summer tour is on

While summer in Portland is a sight to behold, we’ve decided once again to be part of New Belgium Brewing’s Tour de Fat.  It’s so much more than just a summer festival.  The parade and festival’s proceeds go to bicycle and environmental charities,; the beer cups are all composted; and the worker-owned, wind-powered brewery makes a fine, tasty beer. Our “Shows” page lists the sites where we’ll be performing,  as part of Tour de Fat and as part of our undying committment to perform with and for other community groups out in the street.

Because we’re flying to Chicago in July, we want to off-set our carbon footprint as much as possible, given that we’re a bicycle dance group that speaks out for transportation solutions (have you seen our bike rack dance yet?!?!) and environmental kindness. Last year we toured in a veggie oil powered bus, but this year we’re having a little trouble finding one in the Chicago area. Huge thanks to Allan, Portland’s own bike group transporter, for his assistance in trying to find us a local ride out there. But if anyone else can give a shout out to their folks in the mid-West who would love to drive us around for a week in a grease bus, please do. We know with the harsh winter weather out there, the area isn’t crawling with grease buses, but if anyone has any leads, let us know! We will pay a driver, and we would love to keep that money in the hands of a local activist!

We take off July 10th. Stay tuned.

Multnomah. County. Bike. Fair. Saturday.

This is the show you do not want to miss. Or the two shows, to be precise. Saturday, June 27th, 2pm at Colonel Summers Park (SE 20th and Belmont).

Multnomah County Bike Fair is a fabulous afternoon party filled with bikes of all shapes and sizes, bike jousting partners of all shapes and sizes, and a multitude of booths offering up goods and services all bike-related (well, some are food related or bike AND food related). In addition to a number of other delightful entertainment opportunities, the Sprockettes will be doing two performances. We’ll be up at 4pm and again for one special song at 6:15pm. You can’t miss either  of them because the first includes the debut of two new dance numbers, and the second is a performance with live music!

For our dedicated fans who have repeatedly asked for that pink shirt in medium (or any other thing we haven’t seemed to have lately), never fear. We have a whole batch of brand new, fresh off the presses t-shirts printed by real live Sprockettes artists. Come visit our booth to see our new t-shirts, lapel pins, and homemade spoke cards. We were going to have Sprockettes commemorative plates, but we ran out of time to press those.

Come participate in the fun (dancing to live music or competing) or just to watch. All are welcome. Root beer garden for the little ones!

keep on rollin’ with us!

Huge thanks to all the fantastic folks who are keeping Pedalpalooza (and all other summer bike events) a vibrant, amazing, bike-embracing, giant Wow!

Yesterday was Sunday Parkways. It was incredible to pedal through the streets, sharing the full roadway with all manner of individuals and families using every kind of bike, wagon, skate, stroller, and tennis shoe. There were even puppies walking safely down the middle of the street, people. As per usual, the official Sprockettes helmet-mounted camera was out of batteries. I’m sure you didn’t even know we had one because we can’t get the batteries to hold a charge long enough to snap anything good to post. Luckily, there were a bazillion fabulous photographers out there, including Jonathan in his bicycle icon socks.

We’d like to give a huge shout out to the locals as well as the out of towners who showed up to Sunday Parkways. A special thanks goes to the man from Tucson who saw Veer, fell in love with Portland bike culture, and is in town for the entire Pedalpalooza festival. Even though it didn’t rain like it did at the Earth Day show depicted in the movie, we do hope we gave him and everyone else the high-energy, fun show they came for.

Which brings me to my next point. If you require even more Sprockettes energy to keep you rolling through the busy week, come to our Hawt Damn Hot Pink Potluck B-B-Que, family friendly ride, and performance on Tuesday night. That’s June 23rd. The Mercury lovingly listed us a pick for the week on p. 15. That means you have to come!

6pm at Alberta Park: Meet up for the family friendly ride. Wear your hot pinks and blacks if you got ‘em.

6:30pm: Gather up and roll together at a comfortable pace to Peninsula Park. Bring some food to share with the crowd (we’ll have grills going) and your own plate, cup, and utensils.

7:00pm: Sprockettes will perform. Prepare yourselves for the unveiling of a new dance number celebrating the glory of transportation solutions!

And don’t forget the Multnomah County Bike Fair on Saturday at Colonel Summers Park (SE 20th and Belmont)….

Holy Pedalpalooza

Folks, I hope you’re ready for Pedalpalooza 2009 because it already started! Thursday, June 11 was the kick-off for a few weeks of Portland-style bike fun.

Check out the SHIFT site for more details than you can shake a bike pump at. Come to everything!!!

While everything that goes on is amazing, we’ll just highlight a few events the Sprockettes will taking part in or hosting ourselves. You’ll likely see us around at a bunch of events, but here’s where you’ll see us dance and flaunt the hot pink and blackness.

June 21st, Sunday:                                                                                                       SUNDAY PARKWAYS at Peninsula, Arbor Lodge, and Kenton Parks (See http://www.gettingaroundportland.org for a route map.) 9am - 4pm

Join the family-friendly walk, skate, ride, pull in a wagon as a 7.5 miles over a couple loops of N  Portland are blocked to car traffic and open to human powered movement. See event details for more info on the happenings. We perform at Peninsula Park around 1pm.

June 23rd, Tuesday:

THE SPROCKETTES’ HAWT DAMN HOTPINK POTLUCK BBQ

We enjoy a kid friendly ride in style to Peninsula Park, where the Sprockettes perform a special summer teaser show at 7pm. Followed by an evening of grillin & chillin ’til dusk. We meet at Alberta Park at 6pm and ride over to Peninsula at 6:30.
Bring: Food to share, a fork, & a plate. Dancing shoes. As always, wear hotpink if you’re feelin’ it in public.
We provide grills & some homemade goodies to share.
Expect a water feature (yes, Peninsula Park boasts a water feature) and, of course, music & dancing. We will be composting/ recycling, so leave no trace!

June 27th, Saturday:                                                                                           MULTNOMAH COUNTY BIKE FAIR (the Sprockettes anniversary!) at Colonel Summers Park @ SE Belmont St. and 20th Ave. 2:00pm-7:00pm MCBF is the catastrophic culmination of 2+ weeks of Pedalpalooza bike fun.

show to benefit Lotus Seed Ashram

Come help us celebrate and build community. This Friday, June 5th, the Sprockettes will be at the Lotus Seed Ashram for a big, family-friendly fundraising event. The Lotus Seed folks are looking to buy the former church that currently houses their center so they can continue offering their services and outreach in the place they love to call home. Their mission statement says “The Lotus Seed is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing yoga, movement, and art to underserved populations through outreach programs and continued education.”

We’ll be performing around 7pm, but festivities will be going on before and after that. There will be a bike parade following our dancing.

Check it out:

Friday…7pm…4635 NE 9th Avenue (NE 9th at NE Going).

zoobomb pyle dedication

This is it! The Sprockettes are beginning the summer performance season starting now! We’ll be dancing around 6:30pm  at the new pyle, a phenomenal new art installation/Zoobomb pile. Look for Chain Reaction dancing too! Come celebrate with us as a new era of bike piling and artistic collaboration dawns. We certainly aim to prioritize awesomeness.

This installation and event were made possible by collaborations with Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Bureau of Transportation, and some fabulous local artists, Brian Borrello and Vanessa Renwick.

http://zoobomb.net

Zoobomb is a 5 year running weekly bike event that meets every Sunday around 8:30PM across from Rocco’s Pizza (949 SW Oak) in Portland OR. Bring a bike, MAX fare ($2.00), bike lights, and any safety gear you want to wear.
It’s a good time and you WILL have fun!
MINI BIKES ENCOURAGED - ALL BIKES WELCOME
HELMETS ARE A GOOD IDEA
* RIDE AT YOUR OWN RISK *
LEAVE NO TRACE

summer dreamin

This is not actually all that far-fetched of an idea for us. As long as those polka dots are black on hot pink, anything is possible.

Stay tuned because very soon we’ll have our summer show  dates up. There are lots of local shows and events and some more Tour de Fat touring action.

And honestly, we have commissioned the building of a sound system that might not be pedal-powered, but it will hit the streets with us, pulled by a bike. We’ll just say it will power our pedals.

what we’re about

We just wanted to share with you some lovely art by an old friend, Andy Singer. Likely you’ve seen his social and political commentary cartoons on bumper stickers, t-shirts, billboards, the sides of buses in large cities, prime time TV ads, in the contrails left by major airlines.  He even makes books and calendars.

As we prepare our summer line-up of dances, acrobatics, and bike antics, we thought it would be nice to glance at a reminder of how beautiful and powerful the bike can be.

Please enjoy this cartoon sample by Andy and go to his website to see some more.  Pedal on.

Hollis is home

The Sprockettes want to extend a warm thank you from the bottom of our collective heart to anyone and everyone who has supported Hollis, her family, and her community.

Hollis arrived in San Francisco this afternoon from India. The family is really busy getting everything in order, but we expect more blogs and more news when it’s possible for them to make it to a computer. Please stay actively in the loop and keep track of events and news on the family’s blog for her at http://helpholligethome.blogspot.com/.

Again, the good vibes, the loving energy, and the money everyone dug down deep to give have all been crucial to get Hollis where she is now.

Peace.

Benefit show to bring Hollis back to the US, Tuesday, March 10.

Sprockettes Agents are working closely with our community to hold a FUNdraiser next Tuesday, March 10,  to get our friend Hollis back to the US.  There will be  members of the Yard Dogs Road Show, Japanther, Riot Cop, Drunken Boat, Early Times, the Sprockettes, a kissing booth, silent auction, and many other surprises.

The event will be held at 316 NW 4th Ave. (where the Mini-Bike Winter party was). Doors at 7pm, show starts promptly at 8pm. Wear gold! $5-150,000 at the door!!! Please come, tell your friends, and tell those who can’t come to donate online. Every little bit helps enormously!

Family has set up another site to answers questions about Hollis’ condition. http://helpholligethome.blogspot.com/

You are still able to check friendsofhollis.blogspot.com to learn about ways to support the effort.

Both sites are accepting donations to reach their goal of $150,000 to air ambulance her back to the US as soon as possible.

Thank you.