There are many messages delivered with the World Naked Bike Ride with everything from encouraging drivers to take notice of cyclists and promoting cycling safety to saving the planet by not driving and burning fossil fuels, to promoting body awareness and positive self-image.
Every year in cities around the world, people ride bikes naked to celebrate cycling and the human body. The ride demonstrates the vulnerability of cyclists on the road and is a protest against car culture.
This year was the 20th anniversary of the first offical ride held in 2004.
The largest gathering in Australia
The World Naked Bike Ride Byron Bay’s annual ride was held on Sunday with over 100 people taking part. The Byron event is the largest gathering of World Naked Bike Riders in Australia.
Since 2004, cities across the world have experienced the joy of the world’s largest naked event promoting cycling in the history of humanity.
You are invited to not only ride with us but also to help organize a WNBR event in the city of your choosing.
As Bare As You Dare
The World Naked Bike Ride dress code is ‘As Bare As You Dare’ How bare is that? How dare is that? It’s all up to you. Riders decide what rhey are comfortable with. No one is excluded or discriminated against based on levels of clothing, bodypaint, or anything else for that matter.
There was also an event held in Nimbin on Saturday.
The message of WNBR focuses on promoting cycling:
• Save the planet! shifting to a carefree lifestyle is one of the most powerful things a person can do to make a real difference in reducing negative environmental impacts on this planet.
Conrad Schmidt, founder of The Work Less Party and Artists for Peace and WNBR and organizer for WNBR Vancouver, BC says the message to the world is one of simplification, human harmony and love. ‘For a future to exist for tomorrow’s generations, we have to stop wasting the life blood energy of the Earth, stop fighting and killing in the name of consumerist wealth accumulation and learn to love and respect all life on this planet.’
• It’s time to put a stop to the indecent exposure of people and the planet to cars and the pollution they create. We face automobile traffic with our naked bodies as the best way of defending our dignity and exposing the vulnerability faced by cyclists and pedestrians on our streets as well as the negative consequences we all face due to dependence on oil, and other forms of non-renewable energy.
• Breathe easier. ‘If you stand in a closed garage with a running car, you will die in a matter of minutes. Hundreds of thousands of cars in our cities create dirty, unhealthy air.’ – Go By Bicycle
• Body image/self-awareness. Cycling promotes body awareness, the fact that one can achieve a more healthy lifestyle from the exercise we achive by using self-powered transport
• Self-sufficiency. Cycling makes us non-renewable energy sources, less dependent oil
• Think Globally, Act locally. Cycling promotes local cycling businesses and local cycling organizations.
• Less is more. WNBR strips the complexities from modern transport to a simplified message of cycling. For the vast majority of most peoples’ transport needs, cycles are the right vehicle for the right job. ‘You don’t need a wheelbarrow to carry a pea.’
• The unabashed vehicle of the revolution. By cycling naked we declare our confidence in the beauty and individuality of our bodies and the bicycles’s place as a catalyst for change in the future of sustainability, transport, community and recreation.
‘Unless we change direction, we are likely to end up where we are heading.’
•Community-building. Bicycles create public space, enhance street life and build a sense of community
‘If you see someone you know while riding, it’s easy to stop and say hello. Bicycles create public space, enhance street life and build a sense of community’ – Go By Bicycle
•Peace of mind. ‘People are looking for places where they’re not constantly being confronted with cars. It’s just like non-smokers seeking smoke-free space.’
– Franziska Eichstaedt-Bohlig, German Green Party.
Photos Tree Faerie
Good on them! At least some vestige of the Rainbow Region remains and the Bay hasn’t become all Birkenstocks and Range Rovers from the Gold Coast, at least not yet! The participants and organisers do have a serious message about fossil fuel use and the dangers of cycling, the right to be nude and body positivity (disclaimer – I’m a cyclist and yes, I use clothing optional beaches, too!) This year the ride is all the more important given that the clothing optional section of Tyagrah Beach is under the very real threat of closure by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. The ride is a reminder of the Byron Bay of old and not the Byron Beige of today!
Perverts.
If you know some, report them to police. I know many of these people personally and many more naturists and nudists. None fit your description. The father of children and religiously Anglican man who I was left with for 15 mths, and who sexually abused me as a 11yr old, does though.
I just hope those bikes aren’t rentals.
The comment from Kaz. No honey, they are not perverts.
They are liberated lovely folk who are not mentally anal.
Nothing wrong with nudity at all.
Plenty of perverts who wear clothes and are in positions of power.
Oh how happy I am not to be a pushbike seat.
Funny, I have wood friend whose fondest desire is to come back as a bike seat!
Oops! That was meant to be a GOOD friend – he’s not wooden at all!
Love John’s comments spot on beige is everywhere in today’s control freak society no spontaneity and freedom just constant control and have materialism shoved down our throats hopefully no accidents on the ride ouch
I support John and Odette’s comments. The key word to use with such WNBR protests, nudists, naturists, and clothing optional beach goers, is ‘non-sexual’. If viewers see it differently, I respect that, but don’t understand it. There are laws to deal with sexual behaviors in public, so report them.
Thank you.
A big thank you to Eve Jeffery and Tree Faerie for this article and photos. How refreshing to see a media publication treat the human naked form respectfully and without feeling the need to blur or cover those parts of the body that make us human. As a naturist I see only positives to the lifestyle. Thanks.