland

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