World Naked Bike Ride

The World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and ride together en masse on human-powered transport (the vast majority on bicycles, but some on skateboards and inline skates), to "deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world."[1]

World Naked Bike Ride
Participants in the 2007 World Naked Bike Ride in London.
Statusactive
Genremanifestation, bicycle ride
Frequencysemi-annually
InauguratedJune 2004 (2004-06)

The dress code motto is "bare as you dare".[2]

History
A woman at World Naked Bike Ride, London, 2017.
Zaragoza and Vancouver hosted the first NBR. Pictured are participants in the 2009 WNBR in the Spanish city.
Woman and a man riding at the Cardiff WNBR 2018

In 2003, Conrad Schmidt conceived the World Naked Bike Ride after organising the Naked Bike Rides of the group Artists for Peace/Artists Against War (AFP/AAW).[3] Initially, the message of the WNBR was protesting against oil dependency and celebrating the power and individuality of the human body. In 2006, there was a shift towards simplifying the message and focusing on cycling advocacy.

The 2004 WNBR saw events in 28 cities, in ten countries on four continents.[1] By 2010, WNBR had expanded to stage rides in 74 cities, in 17 countries, from the United States to the United Kingdom and Hungary to Paraguay.[1]

Two male riders were arrested during the 2005 WNBR in North Conway, New Hampshire, and charged with "indecent exposure and lewdness". The two riders agreed to having the charges reduced to "disorderly conduct" and paid a $300 fine, the majority of which was paid for by the WNBR Legal Defense Fund.[4] Six male riders were charged with public indecency during the 2005 WNBR Chicago ride and later prosecuted with sentences ranging from fines and non-expungeable conviction to three months of court supervision. In 2007, during the first World Naked Bike ride in Denver, Colorado police surrounded the bike riders and wrote several people tickets.[5] During the WNBR held on June 12, 2010, two males were arrested by campus police at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.[6] Two riders were arrested in New York City in 2014 for "lewdness and indecent exposure".[7]

Simon Oosterman, the organizer of the 2005 WNBR in Auckland, and the first to be arrested during a WNBR event, is credited with going further and refocusing the issue on oil-dependency. He urged: "Stop the indecent exposure to vehicle emissions."[8]

Films
  • "World Naked Bike Ride Thessaloniki Greece" (Βγήκαμε από τα Ρούχα Μας; 27' Greece, 2009) Greek language with English subtitles, won the Audience Award at 11th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2009[9]
  • "World Naked Bike Ride: The Documentary" (Toronto) 4 minute short
  • World Naked Bike Ride (31 minutes, UK, 2006) directed by Johnny Zapatos of High Altitude Films, narrated by Jon Snow
  • Indecent Exposure to Cars: The Story of the World Naked Bike Ride, produced by Conrad Schmidt[10]
  • Bare As You Dare: Portland's World Naked Bike Ride (Portland, OR) Directed by Ian McCluskey[11]

See also

References

Notes

  1. Official WNBR global web site circa June 2004
  2. Artists for Peace/Artists Against War, a non-profit group in Vancouver popularized the motto "Bare as you Dare" and "Naked Bicycle people power" during their Naked Bike Rides Archived 2005-10-31 at the Wayback Machine in 2003 that led up to and became early models for WNBR.
  3. Artists for Peace/Artists Against War's archived web page is currently hosted by The Work Less Party of British Columbia
  4. More information about the case can be found at WNBR North Conway website Archived 2005-12-18 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Preston-Watson, Crystal (11 June 2007). "World Naked Bike Ride - Denver". westword.com.
  6. "Whatcom County Jail Report". Bellingham Herald.
  7. Shepard, Benjamin (13 June 2014). "play and ideas: A Hard Rains Gonna Fall: Vision zero clothing ride 2014". Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  8. Simon Oosterman printed this on a protest banner as documented on Enzyme's WNBR web site Archived 2005-12-14 at the Wayback Machine
  9. Διεθνής Γυμνή Ποδηλατοδρομία (22 May 2012). "1st World Naked Bike Ride Thessaloniki Greece - Documentary Trailer". Retrieved 29 September 2016 – via YouTube.
  10. "The World Naked Bike Ride Movie". Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  11. McCluskey, Ian. "Bare As You Dare: Portland's World Naked Bike Ride"

Further reading

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