In the past few months we’ve sadly lost Agent Babe Alert, as it was time for her to move on to other things. She was inspiring, especially wonderful in the art of group dynamics and implementing the ideal of consensus, Obviously, her fortitude, badassocity and sparkle will be missed.

The most important thing we want to put out at this point is that we will be doing another girls’ camp this summer. We loved being able to give back and empower young women and learn from them in return…mark your calendars for June 9th & 10th. Like last year there will be a performance, and this year there will also be a ride. Look to your left and you will see a link that says “2012 Girls Camp! More Info” – Click on it for pertinent information. We cannot wait to see you there!

Stay tuned for our upcoming shows this summer. We can’t wait to get out in the heat and tear it up Sprockettes’ style with y’all!

See you soon and keep on biking <3

We’ll start off at the 15th Annual Dead Baby Downhill, the greatest party known to humankind. We promise an amazing performance, passion and power, and fire. The Dead Babies are a freakbike club in Seattle that have been gracious enough to welcome us into their caring arms for performances at the Downhill 5 years running. The party also includes pedal-powered carnival rides c/o Cyclecide, bands all night, burgers and dogs, and bike games and jousting. Check out a video of last year’s performance:

On the 6th, we’ll be doing some renegade shows in Seattle: watch out, noble denizens of Seattle! Your capacity for fun is about to expand by leaps and bounds!

On the 7th, we’ll be performing with Cyclecide‘s band and clown show in Olympia, Washington (and if we’re lucky, we’ll also see some amazing interpretive dance from Oly’s own Dance Lab!). We’re still nailing down the details, but this free show will include chaos, crowd participation, and collaborative performances. Check out our shows page for details.

Finally, on the 8th, we’ll be back in good ol’ Portland, Oregon for a show with Cyclecide at the Red Fox.

We’re looking forward to seeing you at one of these shows!

Below you’ll find a video that our friend Tiago Dejerk made of the event, and a couple photos that Jonathan Maus of Bikeportland.org and Meghan Sinnott took.

Thanks again, ladies!

Where: The camp will be located at one of the parks that will be featured during Sunday Parkways in NW. The second day of the camp will include a performance by our campers at Sunday Parkways!

When: Saturday July 23rd 11am – 4pm & Sunday July 24th, 11am – 2pm, with a performance at the Sunday Parkways. Group photo opportunities with all the girls afterwards.

Each registered little lady gets their own Sprockettes Camp t-shirt. Please list the size you’d prefer: S, M, L.

Cost: The Sprockettes perform largely for our community for free, and we would love to continue to do so. Expenses do come up however, and we need your help to keep fun activities like this camp happening in the future.

Please make your donation of $40- $150 sliding scale, payable by check or cash. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.

Thanks again, and we are really looking forward to spending some time with your little ones this summer!

To register or for more questions, email:
sprockettes@gmail.com

Sprockettes have been practicing our little pink hearts out.  We have some new choreography and have added some new members.  Everyone’s soooo excited about the new girls-they’re all so amazing and talented.  Each of them bring something unique and special to the group.

Sprockettes are also happy to be collaborating with the Portland Women’s Crisis Line.  April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and they will be hosting an event, Bike Back the Night,  that takes place in conjunction with Take Back the Night at PSU.   To show our support we’ll be performing at the event.  It’s April 28th at the PSU park blocks from 6-9.

http://pwcl.org/calendar/event/233/

Hope to see everyone there!

We hope this post finds you as energized and inspired as we Sprockettes have found ourselves this month! There are so many reasons to be stoked on life this month, and we’d like to share a few:

First of all, there’s nothing like a good time with your friends to foster inspiration, and thanks to February’s MiniBikeWinter events, the Sprockettes will be chock-full of good-time-friends-and-fun-feelings for quite a while! We had the opportunity to perform alongside our Bay Area Derailluers sisters this year, and even hosted a surprise, debut performance by Chicago’s new bike-dance team The Racketeers! The B.A.D. girls busted out some super-impressive moves and inspired us all to shoot for more pegs on our bikes, and in our lives, while the Racketeers reminded us of the courage it takes to get up and perform that first time, while simultaneously knocking our hot pink socks off! The day after our performances we three teams (including some reps from Vancouver’s B:C:Clettes) had an inspirational and unifying brunch summit, at which we honed our plans to revolutionize the world through bike-dance!

Then, after the craziness that is MinibikeWinter and after months of preparation, the Sprockettes decided to open our arms and welcome new prospective girls aboard our dance-train. We put the call out to several friends, and friends-of-friends, and now have a handful of new ladies trying us on to see if they want to rock the hot pink and black lifestyle. Their excitement has definitely inspired us to set a good example and to show them how hard we have to work to do what we do, but that it really all can (and should) be fun and games! Having been the newest Sprockette for going on a year now, it has been a bit surreal to be on the other side of things, telling new girls how business goes down in the Sprockettes, and acting the part of old pro. Yet it really is inspiring to take a moment and reflect on the development of a group that has honed its practices for 7+ years and is still functioning with such high levels of badassocity!

Lastly – but not leastly – in the world of inspirational new beginnings, the Sprockettes have decided that 2011 will be our year of intentional community participation as we reach out to organizations beyond our usual involvement and partner to support causes for which we advocate. What does that mean, you ask? Well it means that we’ve begun reaching out to organizations that promote positive self-image for young girls, health services for women, advocacy for sex workers, and safe, empowering environments for queer youth! We’ve sent a general call out to see if those groups would like the Sprockettes to perform at any of their big events this year, so that our powers may combine to fight for good! So far the response has been overwhelmingly appreciative and we really look forward to the collaborations to come.

On a final note, we really want to thank our friends, who provided us with such good times this winter, and every winter since we’ve been around. Our community, (however we choose to define it individually), is really what keeps us going, and we love you all from the bottom of our big pink hearts! As we enter April we enter blackout month – a time during which we drill all our songs for the summer, and create some new ones, while respectfully declining any invitation for performances. It gets tough throughout the month, since we all love to dance for you, but we’ll emerge better and brighter for you to enjoy all summer!

So thanks for stopping by and reading about your homegirls, the Sprockettes. We can’t wait to see you in May!

With a heart full of springtime adoration,

Agent Dirt Bag

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

‘Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Here at Sprockettes headquarters we’ve successfully emerged from our annual blackout month, with a couple new numbers to show for our hard work!

We’ll be unveiling one of them (along with some classics) on a ride that we’re leading as a part of Pedalpalooza. If you’d like to join us for an evening of moderately paced family friendly riding, fun, games, and (of course) dancing, here’s the DL:

Sprockettes Bike Ride and Dance Party
Wednesday, June 23rd
6pm
Da Vinci Middle School (NE 27th & Everett)

View Larger Map

Come with your dancing shoes on, and if you want to warm our hearts, all dressed up in pink & black!

A few days after our ride, we’ll be performing at the Multnomah County Bike Fair! This is an all-afternoon event featuring performers, participatory events, vendors, and spectacles in general. It’s also our BIRTHDAY SHOW! We’ve got a pretty flashy song ready to debut to celebrate turning another year older, so don’t miss it!

Multnomah County Bike Fair
Sunday, June 27th
SE 14th and Alder
2pm–7pm, we perform around 4:30, but you’ll want to stay for the whole event!

Hope we see you there!

That being said, we’re turning our minds and hearts towards summer.  The sun and heat brings us out of our shells.  Some of you may be excited to see us again, and we love that!  If that’s the case, please check out our (slowly growing) Upcoming Shows page.

If you’re interested in booking the Sprockettes for a show this summer, now’s the time to make your request!  (Yeah, fer realz.  Our schedule fills up quickly.)  Go to the Booking page and fill out the webform.

See you guys soon!

The Sprockettes looking dapper while dancing their new song. Photo credit: bikeportland.org

What’s the newest thing I (heart) about PDX? The Community Cycling Center‘s Get Lit. I’m riding home from work in the autumnal evening darkness in a constant panic that my rear light is dead. The hook on the back broke so I can’t fit it onto the bracket. So it’s zip-tied to the bike. So when the batteries die (they’re already dying), I can either never take the light off to replace them, or I can’t get the light back on in safely, snugly back into the zip ties. But what do I find but a mass of well-lit Community Cycling Center volunteers handing out AND installing Planet Bike rear and front lights. For free. For us. For me. For the young woman who pulled up right after me in a lather of joy and appreciation because her rear light was recently stolen, and unlike me with my dying batteries, she had none. She had none. Now she has some. And they are bright. And safe. So safe.

I (heart) PDX and the way that grassroots organizations will step up to encourage and support biking. We don’t have all the kinks worked out for truly sharing the road (such as building up more and safer infrastructure for cycling and public transit instead of a 12-lane behemoth that practically dares drivers to try to fill it up each day), we are moving in the right direction. By PSU we have bike tracks. We have bike boxes around town. And thanks to the ever-wonderful CCC, we have even more folks out there who can see and be seen on the road. We’re moving in the right direction, and the way is lit.