San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival

The award-winning Bicycle Music Festival in San Francisco—the world's largest pedal-powered music festival—took place annually from 2007-2015. Co-founded and co-produced by myself and my friend Paul Freedman (Rock the Bike), Bicycle Music Festival was profiled by press outlets as diverse as Treehugger and Scientific American; heralded as "iconic" by NPR, lauded as "the best bike fest" by Outside Magazine, and awarded The City of San Francisco's "Certificate of Honor" for "redefining what a green music festival can be." 

Community-powered through and through, without the help of corporate sponsors, or equipment trucks, the festival was produced (and hauled) by over 100 brave and sexy-legged volunteers and literally powered by the festival audience, who generated all of the electricity needed to run the sound system and lighting via a pedal-powered sound system consisting of up to 30 bikes.

Free and all-ages, Bicycle Music Festival consisted of 3 sequential venues that unfolded like a delightful treasure hunt: beginning in the morning in Golden Gate Park with a stationary venue that featured a half-dozen bands representing a wide cross section of Bay Area music, from salsa, to square dance. Then around lunchtime the entire festival would pick up: bands, roadies, and audience, and load up onto bicycle trailers and cargo bicycles, pedaling across town together to our Night Venue in a spectacle called "LiveOnBike". This cross-city pilgrimage/parade featured live performances from bands perched atop a bicycle-drawn stage, playing to a rolling audience that would stretch for blocks. The parade would then arrive at our Night venue (stationary) where a half-dozen more bands would play until everyone was reduced to an exhausted pile of smiles.

An open-source idea, BMF-style events have been produced around the world, from Europe, to Asia, to South America.