Ft. Collins, New Belgium party style

September 7th, 2009 Posted in Tour

Well, well, well, Ft. Collins, the Sprockettes are thrilled to have made your acquaintance. With somewhere between 8000 and 15,000 costumed attendees at the festival, we got to see New Belgium’s dedication to its hometown as well as the passion Ft. Collinites have for bikes (and beer, of course). The city has more old school cruiser bikes than Amsterdam, and being part of the morning bike parade, as well as traversing the streets of Old Town Saturday night, was like a never-ending museum tour for us velophiles.

We were fortunate to call Pete and Lili’s place home base for our stay. Thank you so much for sharing your space, your Fat Tire ale, your record collection, and of course Sabbath, the black Lab.

We want to take a step back here to make certain that anyone who reads these posts really grasps why we have been participating in Tour de Fat for three years running. On Sunday morning, Sarah from New Belgium gave us a full tour of the brewery, and we were able to learn some of the company’s history and current business practices. This reminded us, again, of our shared sense of peaceful and positive activism to promote health, sustainability, shared power and decision-making, and bikes (among other things). The wind-powered, worker-owned brewery is filled with original art celebrating the employees and their adventures, and natural-light pours in to fill the entire place with warmth and an energizing glow. The operation utilizes energy-efficient machinery, they have compost and recycling bins all over, and they collaborate with other companies with like-minded business practices for things like merchandise production. So if you wonder why we opt to leave our hometown during so much of the summer to do the tour, know that it’s because we so strongly support this company that grows and grows but does not lose sight of its mission to treat workers fairly, leave as small an environmental trace as it can, and give free bikes to employees on their 1st anniversary working there.

May we suggest, to any who might pass through Colorado on your travels, a stop for the brewery tour? You will learn so much about craft beer production as well as the innovation that keeps a philosophically-minded company thriving.

If you’re not going to Colorado this month then, please check out our “Shows” tab for info on 2 upcoming Portland shows. In October we wrap up our time with Tour de Fat 2009 in San Diego.