Naked Bike Ride: controversial protest gains legitimacy
The Bay’s sixth Naked Bike Ride takes place tomorrow from Tarakohe.
Golden Bay’s sixth Naked Bike Ride takes off from Tarakohe tomorrow (March 14) at 3pm, finishing three kilometres away at the Totally Roasted Café at Pohara. Around 100 riders turned up last year for the event, which protests the vulnerable road user’s “indecent exposure to traffic”. Around 70 cities in 20 countries throughout the world now run World Naked Bike Ride-affiliated events.
Naked Bike Ride organiser Victoria Davis says this year’s event is particularly timely, as two speed-reduction petitions have been circulating in the Bay.
“The time has come for action on the issue. Golden Bay could become a national ‘slow down’ model that honours vulnerable road users—not only cyclists, but pedestrians and horse riders. Fully one third of all road fatalities in Tasman District are now pedestrians or cyclists.”
Attitudes in Golden Bay (indeed throughout the world) towards the event have changed markedly since the first Naked Bike Ride. Even as late as 2006, then-Mayor John Hurley contacted the NZ Police Commissioner demanding that riders be arrested for indecent exposure after 200 locals signed a petition against the ride. Constable Arthur Clarence was later cheered by riders when he advised them that legal research on the issue had concluded that nude cycling was not illegal.
In what is thought to be a landmark test case last June in Oregon, Judge Jerome LaBarre cleared Portland nude cyclist Michael “Bobby” Hammond of criminal indecent exposure charges, saying that cycling naked had established itself as a legitimate form of “symbolic protest against cars and possibly the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels.” The police brought the charges after 1,200 people turned up for Portland’s annual Naked Bike Ride.
Typically for the Golden Bay ride, only around one third of riders get naked. The rest take off in various states of dress and undress, from fully clothed to flimsily clad or adorned in body paint and slogans.
Gerard Hindmarsh
