The Philly Naked Bike Ride (PNBR) is back for its 15th ride Saturday, starting from Glendinning Rock Garden around 5 p.m. and finishing at Drexel Park.
The annual event, part of the World Naked Bike Ride movement and organized by members of the social cycling volunteer group CycleScenePHL, is a clothing-optional bike ride through the streets of Philadelphia, with the course changing slightly every year. It has happened in Philly since 2009 and last year drew around 4,500 riders, according to the rough headcount of the group’s lead facilitator, Wesley Noonan-Sessa. It’s only an estimate, as people can join and leave all throughout the ride.
“We did a full stop at 20th Street on Market and the ride went all the way back to 36th Street with no gaps, which is more than a mile long, of two lanes of traffic,” he recalled.
The event comes at a moment when Philly’s cycling community has had a significant uptick in activism, following the death of cyclist Dr. Barbara Friedes in July, the first cyclist death of the year in the city.
During these protests, there’s been frustration with a perceived lack of progress by Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration on street safety, with chants of “Concrete now; Paint will not protect us,” “What do we want? Safe streets. When do we want it? Now,” and others.
This Saturday’s PNBR will probably have some of that alongside its more common chants, like “less gas, more ass.” Ahead of this year’s ride, the organizers have discussed where the balance needs to be, with members of the group wary of straying too far from the original message and goals of the World Naked Bike Ride — promoting “fuel-conscious consumption, positive body image, and cycling advocacy” — that makes the event popular, inclusive, and fun.
“We will have people coming from all over the city, all over the country, that have no idea what has happened here in this city. So we want to make sure that we stick to the message of the World Naked Bike Ride,” said Laura Mulhall, who’s been involved in the ride for close to a decade and is helping organize it for a third year.
Large turnout expected
The organizers are expecting a relatively large turnout this weekend. The weather should be great and, as the largest naked bike ride on the East Coast, people historically come from all over the city, and the country for it. Portland, which has the largest Naked Bike Ride in the country, canceled its ride this year, which Philly’s organizers expect to boost turnout.
The ride is free — beware of online scams asking you to register or buy tickets — and you are welcome to join at any point along the route. Professional body painters are on hand at the starting point to decorate folks with messages. Riders can strip down as much as they’re comfortable with and the ride is designed to be fun.
“I remember the first time that I went fully nude and I thought, ‘Why haven’t I done this years before?’ It is the most exhilarating and free feeling in the world to be able to do that,” said Mulhall.
Aaron Rabon, who participated in the ride last year and is helping organize it this year, compared the atmosphere in the PNBR to a rock show.
“The energy that the Philly Naked Bike Ride feels like is very metal,” he said. “We’ve got people real close to each other, yelling at the top of their lungs, in a big crowd going through a lot of people, just kind of being silly, goofy, swinging our arms around, getting our genitals out. I mean, it’s wild and almost chaotic, in a way.”
The organizers started planning and testing out the route and signing up volunteers in early spring. The Philadelphia Police Department is told about the route before the event, but has had no involvement.
A team effort
Mulhall has been on the street team since 2022, keeping folks safe and organized during the ride. This year she will be on the advance team, the group that leads the ride — warning and halting traffic so that the rest of the group can pass through intersections safely.
“I still have to deal with the cars and the traffic so I don’t really get that luxury [of a cleared road] in the past couple years since I’ve been up there.” Mulhall said. “But I know that I love doing that to ensure the safety of those thousands of people that come into the city.”
Mid-marshals are street team members that maintain order in the middle, while a group called the sweep ensures no one is left behind and looks out for any antsy, impatient drivers.
“Conflict management is something that we do a not insignificant amount of talking and training about with the street team,” Rabon said.
But part of the naked bike ride is to highlight to car drivers the vulnerability that cyclists and other non-car travelers face on the streets every day.
“As cyclists, we are naked every time we are on a bicycle,” Mulhall said “We’re not protected by … a big metal box of airbags. We have just our bodies. We are essentially naked every single time we ride our bike.”
Philly’s biking community has social groups like CycleScenePHL — which organize night rides and other fun events — and advocacy groups like Philly Bike Action! and the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. The PNBR provides a unique intersection for these groups and communities.
“We want to reduce carbon fuel consumption. We want to have more people biking. We want to call for safer infrastructure for biking and safer streets for biking,” Noonan-Sessa said. “But [the PNBR is] very much a party atmosphere. It’s a party meets a protest.”
“We always have a little bit of chanting going on during these rides,” Rabon said “But at the same time we’ll have people who want to take no part in that, and that is all part of how we would like to lead an inclusive ride.”
Noonan-Sessa is also a board member of Philly Bike Action!, which organized a protest ride from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to City Hall a month ago, and attempted to give thousands of petitions to Mayor Parker and City Council earlier this week. The group has called for concrete barriers to separate the city’s bike lanes from car traffic on some streets, and also asked Parker to restore and increase the funding that was reduced by more than half from the Vision Zero line item in the city budget. The mayor’s office has claimed that funds for street safety exist in other city programs.
The advocacy and protests have yielded some results, with some churches
agreeing to end bike lane parking on Sundays.
‘A ride that should be fun’
Yolanda Gomes-Galvez joined the PNBR’s street team a couple weeks ago. She’s also been a volunteer for Philly Bike Action! and spoke at the City Hall protest. Her advocacy for safer streets has been a part of her three years riding in the PNBR with the message she has painted on her body.
“In my first Naked Bike Ride, one of the messages on my back was like, ‘Oh, there’s this number of cyclists who have been killed in this city.’ So I think, even before Philly Bike Action!, I’ve always been very vocal with this,” she said.
Despite that, Gomes-Galvez said the overall message of the PNBR should be apolitical and fun.
“You see so many different people who vote whatever party, people who perhaps don’t ride bikes, and they still come to the ride because their goal is to have fun, to enjoy the day and to be naked,” Gomes-Galvez said. “For me, even though I think I’m a big advocate for bikes — right now for bike safety — for me, it’s a ride that should be fun.”
And, all would agree, safe.“Since [Friedes’s death], I’ve actually had three friends who’ve been in incidents with cars,” Noonan-Sessa said. “So, it’s like we really need to step it up and make the streets safer, get car speeds lower and have safer spaces for people to bike and walk in the city.”
