Rock The Bike: BLOG
Basic questions to consider when crafting your Pedal Powered Stage
Oct 16, 2012Posted by fossilfool in Electric Fender Blender Pro Related Posts, Featured News, LED Panels, Modified JBL Loudspeakers, Mundo 500, Pedal Power Utility Box, Pedal Powered Stage Gear, Pedalometer | 0 comments
The technical needs of a Pedal Powered event vary greatly depending on things like audience size, venue, and power needs of musician’s devices. Over the past 6 years Rock The Bike has Pedal Powered events large and small. In this post we’ll try to help you arrive at what type of Pedal Power system would make the biggest impact for you.
Above: Shake Your Peace! performs during the Bay Rising Tour on their Pedal Powered Stage crafted by Rock the Bike.
Please consider and answer these questions:
- Outdoor v. Indoor. Doing anything in an outdoor space requires more power, as there are no resounding walls. What are the spaces you wish to use as venues? Do you have a photo of one of the events you host?
- Will you be doing nighttime events? Is there always light available? Do you have a need for Pedal Powered Lighting?
- What is your main motivation for doing Pedal Power?
- Audience size. How many people are in the crowd at the events you envision Pedal Powering?
- Do you need to provide AC power? Examples of why you’d need this include: charging cell phones, charging laptops, powering a mixing board, powering a power tool as an example of Pedal Power.
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read moreWatch Fossil Fool’s TED Audition.
Aug 13, 2012Posted by fossilfool in Blog, Featured News | Comments Off
VOTING IS CLOSED! Thanks for reading and watching the video!
Friends, customers, and fans: Please support my campaign to speak at the global TED 2013 conference. There is an open voting and comment period happening NOW until the end of August, in which you can watch and review all the amazing auditions that took place in the past 6 months. I auditioned in Vancouver in May. While the TED team make the final decisions, your feedback and ratings are going to help this talk get noticed. Please see bold instructions below for info about how to take action!
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read moreRide to Gaia Fest with Rock the Bike
Jul 13, 2012Posted by Brittany in Blog, Rides and Events | Comments Off
Beginning July 30 from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, we will pedal northward, covering 180-miles in 4-days, arriving in style at Gaia Fest, an awesome music and camping festival at the Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville.
For the past 4 years, we have mobilized hundreds to ride 20 miles south from San Francisco to Maker Faire.
At the Bicycle Music Festival, we move our entire festival, including our 10000-watt Pedal Powered Stage and hundreds of fans, from our day venue to our night venue 5 miles away.
We have studied from the masters of self-supported music and bike touring, the Pleasant Revolution. Cello Joe, in foreground, will be biking with us. Kipchoge, in background will also be biking to Gaia, but from the North.
And now, we are ready to bring YOU safely by bicycle to Gaia Fest!
We will be carrying all the supplies we need for our tour, then setting up a Pedal Powered Stage featuring some of the best bands at the Gaia Festival, right across from the Main Stage!
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read moreMany thanks San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival: World’s largest Human Powered Music Fest.
Jul 6, 2012Posted by fossilfool in Blog, Featured News, Ice Cream Bike, LED Panels, Modified JBL Loudspeakers, Pedal Power Utility Box, Pedal Powered Stage Gear, Pedalometer | Comments Off
The 6th Annual San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival was our biggest ever and a milestone for our grassroots Human Powered Music Fest. Many thanks to the bands, fans, and our huge volunteer crew. Any one of the 3 phases of the day would have been epic enough. But we had a beautiful, idyllic daytime music festival in the park, an outrageous mobile party, and a post-modern urban block party all in one day. Daytime: 500+ people in a meadow, enjoying live music in the beautiful sunshine… Followed by a fire-truck dodging, freeway underpass screaming, Fossil Fooling LiveOnBike session, with captain Ariel using no electric assist to pull 3 performers and audio gear weighing 250 pounds on our Mobile Stage… Followed by a street party with an elevated stage, a glowing Bike Tree, and a 3-person pedal powered stage lighting system.
Rupa & The April Fishes perform at Golden Gate Park’s Log Cabin Meadow. Photo: Volker Neumann.
We had 19 pedalers at the peak in Golden Gate Park! Plenty of power for our 10000-Watt sound system to run. In the distance you can see our Pedal Powered Line Array hanging from its bamboo tripod.
The suite next to the metalshop in our Berkeley workshop community is available!
Jun 9, 2012Posted by fossilfool in Blog | Comments Off
The workshop community has the honor of being the only structure zoned for ‘Light Industrial’ in this otherwise residential neighborhood. This makes it ideal for inventors, frame builders, seamsters and seamstresses, or fabricators. We are close to good food and 3 BART stations.
Bike Blenders, Pedal Powered Activities for Events and Education
Mar 21, 2012Posted by Brittany in Blog, Featured Post | Comments Off
Bringing Pedal Power to your event increases the fun and participation while decreasing the use of diesel generators, extension cords, and batteries. This instantly gets your group moving, breathing, and active. People are more likely to loosen up, enjoy themselves, and learn something new when their body is engaged. Our most popular activity — and the most accessible starting point for anyone interested in Pedal Power — is Bike Blending. Please read on to see the different Bike Blenders and our full array of Pedal Powered activities!
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read moreVow for 2012: No More Foofy gigs!
Dec 7, 2011Posted by fossilfool in Blog | Comments Off
We want to feel the love at all of our events in 2012 and are willing to let some event opportunities go if they are shaping up to be foofy.
Foofy: Excessively frilly or frou-frou, typically in a manner calculated to attract attention to an otherwise unremarkable person or event. Source: Wiktionary
In the context of Pedal Powered events, foofy is synonymous with greenwashing, needless burning of Fossil Fuels to get there, or huge expense of resources to amplify a vague message.
For 2012, we vow: No More Foofy or Unattended Gigs!
We’re grateful to everyone who has reached out to us about event opportunities. And we don’t want to point fingers. But those on the crew who’ve been there week after week know we’ve had some foofy gigs in the mix this past year. We took almost all the events that came our way in the past year, turning down only an employee event for a major oil company. In 2012 we want to apply a stricter standard to avoid taking gigs that waste our time or use our Pedal Power to further a lame cause. This will hopefully save our team’s energy and resources to give our all to the products and events we believe in.
If several of the questions below raise a flag , that’s a clear sign this gig is likely to be foofy. Avoid it!
- Would we be proud to announce it in our newsletter?
- Are we comfortable doing it? In order to get the gig, do we need to promise something we’ve never done at an event before?
- Does this event producer / client have a message? And is it a message we can get behind?
The message doesn’t need to be the focus of the event. For example, our music events don’t always have a strong message, and they’re still worth doing. - Do we respect the planners / organizers and their work in the community?
- Do we need to burn fossil fuels to get there? This is a big one. We did a lot of truck and airplane gigs in 2011. Using Fossil Fuels to get to a gig raises the bar on everything else. We need to reach a good number of people in a real way to make up for burning
- Do we get to work with kids? Major trump card! Working with kids makes almost everything else passable.
- Does the client care about the event enough to want to be there in person? Enough to pedal? At many of our events, we are left to hold it down and the event contact / client is busy doing something else. Not a deal braker on its own but if 2-3 other flags are up, then this might make the gig unworkable.
No more unattended gigs. We will work to get our people there!
OK, so we are only going to do events we believe in. Now we want to avoid another pitfall: unattended gigs. There were too many events in 2011 that had awesome music, a great message, and not enough people! We will use every tool in our bag to get our friends and people out. If you want to make sure you hear about these events, join our Facebook page, and our newsletter using the icons above.
Bike Fair at Sproul Plaza. Awesome event, great music and dancing, but only 5-10 people from our community showed up beyond our crew who were working the event. Let’s grow that number next year so that we can have more great dance moments like these at our Pedal Powered events.
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Recent Highlights: Fall 2011
Dec 1, 2011Posted by Brittany in Blog | Comments Off
We give many thanks to all of our Fall event partners. Here are some highlights from the season:
Occupy Music Festival
On 11-11-11, Rock the Bike came out to help power the Occupy Music Festival. We brought speakers, bike generators, and our new LED lights for an awesome day-and-night show. We’d like to shout out our gratefulness to videographer, Arthur Woo, and all the great bands that made it what it was!
Morgan roadying to Occupy Music Festival.
Pedalfest
We pulled out all the stops and brought along our entire pedal powered fleet: Fender Blenders, the Ice Cream Bike, Pedal Powered Stage, Pedal Powered Spin Art, and even an aerial performance by Tara Quinn.
Local Bites
This summer we released our new Ice Cream Bike. We think it’s our sleekest design and most innovative product yet, and it’s a great example of the progress we’ve made at Rock the Bike. We also got an amazing opportunity to pedal power our first foodie event with it at The California Academy of Science’s LocalBites.
Life is Living
This year was Rock the Bike’s first Bay Area doubleheader! While many crew members stayed at Cow Palace, a few went to Oakland to pedal power our first cooking demo.
Ramping Up Our Performances
We started off with one acrobatic artist (Tara Quinn), and now we have worked with four! We’re enjoying all the functionality of El Arbol, allowing hoops and even silks!
We’ve also added Pedal Power Stage Lighting with LED Panels (seen above & below in Red and Blue) to our Pedal Power Stage!
What are the elements of a Pedal Powered Stage?
Nov 8, 2011Posted by fossilfool in Electric Fender Blender Pro Related Posts, Featured News, LED Panels, Modified JBL Loudspeakers, Mundo 500, Pedal Power Utility Box, Pedal Powered Stage Gear, Pedalometer | Comments Off
Pedal Power Generators:
You will need enough bicycle generators that the pedaling effort per person is approx. 50-75 Watts. Based on my experience at events, 50-75 Watts is the amount that an average audience member can continuously provide. You should also have ‘ringer pedalers’ in your crew. Ringer pedalers are strong racer or everyday commuting cyclists who can contribute up to 4 times more than an average pedaler. Whether you’re relying on ringers or the GP (General Public), you’ll need enough bikes that the effort can be shared. Tip: Use a Kill-A-Watt to measure the consumption of the gear you want to use. Then divide by 60 watts!
El Arbol: The Bike Tree
Jul 25, 2011Posted by fossilfool in Featured News | Comments Off
Tara performs on El Arbol at the start of the SF Marathon
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- El Arbol without its Canopy of Leaves
El Arbol is a 15′ tall Bike Tree, a functional tall top-bottom tandem bicycle with a built-in 1500-Watt Pedal Powered stack of loudspeakers. Perfect for Pedal Powered Stage events, it’s fun, loud, clear, and expands the notion of ‘Stage’ to include the pedalers.
Justin Ancheta band performs through El Arbol at Maker Fair. Photo: Krista Jones
The height of the upper loudspeaker helps the sound spread out easily above a crowd, without requiring deafening levels of volume.
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