World Naked Bike Ride in Portland takes a hiatus

Organizers of Portland’s World Naked Bike Ride have announced that they will take a year off from programming the massive ride this year. The army of volunteers who put on the ride say they need time to make sure that the event is better, safer, and easier to plan in the future. We talk to Meghan Sinnott, longtime organizer of the ride, about the decision and the future of naked bike riding in Portland.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Organizers of Portland’s World Naked Bike Ride announced on Wednesday that the massive in the buff ride will not happen this year. Jonathan Maus, the editor of BikePortland, called it a well-deserved year off for a ride that’s been working overtime for two decades. The army of volunteers who put on the ride say they need time to make sure that the event is better, safer and easier to plan in the future. Meghan Sinnott has been a longtime organizer of the ride. She joins us now. Meghan, welcome.

Meghan Sinnott: Thank you.

Miller: Why did you and some of the other organizers decide to cancel this year’s official ride?

Sinnott: Well, the quick and dirty of it is the planning organization team kicked off just a little too late. We like to have kind of a recap meeting in September post ride. That didn’t happen. And then kind of throughout the winter there’s check ins, there’s ideas, there’s dreaming up new partnerships, new ways to strengthen the ride, to bring on more volunteers, to make it stronger, and that didn’t happen. Our first meeting was later in the game than ever before. And the thought was we tried to scramble and there was just a quick succession of events that made it feel like perhaps the best thing for this ride and for the community is to just postpone it this year. It’s been a long time in making both the ride and the need to pause, reflect and identify ways to make the ride as safe and inclusive as possible.

Miller: There were thousands of people a few weeks ago for the PedalPalooza Kickoff Ride. Are the logistics for a naked ride are different from those for a huge ride where people wear clothes?

Sinnott: There’s a lot of similarities and there’s a lot of differences. If I could identify the largest differences, the vulnerability of cyclists who show up for the World Naked Bike Ride, not only are they naked, there’s inherent vulnerability in that.

Miller: An intentional vulnerability.

Sinnott: That’s correct. The Bike Summer Kickoff Ride is kind of a homecoming. It’s for individuals who are super fans of this three-month-long festival. And so a lot of the individuals, though not all, are relatively confident cyclists. They’re there because they’re so excited about 800 different bike rides that are happening this summer. But the World Naked Bike Ride, it speaks to a different crowd; it speaks to a much larger crowd. So you’re bringing in individuals, many of whom aren’t confident cyclists, many of whom aren’t regular riders in group rides and then you’re bringing in people who don’t know the city that well. In an interesting turn for the World Naked Bike Ride in Portland, it became worldwide known, unlike any of the other rides. So we had people coming in from all corners. And so there were just those considerations. It’s also a huge ride. The Kickoff Ride was thousands of people, but the World Naked Bike Ride has potential and has been 10,000 people. And the capacity for the organizers and for the city to make that as safe as possible is just there’s nothing quite like it.

Miller: You’re getting to one of the lines in the announcement that really surprised me. It read, for many Portland, the Portland World Naked Bike Ride may be their only ride of the year. I basically ride my bike every day, but every day I have my clothes on. It’s just really hard to imagine my only ride of the year being a naked one. What do you think draws people to this?

Sinnott: There’s so much. I mean, one, it’s unique. For many, it’s just the protest. For others, it’s perhaps more of a nudist thing.

Miller: You say just the protest. I think a lot of people listening may literally have no idea what you’re talking about.

Sinnott: Yeah.

Miller: So what is it?

Sinnott:  It is a protest against dependency on oil.

Miller: What’s the connection between riding a bike naked and protesting our global reliance on fossil fuels?

Sinnott: Well, it certainly gets the attention, right? People protested a lot in the early 2000s and nobody paid attention. Through a protest on a bike ride in the buff, and all of a sudden, eyes turn.

Miller: So it’s a way to get people to look at you?

Sinnott: Mm hmm. It’s also a way to highlight the vulnerability of cyclists, to show the bicycle as a joyous vehicle, to show that there’s alternatives, that we don’t have to rely on oil.

Miller: This is called the World Naked Bike Ride. How does Portland’s version compare to other rides around the world?

Sinnott: So, a lot of the rides happen in the daytime. Ours historically has happened in the evening, although there’s certainly the ability to change that.  Ours is the largest. There’s just different flavors for every ride. If I remember correctly, for example, the one in Louisiana, you’re not actually allowed to be naked legally. So there’s some issues there. In Greece, there’s an incredible ride that every year they have an additional theme. So breastfeeding in public, and one year the sendoff was women breastfeeding as everybody rode past down the street. So it’s just playful like that.

Miller: Sometimes romantic couples will say we’re going to take a little pause, take some time off, but then that pause becomes permanent. Are you at all concerned that a one-year delay will be the same thing, will be the end of this ride in Portland?

Sinnott.  That’s an interesting comparison but in a one-on-one or otherwise relationship, there isn’t an entire community so deeply invested.

Miller: Hmm.

Sinnott: And I cannot imagine that the community is going to let this ride go. This ride is too powerful. It means too much to too many people and there’s so much opportunity. It’s ripe for revamping, for bolstering and for a really strong future.

Miller: So does that mean that there’s not going to be any naked bike ride this summer?

Sinnott: Don’t you worry, I know that you commute every day in clothes, but they’re…

Miller: Which the world is happy about it. [Laughter]

Sinnott: There are a number of naked bike rides that have happened every year. There’s full moon rides, there’s a fig leaf ride, there’s a Terry Sue Weber Ride. There’s a bunch of different bike rides that happen including a naked zombie ride. So don’t worry, you will get your opportunity to ride naked if that’s your thing. But if you would like to ride in an event with a very strong protest angle as the World Naked Bike Ride does, that’s the big ride and that will be in 2025.

Miller: So there’s not going to be any version of a really big ride this summer?

Sinnot: There won’t be the World Naked Bike Ride and there’s so much that goes into organizing the World Naked Bike Ride. There’s hundreds of volunteers. Historically, it’s taken a year to organize. There’s so many community partnerships. There’s the work that we do with the city, with parks. There’s the permitting, there’s just, there’s so much. Anybody could put a ride on the calendar that is a naked ride. But my hope is that people consider what harm that might do to the image of the World Naked Bike Ride, the world over.

Miller: What are your concerns? So, as you’re saying, it’s possible for anybody to say, I’m hosting this particular ride for bike summer for what we call PedalPalooza. And then people can go join it. So what’s the nightmare scenario for you if that were to happen?

Sinnott: I think a lot of us are scared that people will be misled and that they will be lured into a false sense of security with regards to the ride.

Miller: What kind of security are you talking about that you say is necessary And that is not necessarily there if people don’t plan it well enough?

Sinnott: I think the sheer number of volunteers that goes into it, having the support along the route, having tried and tried again with the route, making sure the route doesn’t ride along tracks, making sure there are no obstacles in the way, making sure it’s not too steep of an incline or decline, all the things that go into making a safe and considerate route. There’s the liaison work that needs to happen with TriMet, for example, making sure that you don’t stop public transportation for too long. There’s making sure that you don’t trap drivers in a circle. There’s making sure that your route is also considering drivers at large, making sure that you’re not postponing key routes in the city for too long.

Miller: You’re talking about an enormous logistical set of considerations. If five, eight, 10,000 people are sort of gumming up the city.

Sinnott: Yeah, it’s difficult to lead any ride. Any bike ride takes a lot of work and over 600 ride leaders do it every year for Bike Summer. The World Naked Bike Ride, because it has become so large, because people love it so much, because people come in from all around the world, there’s just so much more that has to go into the messaging, to the communications, to the deep planning, and there’s a bajillion bits and pieces. There’s a whole 20 years of planning behind it, history from the organizers, all of our planning documents. It’s a fiscally sponsored project. It’s a 501(c)(3) and we are just simply requesting that the community honor the fact that we believe we need a break one year. And we’re inviting people to join the planning committee in a way that we have never done before.

Miller: That was part of your announcement on Wednesday saying, hey, we need more volunteers. This is so big. We need more people to help us make this great. Have people responded to that call yet? It’s just been a day and a half.

Sinnott: [Laughter] I actually haven’t checked the spreadsheet, dang it. I’m sure, but it’s important for the community at large to know that every year we put out a call for volunteers. We need medics, corkers, people who help us along the route. We need people to sell merch. We need people to hold signs, we need people to pass out stickers, all of those things. This year, we’re seeking a new planning committee and it’s scary and it’s going to be a lot of work and there’s going to be a lot of interviews and bringing people up to speed, but no considered effort like this has ever happened for the ride. And I think it’s going to be a great benefit to the ride and to the community.

Miller: Meghan Sinnott, thanks very much for joining us. Meghan Sinnott is a longtime organizer of the World Naked Bike Ride, currently festival organizer for Bike Summer.

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