Momentum Magazine, the magazine of record for Bike Culture, has written up the BMF. Here’s the excerpt from the May 2008 issue, which gets distributed in bike towns from Vancouver to LA and beyond.

The san francisco bicycle music festival combines two of the best parts of summer: open air concerts and riding around town with friends, creating a roving, interactive community celebration. On June 21, the longest day of the year, the festival starts at a Farmers’ Market and winds through the streets of San Francisco pumping music with a pedal-powered sound system. Stopping at parks throughout the afternoon, the ride becomes a sunset street party with stilt walkers and fire spinners, and ends at a converted auto body shop turned artists’ studio where the party continues until midnight.

Performers include: the Ginger Ninjas, who recently completed the “Pleasant Revolution,” a bike-based musical tour in the USA and Mexico; didgeridoo-er Hernan Battiato; Justin Anchetta; folksy crooner Sonya Cotton; wordsmith Reztef Ttocs; Shake Your Peace; The Blank Tapes; Honey.Moon.Tree; Thao Nguyen, and Fossil Fool aka Paul Freedman. The festival provides loaner bicycles to musicians who don’t have their own and recruits a team of volunteers with cargo bikes to participate as haulers.

Last year’s festival saw about 2,000 people over the course of its 15-mile ride, with several hundred at each stop. This year, festival organizers are excited to welcome even more participants with music, performances, bike advocacy groups, and food at every stop. —–

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Hey BMF fans, the postcards are finally here. Their big, bold “Bicycle Music Festival” leaves no room for doubt. BMF is coming June 21. People are coming from as far as Seattle and LA. If you’ve got two wheels and two legs in this city, you know you need to be there.

And if you have a hankering to ride around to bike community hotspots like Zeitgeist, Ritual, and Atlas, bike shops like the FreeWheel, not to mention churches, synagogues, festivals, sustainability smokeouts, and night clubs like the Elbo Room and Bruno’s, and help with grassroots publicity for the BMF, please pickup some postcards and help us do distro. email paul@ or gabe@ this esteemed web site if you’re interested.

I got a cool phone call from Keeeth (representing Pedal Express in Berkeley) offering to help carry gear and instruments at BMF. He has a dependable trailer that he used last year to carry most of the drum set. Big thanks Keeeth! And to  all you other potential volunteers… If you’ve got an Xtracycle or a trailer or some other cargo conveyance, please contact Gabe or I.  Gabe@ or Paul@  the address of this esteemed website. It’ll be fun, and it’s for a great cause — bringing music to the streets, parks, and people of the Mission.

Bicycle Music Festival, San Francisco

The san francisco bicycle music festival combines two of the best parts of summer: open air concerts and riding around town with friends, creating a roving, interactive community celebration. On June 21, the longest day of the year, the festival starts at a Farmers’ Market and winds through the streets of San Francisco pumping music with a pedal-powered sound system. Stopping at parks throughout the afternoon, the ride becomes a sunset street party with stilt walkers and fire spinners, and ends at a converted auto body shop turned artists’ studio where the party continues until midnight.

Performers include: the Ginger Ninjas, who recently completed the “Pleasant Revolution,” a bike-based musical tour in the USA and Mexico; didgeridoo-er Hernan Battiato; Justin Anchetta; folksy crooner Sonya Cotton; wordsmith Reztef Ttocs; Shake Your Peace; The Blank Tapes; Honey.Moon.Tree; Thao Nguyen, and Fossil Fool aka Paul Freedman. The festival provides loaner bicycles to musicians who don’t have their own and recruits a team of volunteers with cargo bikes to participate as haulers.

Last year’s festival saw about 2,000 people over the course of its 15-mile ride, with several hundred at each stop. This year, festival organizers are excited to welcome even more participants with music, performances, bike advocacy groups, and food at every stop.

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Four members of SHAKE YOUR PEACE! are biking through Utah, performing with their pedal-powered P/A. Frontman Gabe Dominguez is my BMF co-organizer. SYP! sounded great at the Maker Faire last weekend. Best of luck Gabe, Sonya, Sean, and Scott!

We had 11 bands over two days at last weekend’s Maker Faire. We had three pedal power bikes powering two 400-watt JBL powered speakers. Unlike the ones the Ginger Ninjas took to Mexico, these speakers were powered by traditional amplifiers, not digital amps. So the three pedal power bikes were barely enough. We couldn’t really have kids pedal one of the three, because they just didn’t put out enough power. And you really can’t kick a kid off a bicycle and feel good about yourself at the end of the night. So we said “adults only.” Fortunately for this year’s BMF, it’s looking like we’ll have the Ginger Ninjas in effect, with their Pleasant Revolution sound system, road-tested after 5 months through Mexico.

Anyway, there are some great shots from the Faire on Flickr. Hope you dig it.