Coolest night ever!
27 June 2011
I spent yesterday at NYC’s Annual Gay Pride Parade, a particularly enchanting year of events two days after gay marriage was passed in New York State! Because of this, I happened to be in Lower Manhattan and I happened to mosey into Union Square Park right as a concert was being torn down. Alas, I had missed the concert, but I certainly happened something interesting, if not a little late. Pedal Power NYC (http://www.pedalpowernyc.org/ ) is a new organization in New York that grew out of connections with thriving similar such groups in other cities such as San Francisco. It started with the goal of capturing and repurposing human power with bicycles.
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Their “About” website description includes:
Off the Grid Grooves, Electric Humans Unite
We provide the bicycles and the crew – you provide the Natural Ass! Let’s be honest, we’d rather power our stage with natural ass than natural gas—
and we’ve developed a live human-powered system that does just that without sacrificing sick sound quality.
Founded by Ariel Agai in 2011, Pedal Power NYC helps us imagine new possibilities for our energy use and celebrates Sustainability Creativity and Human Energy.
We want your Natural Ass to power our amps.
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Thus, an entire concert can be put on without a single outlet. Next to this daytime concert stage were ten bicycles. Guests were encouraged to play their part in pedaling; they were helping the show go on. There were many performances, all powered by bicycle.
Afterward, the group had planned a ride back to their warehouse in Williamsburg, all to be filmed for a documentary on the day’s events. I joined on—why not?—and we took to the streets slowly so that all of Manhattan could enjoy our incredible pedal powered sound system and music as we passed by. We were at least 15-20, some with just bikes, some with giant sound systems strapped to the backs; and other trailing other stuff back from the concert. Ariel was the DJ, with an ipod and DJ soundboard strapped to his handlebars, and there were four other bikes
with giant speakers strapped on the back. We carried the dance party
through New York City, stopping and dancing at all of the red lights along the way. The entire route was marked by smiling faces shaking to fabulous dance music, and some very intrigued New Yorkers. (One guy had a maraca in one hand that was quintessential to the group as a whole...you really will have to see
the video when they finish it.)
We went over the Williamsburg bridge and into Brooklyn (now in less traffic so getting off our bikes and dancing at all of the lights), and then had a wild
three minute dance party outside of a group of bars, getting people to
come outside to dance until a police vehicle pulled up and we took
off. When we finally stopped near the warehouse I got to actually introduce myself
to all of these strangers with whom I had just rode for two hours, and
it turns out another straggler had joined the group, too, when he
heard us pass by his window while he was reading in bed!
We went back to their warehouse and carried on the dance party, until I left to ride the twelve miles back up to Harlem at 3:00 am.
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