Last Friday evening, Mission Bay Reserve lit up with hundreds of LEDs, glow sticks, strobe lights and even disco balls for the start of the first official Auckland Bike Rave.
Co-organiser Lennart Nout reports:
Bike Raves are a Vancouver invention that’s flying round the world. The spark of inspiration for our version was supplied by Vancouverites Melissa and Chris Bruntlett during their recent visit to Auckland.
The concept is simple. You get together with some friends, light up your bike and play some funky music through portable speakers. While cycling along, you meet new people, see the city at night, have a little stop at a local park here and there, and enjoy a well-deserved drink afterwards.
Everyone loves a party, especially one on bikes. With Auckland growing into a more bike-friendly city, the time was ripe to trial the concept here. And what a brilliant success it was.
Riders and onlookers alike were dazzled by helmets with Sky Towers, a rocket-bike, a disco cargo bike, and thousands of LEDs and glow sticks.
Our route took us from Mission Bay all the way to the new and beautiful Westhaven promenade (I highly recommend going there at night).
We took our time, stopping along the way to enjoy the music, start up the famous “bicycle whirlpool” in a local reserve, and admire the (coincidental) fireworks from a Festival event in the Domain.
We got so many friendly toots along the way, from car drivers, port workers – and even from the train!
It’s blazingly clear that Auckland is ready for more events like this, so we’ll definitely organise another one relatively soon. In the meantime, like the Bike Rave page on Facebook and stay in touch via Twitter using the hashtag #bikeraveAKL. See you next time!
Pics by Antoine Pethers, François Le Français and Scott Smith, via Facebook.
And Antoine’s also written a rave review (heh!) over at Bike Friendly North Shore.
