Portland’s World Naked Bike Ride will take the year off

There will be no World Naked Bike Ride in Portland this year. Think of it as a well-deserved year off for a ride that’s been working overtime for two decades.

Organizers announced today they plan to take a one-year hiatus to “retrench” and work on the ride’s vast, behind-the-scenes foundation and make it even stronger in the future.

First held in 2004, the Portland version of the global protest against Big Oil quickly became one of the largest in the world. It put Portland on the map as a naked cycling epicenter and by 2013, the ride set a record with an estimated crowd of over 8,000 people who flooded streets with smiles for miles. It peaked at an estimated 10,000 riders in 2014. The ride got so large that in 2022 we reported that organizers publicly hoped fewer people would show up.

As we shared in 2015, the nonprofit Portland World Naked Bike Ride (PDXWNBR) takes an army of volunteers and dedicated do-gooders to pull off. Imagine several thousand naked people on bikes — many of them novice riders who haven’t dusted off their bikes since last year’s WNBR — rolling through public streets open to other traffic, with or without a police escort, and being led by volunteers. And they expect a big, fun, safe gathering before the ride and a party afterward.

That’s a huge undertaking for a grassroots nonprofit without any paid leadership or staff and that features new ride leaders each year.

In a statement today, organizers said they simply don’t feel like they’ve got the leadership and help in place to do justice to such an important, iconic ride. “The planning for 2024 didn’t start in September as expected, and by springtime we realized we were behind on our leadership recruiting goals,” the statement reads.

Here’s more from the statement:

“Making the protest safe and accessible is a huge undertaking, months in the making. For many Portlanders, the PDXWNBR may be their only ride of the year, so we hold the event to a high standard, with comprehensive volunteer organization, neighborhood outreach, and coordination with agencies like TriMet and Portland Parks & Recreation. Our history has also shown us how a little more planning can make the protest even more welcoming, with local artists, musicians, medics, bike mechanics, and other community partners all on hand…

Portland deserves the World Naked Bike Ride to be done right, so we are retrenching and focusing on growing our diverse, all-volunteer team this year.”

Meghan Sinnott, a former lead organizer and dedicated volunteer of the ride over the past 10+ years who I spoke to for this story said the ride — and all the people it means so much to — deserve a year off. “As this ride continues to grow in popularity, there are persistent struggles that are real,” she said.

I got a feeling from Sinnott that she was crushed the ride wouldn’t happen this year, but that it would be a disservice to everyone if it went forward. “There’s such a deep, deep reverence and love and joy around this event,” she shared. “This ride is bigger than Bike Summer. It’s bigger than Portland bike culture. It’s iconic. There’s a lot of emotional investment in this.”

Now Sinnott and other organizers want to focus on volunteer recruitment and finding great leaders for next year’s ride. They’re especially looking for people with varied perspectives beyond the bike community. If you’re curious and want to be on next year’s Leadership Committee, use this form to apply. The deadline is 11:59 pm on September 6th.

If riding nude is your thing and you’re bummed to miss WNBR, there are several other opportunities to ride naked this summer. Browse the official Bike Summer Pedalpalooza calendar on the Shift website.

— PDXWNBR.org