Hundreds of people joined the World Naked Bike Ride Saturday afternoon in a flesh-filled spectacle that marked the 20th year Portlanders have come together for this mass protest and celebration.
World Naked Bike Ride is a global event launched in Spain in 2003. It has roots as a protest against oil dependency and has morphed and grown into a larger movement that encompasses many goals and ideas. Portland has held a version of the ride annually since 2004 (large rides were not organized in 2020 or 2021 due to the Covid pandemic).
This year a new crew of leaders branched off from the group that had been leading the ride since its inception. Compared to previous editions, Saturday’s ride was much smaller and the general vibe as I observed the crowd at the meet-up spot at Colonel Summers Park in southeast was different than years past. There was less partying. It felt more like a gathering than a festival. I didn’t see anyone consuming alcohol. And the usual legions of novice riders who seem to dust off their bikes just for WNBR, mostly stayed home last night.
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At the meet-up spot in Colonel Summers Park, pink vests of volunteers and naked bodies dotted the grassy field as mobile sound systems filled the air with music.
On the park’s pavement next to the tennis courts, a place that has hosted so many bike cultural moments over the years, I met someone named Jasmine wearing underwear and roller skates. She was first inspired to join big group rides after randomly coming across the Opera Ride on her way home from work one day. “I was like, these people look like they’re having a lot of fun,” she said. “So I grabbed my bike and joined them.”
Bill Chin, who I once referred to Pedalpalooza’s iron man for his prolific ride attendance, was also there. The 64-year old said he’s done several naked rides. “I think it’s interesting. It’s fun to be free,” he said, as he stood wearing nothing but shoes. For Bill, the ride is, “all about protest and visibility, body positivity and inclusion.” “I’m an older person, but I fit in just fine with everyone else,” he shared.
That sense of inclusion is important to the organizers of the ride. One of them, Moorland Moss of Nakedhearts:PDX, took to the mic before the ride began. “It’s a huge deal that you decided to come out,” they said to the crowd. “No matter what the reason, you’ve chosen to come out and be naked and vulnerable with strangers. You are all welcome here.”
“I hope that during the ride you can feel a sense of belonging to Portland, America and the year 2024,” Moss continued. “It is increasingly difficult for a lot of us to feel that way… Your body speaks the truth, and we need to stop letting our politicians and all these things lie to us. We need to start listening to us, and I hope you can feel a sense of belonging to yourself, because that’s where the truth lies.”
Moss then shared messages about consent, respect, and safety before handing the mic to three speakers.
Hearing about activism and important issues in speeches before the ride was another big shift from previous years. It underscored a key goal of this year’s naked ride leaders: to make the protest aspect — which had been largely absent from the ride for years — much more prominent.
The first speaker (who didn’t give a name and I forgot to ask) urged the crowd to get engaged with the fight to prevent climate change. “I want to encourage everyone to expand their thinking outward on a more global scale, because our struggles against climate change and fossil fuels here in Oregon, are connected to what’s happening all over the world right now,” she said.
Specifically, she pointed to the global week of protests against Chevron that begins Sunday. The event is organized by the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement that works to negatively impact corporations that are benefiting from what she calls the “Illegal occupation and apartheid and genocide in Palestine.” The speaker said Palestinian sovereignty is a threat to Chevron’s off-shore drilling operations and that all the bombs Israel has dropped in Gaza, “Have contributed more to climate change in the past year than anything else going on.” “That’s something we should all be yelling about today and every day.”
Next up was a woman named Alyssa who shared a poem from “those who are harmed or negatively affected by objectification and sexualization.” “Society and relationships can sometimes either treat us like an expendable commodity or a footnote, while they impose, objectify and sensationalize projected idealism,” she shared. “AKA, it sucks facing life with all this patriarchal bullshit and relentless sexual and societal harassment.”
Then Dineen O’Rourke took the mic. O’Rourke works with the nonprofit 350 PDX and leads their campaign against Zenith Energy. She told the story of how the company came to Portland seven years ago and, “sneakily” bought a facility in northwest Portland to transport and store crude oil and tar sands oil from North Dakota and northern Canada. “Once that happened, we saw quadruple the amount of oil trains coming into this region,” she shared. Despite this, O’Rourke blamed Portland city council members for being “bought out” by Zenith and betraying Portlanders. “It’s despicable,” she said, as she reminded folks to prepare for an upcoming comment period and public hearings by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
Then it was time to ride!
The group massed onto SE 20th and headed toward the wide, wonderful downhill of SE Hawthorne Blvd toward the Willamette River. The bodies flowed and spirits rose as legs powered bikes, boards, and skates. We rolled onto SE 7th southbound as spectators began to spill out of businesses to watch the sea of skin cycle by. Then it was on to the Tilikum Bridge and Naito Parkway.
We rode miles north on Naito until it turns into Front Ave. Our destination was the Zenith Energy Terminal — the facility O’Rourke warned us all about.
“We can’t take 4 ounces of hand sanitizer on a plane,” Moss said as the group neared the location of a planned die-in protest. “But they [Zenith] can bring millions of gallons of chemicals into our city.”
Once the group arrived on the street adjacent to Zenith’s massive oil storage containers and train cars, everyone laid down on the pavement. The music stopped. Skin pressed onto pavement as a planet earth flag waved silently in the breeze.
Cheers and bike bells rang out as protestors stood and mounted their bikes. View a video of the protest on our YouTube channel (it’s age-restricted so I can’t embed it here.)
As the sun set, the ride continued back into downtown Portland. The group rolled over the Morrison bridge into the central eastside and ultimately to the Eastbank Esplanade where dancing, live music, and a rising full moon marked the end of the the ride.