the Sprockettes dance their [...]]]> This weekend I went to the Tour de Fat in Seattle at Gasworks Park, a touring festival sponsored by the New Belgium brewing company to promote their beer, but mostly to celebrate bicycles and art.  There were a few spectacular performances that I thought I would to recap and review here.

the Sprockettes dance their biker girl hearts out

First, I saw the Sprockettes, an all female bicycle dance troupe from Portland, Oregon.  Clad in hot pink and black, they gave a spirited performance dancing to what sounded like 80s/90s pop-punk music, half of them lip-syncing along.  Some of the simple acrobatics they did using their little trick bikes were really clever and fun.  Their dancing wasn’t always synchronized, but that was not the point.  The point was that every move they made, they made with such GUSTO, such vigor and spirit.  Watching them made me feel like our culture is not actually doomed, and the revolution will be lead by girls on bikes clad in pink hot pants.

the Baron Vegan von Hamburger

The other show I saw was the Squirm Burpee Circus, by a group know as the Handsome Little Devils.  Their show, as they proclaimed, was a “vaudvillian melodrama, with good guys and bad guys.”  Their schtick was pretty straightforward, but effective and enjoyable.  The bad guy, the Baron Vegan von Hamburger, had a contraption he used to to turn the audience’s applause into pure evil, in the form of a giant black balloon.  But!  if the audience applauded TOO loud, the machine would malfunction and the balloon of evil would burst.  The good guys, brothers Mike the Handsome and Dashing Dave, with their assistant Lolo making a love triangle, performed some first rate juggling, swing dancing, and tricks, as well as having some of the best audience banter I’ve seen.

my dad enjoys a very unusual bike

Unfortunately I missed a show by Nanda, a group of juggling and acrobatic ninjas from Port Townsend.  In addition to the variety of performances, there was other bike fun to be had, at a section of the park full of funky, rideable art bikes that were some of the strangest (and funnest) looking bikes I’ve seen.

Seeing such an outpouring of bike love and creativity got me really exciting for bike touring around the northwest, and seeing the performances got me really excited to start developing our own show, INTERROBANG!