The 2010 video has some interviews with Paul Freedman about the philosophy behind the festival:

This year’s festival is coming together in a beautiful way. Here are some of the highlights for Gabe and me.

True Festival Sound — We’ll have a 14-bike Pedal Powered Stage, a mini-Line Array suspended from a 18′ bamboo tripod affectionately known as the ‘Tarzan Tower’. A Line Array is the hanging vertical cluster of speakers favored by most Live-Sound engineers for larger outdoor concerts.  This rig, and our twin 1000-watt Pedal Powered Subwoofers, will take our sound to a new place this year. Most fans will be pleasantly surprised by the presence of the sound. And still 100% Pedal Power! Also, there will be 4 monitors for musicians to hear themselves, an expanded sound board, proper equalizer, etc. Our festival sound crew has been extremely active at events like the Bay Rising! tour and the Maker Faire.

Good Food! We will have food from Hot Bike! a local chef who carries all her kitchen supplies by bike. But don’t worry, she can turn out tacos and gourmet grilled cheeses with ease thanks to her loyal kitchen crew and gigantic two-burner stove.

Awesome local music. Please check out all the bands on the lineup by clicking BMF 2012 above on the left. Truly an exciting range of local talent including some major artists and up and comers. There are no dead spots in the lineup! Please come ON TIME so you don’t miss the earlier bands, Lia Rose starts at 12 with her full band Tiny Television. Major Powers, performing at 1PM, knocked our socks off at Maker Faire with their tight harmonies. Oona, performing at 2PM, is raring to unleash her stage energy and her new single, Kaleidoscope. Rupa & the April Fishes, performing at 3. At the night venue, we’ll have a performance by Birds & Batteries, a band that’s truly tearing it up in the SF Rock scene.

Return of SHAKE YOUR PEACE!  A special shoutout here to my co-director Gabe. His band SHAKE YOUR PEACE! performed at the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Bicycle Music Festivals, then went into artistic hiatus for 2 years, only to emerge stronger than ever as an 8-person group. Tight arrangements and afro-cuban percussion elements make it danceable, while Gabe’s humor and message pull the heart strings. Yeow! Don’t miss them in the sunset slot at Showplace Triangle (8PM).

Next level LiveOnBike FM broadcast. We’ll be using a pirate radio station with a 8′ antenna that will reach the entire ride. Cruise near a sound bike and enjoy Live Music.

Redundant Pedal Power systems. Between Rock The Bike and SHAKE YOUR PEACE! we will have 3 Utility Boxes at BMF. If there’s a problem with one, we can drop in a backup. 1 of the 3 is going to be used for Tweener sets while roadies are setting up the next band. Our gear was quite reliable at the Maker Faire where it ran cool calm and collected all weekend with audio at festival levels.

These photos were taken by a number of super talented photographers. Click on the photos to view credit info on Flickr.

Add your own photos!  Join the BMF Flickr group to add photos to the pool!

Follow BMF on Twitter to get live route and performance updates all day!

Click here for an easy way to embed this map into your blog or website

Route Map

View Bicycle Music Festival, June 18th 2011 in a larger map

Here’s the Route Turn Sheet:

Bicycle Music Festival Turnsheet – June 18th 2011

BEGIN 5pm — Old Cabin Meadow, GGP (JFK & Stow Lake)

1. West on JFK
2. left on Kezar Dr
3. merge into right lane
4. right on Stanyon
5. left on Haight
6. left on Masonic
7. right on Oak
8. right on Scott
9. left on Haight
10. right on Steiner
11. cross Duboce
12. continue on Sanchez
13. left on 18th
14. right on Dolores
15. left on 19th
16. right on Valencia
17. left on 24th
18. left on Florida
19. right on 17th
20. left on Wisconsin
21. cross 16th, enter parklet by Cafe

ARRIVE 6pm — Showplace Triangle (16th & Wisconsin)

Volunteer! Wanna be a Bike Roadie? Rock the Merch Table or the Smoothie Station? Be a Golden Goose? Perhaps you’d like to post fliers or help test/build equipment before the day-of? Fill out the Volunteer Signup Form to let us know how you’d like to help out. Thank you!! *** *** Say Something! Blog about BMF! Tweet about BMF! Ride through the streets shouting BMF! June 18, 2011. Follow BMF on Twitter and get live updates on the day of the festival. Invite your friends to the FB event and become FB friends forever.

Make Something!

• Make your own BMF Spoke Cards – Click Here for printable image

Bring Something!

• Bring cash for the bands – its how they get paid and a great way to show support.
• Bring your own cup for a Pedal Powered Smoothie & Ice Cream
• Read up on how to be a Great Pedal-Powered Event Participant

Take Something!

• Post your Pics! Add your pics to the BMF Flickr pool
• Pack-In Pack-Out - BMF is a “leave no trace behind” event. Please help by picking up your trash and leaving the event sites better than you found them.

Give Something!

• Become a Sponsor of BMF – BMF is made possible by the support of some wonderful local individuals, businesses, and organizations. We encourage support via Financial Contributions or in-kind materials/services to help support the Bicycle Music Festival. All Donations are Tax-Deductible! E-mail Jeff@bicyclemusicfestival.com for more info.

Represent! Calling All Bay Area Community Organizations

Collaborate with us! Do you have a cool community activity that we can tie-in to the BMF like a farm workday, social activity like a capture the flag game that you and your friends are organizing, or want to table for your non-profit organization at the BMF? Let’s do it! Contact jeff@bicyclemusicfestival.com.

Scouting Locations

Please let us know if you’ve found an awesome spot for a future pedal-powered concert. Email Gabe@bicyclemusicfestival.com

BE THERE for the best damn show of the year!

Our featured LiveOnBike performers, the Ginger Ninjas and SF opera singers, will be standing on an 8′ wide mobile stage towed by an electric cargo bike. We’ve been wanting to elevate our LiveOnBike performers and provide a more comfortable performance platform. The new stage will allow our LiveOnBike acts to sing, dance, and get our festival rocking all the way to our night venue. See lots of great LiveOnBike videos at LiveOnBike.com

Better sound! More Pedal Power generators!

Our Pedal Powered Stage will be twice as powerful as last year’s! 12 pedalers will allow us to run a 4000-watt system, complete with a dedicated subwoofer for rich, danceable bass! Our recent experience building a 16-bike system with a group in New York has shown that more generators makes a big difference. So we’re building up new ones just in time and calling out to the Pedal Power community for more.

Ice Cream Bike!

Rock The Bike recently finished an amazing Pedal Powered Ice Cream maker for a creamery in Brooklyn, NY. We’re finishing up a second Ice Cream Bike in time for this Saturday’s festival. We’re hoping for a hot day!

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See you at the Festival

~The Bicycle Music Festival crew

Ride Your Bike there:

Welder and art bike creator Jay Broemmel showing up in style at Sunday Streets.

By biking to our event instead of driving, you can help us keep to our goal of being a ‘Carbon Negative’ event. Biking there makes a huge impact — bigger than recycling, composting, reusing and even pedal powering the bands on our Pedal Powered Stage. Plus, you can meet up with other festival goers and spread the word en route.  Riding there is a great warm up for dancing and Pedal Powering the live bands, and helps you clear your mind for an awesome day ahead.

We recommend bringing a lock, even though we aim to provide enough safe bike parking for all of our fans and performers.

But my bike is broken!

Really? Experience shows that 85% of bicycles considered “broken” by their owners require only air in the tires or oil on the chain, and that 75% of statistics are made up on the spot. So why not ask a neighbor this week if you can borrow a pump and some chain lube?

Roadie co-captain Ariel adjusting a fan’s bike after a recent Sunday Streets event.

Even if you can only limp on in to the event on your bike, you’ll find “Bike Paramedics,” helpful bike people with tools who can make the little adjustments needed on your bike. If something’s bugging you, ask a crewmember and we’ll help you get your bike dialed.

How to ride in the LiveOnBike parade:

Justin Ancheta performs LiveOnBike at the 2010 San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival. Photo: Fossil Fool.

You will not want to miss the LiveOnBike performances on the bike ride between our daytime and nighttime venues. To truly experience the Bicycle Music Festival, you have to take in a LiveOnBike performance! A LiveOnBike performance is an amplified music performance that takes place on a mobile stage in front of a large group of riders. We want these rides to be safe and law-abiding so that our festival keeps a positive reputation in the community. We will have experienced route marshals identified by patches and armbands, who will help keep our group together and safe. Please follow these simple rules:

- Some of the bikes in our group ride will be carrying live performers. These bikes generally require more concentration to ride safely. Please give these performance vehicles extra space so that their riders can maintain focus on safely guiding them through our route.

- Look for Route Marshals who will be identified by BMF patches.

- Do not ride in the oncoming lane of traffic!

- When we are on a multi-lane street such as Oak, stay to the right, keeping one lane open to allow cars to pass. Note that in the photo above, cars would have had difficulty passing the group, because we were taking up more than 2 lanes of traffic.

- How we handle stop signs: We roll through stop signs unless route marshals say to stop for safety or pedestrians. This reduces the amount of time our group spends in intersections and minimizes the delays we may cause to other road users.

- How we handle red lights and major intersections: We approach red lights and major intersections slowly, gathering our group and waiting for a green light. We try then to ride through as a single group. If the light turns red halfway through, we try to continue moving our group through the intersection unless it is unsafe to do so. Please defer to route marshals!

- Be careful of car doors opening if you are riding close to parked cars.

- Please ride predictably and in control.

- Try to stay with the main group, it’s safer and more fun for everyone.

Our 4000 watt sound system is missing one thing: Power.

photo: Celeste Lindhall

Our Pedal Powered Stage relies on you, our fans, for a steady supply of good clean Pedal Power throughout the day. Pedaling is optional, but almost everyone who comes to a Pedal Powered event will want to try pedaling for at least a song or two.

When you want to pedal, make your way to the generator bikes and let one of the Pedal Power coaches know you’re ready. The job of the Pedal Power coach is to keep their eye on the pedalers and know who is ready for a break. The coach will escort you to a bike much like a Maitre D escorts you to a table at a restaurant. The Pedal Power Coach will also help you on and off safely by stabilizing the handlebars, and then raise or lower the seat for you as needed. With the seat height correctly adjusted, you’re almost good to go.  Now is a good time to pedal a few strokes and check the gear ratio. Too hard? too easy? Ask the Pedal Power coach to help you adjust the gears until you find on that feels like pedaling up a little hill. Now you’re ready to contribute. Stay on for as long as you like.

Most of the bikes we use as generators are provided by us, but we do have one Pedal Power rig called the Biker Bar that has places for three regular bikes. In the photo above, the girl with the starry tights is pedaling a regular road bike on the Biker Bar. If you want to use your bike as one of the generators on the Biker Bar, please show it to a Pedal Power coach and we’ll get it involved.

We use “Pedalometers” to communicate the health of the Pedal Power system to our Pedalers, performers, and the sound guy. The Pedalometers are positioned close to the generator bikes. While you’re pedaling, please keep your eye on the Pedalometer so you know when power is needed.

Eat Breakfast:

It helps if the pedalers have energy, so eat some breakfast and drink water before coming to the festival.

What to wear:
Wear your favorite festival attire or street clothes, basically clothes you can move in. No spandex needed, but if you want to suit up, be our guest! Ladies, consider wearing pants or tights underneath skirts or dresses.

Bring layers! Our festival starts in the hot sun and continues into a beautiful moonlit night. The wind can be cold at night. Don’t forget warm clothes so you can stay with us into the night!

Stay fed and hydrated. Bring a reusable cup, bottle, fork, spoon, bowl:

To reduce the amount of waste at our festival, we need you to Bring Your Own. Bringing your own is much better for the environment than even the most advanced compostable plastics, which still require manufacturing and transportation. Plus, our chefs are extra friendly with portions when you bring your own.

We’ll be serving up delicious Bike Blended Smoothies. Have one!

Our Bike Blended Smoothies are a delicious way to stay hydrated and nutrified at the Bicycle Music Festival. You can be the pedaler that supplies the power to blend them up! Bring a cup for extra-generous treatment from the smoothie chefs. Bike Blended Smoothies are one of the main sources of revenue on the day of our event, so please  try the various flavors we’ll be offering throughout the day.

Directly support the bands you like by giving tips to the Golden Geese:

photo: Dustin Jensen

Please treat the performances at Bicycle Music Festival like those of a good street performer. We rely on audience generosity to make sure our performers get paid. Our hot spandex-clad Golden Geese volunteers make their way through the crowd after each performer, shaking their buckets and calling for donations for the last band. If you want to give but need change, please ask them — they are like human ATM’s. Also, please remember that we have a dozen bands on the lineup, so bring enough to give cash to multiple bands.

All of these incredible performers on a huge pedal-powered sound system, powered by YOU!

6:00pm Showplace Triangle (16th St. & Wisconsin)
6:00-7:00 boom boom boom boom boom! feat. Izzy*Wise (hot Bay Area DJ)
7:00-7:45 Fito Reinoso ~ (Cuban salsa)
8:00-8:45 Sukhawat Ali Khan ~ (ecstatic booty shaking N. Indian bhangra rock)
8:45-9:00 aerial performance by Tara Quinn ~ (acrobatics/ circus)
9:00-9:45 California Honeydrops ~ (blues, gospel, New Orleans jazz, early r&b)
10:00-10:45  Ashel Eldridge/ Seasunz ~ (Oakland progressive hip hop)
10:55-11:25 Fossil Fool the Bike Rapper ~ (SF bike activist hip hop)

Rock The Bike *

A group of inventors and advocates working away in a sweet little workshop in Berkeley, California, pushing the limits of bike culture. Rock The Bike designed the Pedal Powered Stage used at BMF, and also created the LiveOnBike Mobile Stage. Founder, Fossil Fool, is one of the co-directors of BMF.

www.rockthebike.com

……*** *** …

Rainbow Grocery *

Rainbow Grocery strives to offer vegetarian food products that have minimal impact ecologically and socially, while providing their employees with livable wages.

www.rainbow.coop

The Bike Kitchen *

The Bike Kitchen teaches people of all ages and backgrounds how to repair bicycles. Through bike repair and bicycle related projects, the Bike Kitchen promotes personal development and provides leadership opportunities.

www.bikekitchen.org

Trader Joe’s *

Trader Joe’s is a specialty retail grocery store that offers customers low cost groceries through direct purchasing from suppliers.

www.traderjoes.com

Zellerbach Family Foundation *

The Mission of the Zellerbach Family Foundation is to be a catalyst for constructive social change by initiating and investing in efforts that strengthen families and communities.

www.zellerbachfamilyfoundation.org

Sports Basement *

Sports Basement is a sporting-goods retailer in the San Francisco Bay Area is active in the community and in sports and activities.

www.sportsbasement.com

Straus Family Creamery *
Straus Family Creamery is a small, family-owned, organic creamery which produces organic, cream-top milk, ice cream, sour cream and European-style yogurt and butter with milk sourced from their own dairy and from three other local, family farms.
www.strausfamilycreamery.com

Catholic Charities CYO
>
www.strausfamilycreamery.com

A big THANK YOU to…
San Francisco Recreation and Parks!

SF’s Recreation and Parks Department administers more than 220 parks, playgrounds, and open spaces in San Francisco, as well as two outside the city limits.

Safeway *

…

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The Bicycle Music Festival is a 501(c)3 project of the San Francisco Parks Alliance www.sfparksalliance.org

San Francisco Parks Alliance is dedicated to providing leadership and support for San Francisco parks, recreation centers, and open spaces. We at BMF are so grateful to be a part of such a great project and we look forward to our future work together!

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Please support the Bicycle Music Festival by making your tax-deductible donation.

Questions about becoming a Festival Sponsor? Email Jeff Blumenthal at Jeff@bicyclemusicfestival.com