This year’s festival is Permitted! We are proceeding with the blessing of the city and have even received honors from two of SF’s Supervisors, Eric Marr and Ross Mirkirimi. Many thanks to them and to you for showing up on your bike, ready to power SF’s greenest and most dynamic music festival ever!
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Highlights include:
Sean Hayes — One of SF’s most beloved rockers. Sean stuck with us last year when our arrival at Dolores was delayed by two hours, even playing acoustic for the waiting crowd, then busted out with an awesome pedal powered set. Be there to pedal power Sean and his band this time as he breaks it down in the hot sun at Speedway Meadows! See Sean and Ezra Lipp performing “turnaroundturnmeon” at last year’s festival.
To fully enjoy the Bicycle Music Festival you’ve got to try it by bike. That way you get to see the LiveOnBike performances between festival venues.
If you are a fan or musician needing a bike:
You may not have a bike in good working order. Some of you have extra bikes.You can post comments to this post if you need a bike or have a bike. Hopefully, bike connections will be made.
You can also rent a bike on the Day of BMF.
Avenue Cyclery has agreed to allow BMF fans a 24 hour rental cycle, which means you can stay late and enjoy the night ride, then return the bike the next morning, on Sunday (June 21st).
In addition to that, thanks to Andrew at Avenue Cyclery, they have offered a 15% off discount for BMF heads!
They also told me that if we wanted to we could reserve bikes, they would just need to know what size and how many. Let me know
Street Address:
Avenue Cyclery
756 Stanyan Street
San Francisco, Ca 94117
phone: 415-387-3155
fax: 415-387-0445
If you are a roadie needing a cargo bike:
Thanks to Rock The Bike, SFBC, Yuba, and Xtracycle, we have a dozen Sport Utility, Cargo Bikes, and cargo trailers on loan this year. If you want to use one of these to fulfill your Roadie responsibilities, leave a comment on this post.
Radio Africa is this year’s BMF food vendor!
Radio Africa is one of San Francisco’s favorite nomadic chefs.
Proceeds benefit the Festival!
here is the menu:
- Edamame hummus with green olive oil
- Moroccan chicken tagine with preserved lemon and couscous
- Ethiopian vegetable wot of green beans, potatoes, carrots, swiss chard, white corn
and chermoula
donation $8 for all or $6 each
And don’t forget to bring your own cup for a Bike Blended Smoothie! We’ll have several slammin’ flavors. Everyone please send out for a hot day! Thanks to Smoothie Captain Sammey and our other smoothie crewmembers.
The two-bike pedal power system shown above was our trusty backup system at Maker Faire this past weekend. Both bikes use powerful hub generators rated at far higher wattages than a human can generate. This means that we’re using them in a range at which they run cool, calm, and collected. They feel very smooth because there’s no friction involved. Just magnets and ball bearings.
Not shown this photo is the Biker Bar, Rock The Bike’s newest pedal power system. It’s got tremendous potential, but has had mechanicals at its first two outings. The plan is to fix the mechanical issues in the next 3 days, test it out at the Youth Unity Summit this Saturday, our last outing before BMF.
“For those who love bikes and biking, the local cycle calendar is full of flavourful events. February brings Love on Wheels, the 1970s-style dating game and party hosted by the SFBC. Easter is the date set for the Bring Your Own Big Wheel Ride down Lombard, San Francisco’s “crookedest street.” In April, local cycling heroes are cheered at the SFBC’s Golden Wheel awards. May’s Bike to Work Day rewards tens of thousands of commuters with coffee, treats, and more at 25 energizer stations throughout the city. In June you can ride with the Bicycle Music Festival and help pedal their human-powered PA system.more…
We couldn’t have picked a better day to celebrate the first ever Southbay Bicycle Music Festival, July 19th, 2008. On a warm sunny afternoon we met at Hermosa Pier, sang happy birthday to Cruiser of the week “Tony’, then we headed off towards the Esplanade cruisin’ to the Beatles ‘Magical Mystery Tour’. (What can I say, it felt like we were heading off to Woodstock so the mix was leaning a little towards the ’60’s for this ride)We had a few newbies and some returning youngsters like 2 year old Lola Martin and her 3 1/2 year old sister Sophia, who came with their dad Roger. (Sophia and Lola are former Southbay Cruisers of the Week’ as well.)
As we made our way to Valley Park we were greeted by Makena, one of our featured artists, all set and ready to perform for us thanks to help from ‘Amy ‘The Wonder Woman’ who missed the ride so that she could decorate the park with posters and banners and help the musicians set up. She was also helped by Mary Caldera-who along with Shawnee made two awesome posters just for this occasion. (See pics on www.southbaycruiser.com)
After settling down to a barbecue, Makena kicked off the evening’s performances which included some classic and orignal hawaiian music which inspired us to get up and dance. All the way from Hilo, Hawaii, Makena was awesome, feeding our souls with island tunes like ‘Ulupalakua’ and ‘Waikiki Hula’ It was sure nice to finish a ride in a park and be greeted by Hawaiian music. This duo has performed on MTV and around the world and it was awesome to have them kick things off! They even taught us a little about Hawaiian culture between sets.
As the evening set in we lit our bonfire and were mesmerized by Manhattan Beach’s Delfina. Although only 18 years old, and with only one year of guitar/singing behind her, you’d think she’d been playing since the day she was born. Filling up our souls with stirring original tunes like ‘April Eyes’, and ‘Ritmo Porteno’, this Argentian born rising star had us all on the edges of our rocks around the bonfire. Were it not for the fear that our shared battery powered amps might run dry, she could have performed for us all night long.
Next came The 3 Heads. Acoustic rock legends in their hometown of Eureka,CA, these four took our makeshift stage around the bonfire, and picked up on what Makena and Delfina had started. Belting out original tunes ‘Undertow’, ‘Holiday’, and their anthem ‘World Was Ours’, these guys really helped set an intimate mood around the campfire with their acoustic guitars, bass, and cajon. Their jokes between songs were even more entertaining. At one point they broke into a spur of the moment spontaneous ‘Southbay’ rap song at the end. We were even entertained to one encore performance although, we would have loved to heard them play a few more.
We finished off the night with some karaoke performances including a few from Victor and his son singing some classic Doors. It’s hard to follow up to acts like Makena, Delfina, and The 3 Heads, but we had to try, and we had fun doing it too.
Last but certainly not least, we helped benefit ‘A Window Between Worlds’, (www.awbw.com) a local Venice,CA based group that helps abused women and children get a second chance on life by providing then with safe housing and an art healing program. We brought them canned foods, art supplies, clothing, and $20 in cash donations.
We are looking forward to the next Southbay Bicycle Music Festival. A year seems a little long to wait, so we might have this become a semi annual or possibly even quarterly event.
This year’s festival is Permitted! We are proceeding with the blessing of the city and have even received honors from two of SF’s Supervisors, Eric Marr and Ross Mirkirimi. Many thanks to them and to you for showing up on your bike, ready to power SF’s greenest and most dynamic music festival ever!
