Photo from http://bicyclemusicfestival.com/about_bmf/
On Saturday, June 22, 2013 the 7th annual San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival (BMF) was brought to life. BMF is the world's largest mobile music festival that features up to 15 bands and is powered solely by bicycle. It is a free, all-day and into-the-night event that takes place on the Saturday closest to the summer solstice.
After a five-hour music festival in Golden Gate Park, the entire festival – stage and musicians – packed up and paraded on their bicycles through the city. “Artists and bands perform while rolling down the city streets mounted on the backs of cargo bikes and bike trailers outfitted with microphones and amplifiers. The sound is wirelessly routed to “soulcycle” party bikes interspersed throughout the crowd, surrounding the crowd with sound,” writes the BMF website.
The bicycle parade ended in Mission park for a three-hour night-time music festival that offered bike-blended smoothies, pedal powered ice cream, art bikes and more.
BMF features a 14,000 pedal powered PA system to broadcast the music. It is set-up and taken down in-between stops. It is hauled by bicycle to each location. No motor vehicles are used in the festival.
According to the BMF website “The mission of the Bicycle Music Festival is to promote sustainable culture in general and bicycle culture in particular, by physically engaging and immersing our community in the magic of bike culture, and cultivating and nurturing a network of local sustainable musicians, through our staging of free, community participatory, bicycle-based music events.”
The event began in 2007 and has doubled in size each year. The festival is run by a team of over 40 volunteers and supported by donations from the public and partnerships with hip companies.
"The Bicycle Music Festival and its pedal-powered PA system are not only wonderful ways for the community to quite literally empower itself, but also a wonderful way to remind ourselves as we generate electricity with one another, shoulder to shoulder, where power is ultimately rooted,” states the BMF website.
For more information and videos visit: http://bicyclemusicfestival.com/about_bmf/
