(Photo © J. Maus)
People from all over the world and still buzzing about Portland’s World Naked Bike Ride that happened Saturday night. By nearly all accounts it was a another solid success.
Before this one becomes history, there are a few things I wanted to share.
“We want to give our thanks to Bridgeport, the City of Portland, the Portland Police Bureau, Mark Ginsberg, She Bop, and the wonderful volunteers who made this possible.”
— Chris McCraw, volunteer organizer
First, please take a moment to appreciate the amazing volunteers who gave hundreds of hours to make it happen. Coordinated through grassroots bike fun group Shift, they spent months figuring out all the details so thousands of people could ride bikes naked and take part in this amazing community event unlike any other.
One of those volunteers, Chris “Fool” McCraw reckons he spent about 150 hours planning the event. Not looking for any accolades himself (his friend told me that figure), Chris wants to give thanks to others.
“We want to give our thanks to Bridgeport [after-party sponsor], the City of Portland, the Portland Police Bureau, Mark Ginsberg [partner in law firm that sponsored the ride], She Bop [ride sponsor], and the wonderful volunteers who made this possible.”
Another volunteer was Meghan Sinnott (who is also behind PDXByBike and many other awesome things). Meghan says they’ve gotten a huge response for the official World Naked Bike Ride poster and they’d be happy to sell you one (proceeds go to Shift and the WNBR) Here’s how to get one:
- They will be sold for $10 at the Multnomah County Bike Fair on Saturday, June 25th.
- You can email wnbr2011 [at] shift2bikes [dot] org to make an order
- They’ll be available for purchase at Bikeasaurus (1337 SE MLK Jr. Blvd) soon.
To get one of the official t-shirts that were sold at the event, you can also email wnbr2011 [at] shift2bikes [dot] org.
In our final bit of Naked Bike Ride news bits, Meghan told us this morning that local filmmaker Joe Biel filmed the entire ride last night. He’ll work with volunteers to count every person in hopes of making an official application to the Guinness Book of World Records.
I’m looking forward to the official tally after last year’s 13,000 estimate was questioned by many. My guess is that there were 8-9,000 people on the ride Saturday night.
Thanks again to everyone that helps make this ride possible. I just write about it and show up with my camera, but I know how hard they work. I also know that we shouldn’t take for granted how lucky we are to have a city that lets this happen so smoothly.