January 2012!

Happy January All! This month is a busy one for us, and we have a lot to share with you.

Two of our members have moved on, Agent Nikita and Agent DirtBag.  They were both awesome, hard working and wonderful, and they will be missed. In their wake, we have accrued two new members, Agent Vulvattack and Agent Rummy Rose! You can check out their bios soon on the bio page of our website, and see them in their very first performances this month.

On Monday, January 16, the Sprockettes will join with many others such as Mic Crenshaw, Wanderlust Circus, Justin James Bridges, David Rovics, DJ Hoya and many more in a show called “Occupy the Dream” – a morale booster for the Occupy movement. In solidarity with people’s movements all over the world, we will gather to honor the troops on the front lines of this peaceful revolution as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We really hope to see you there. Spread the word with the Facebook event and learn more about the performers and the event here. There is a donation asked, but no one will be turned away due to lack of funds.

Our second appearance will be at Project Grow alongside the works of artist Johhnie Olivan, Co-Founder of Rejuiced Bikes. He will showcase his 3D installations and pedal powered pieces throughout the month of January. Rejuiced Bikes is a space that works to recycle unwanted bicycle parts that would otherwise be melted down. On Friday January 27th, the Sprockettes will perform at the closing of this amazing event. Find out more info and RSVP here.

Stay cozy and we’ll see you soon!

Occupy Fundraiser and Port City Bike Art Show!

Hello, Sprockettes fans and supporters! We have 2 shows coming up.

The first, on Monday, January 16th, is in support of the Occupy movement. It’ll be a great night of entertainment at the Alberta Rose Theater on 30th and Alberta, and proceeds will go towards legal fees of Occupiers who’re going through the court system. Check out the facebook event here.

Then we’ll be performing at Port City, where there’s a bike-themed art installation by Johnnie O of Rejuiced Bikes. Our show will be on closing night: January 27th. Check out the facebook event here.

Port City Development Center, People’s Co-op, Roller Derby!

Although the summer begins to slightly chill out here in P-town, we’re still staying super busy. September is turning out to be a much busier month than we had planned. We’ve got 3 great shows coming up.

We’ll be performing at Agent Curse and Agent Dollface’s job-site, for the employees at Port City Development Center on the 16th.

We’ll then be shaking it at Agent Babe Alert’s work at the People’s Co-op Harvest Fair and Craft Festival at about 6:30pm on Wednesday the 21st.

Later we’ll be sharing the floor with some other rad chicks at the Roller Derby West Region playoffs, on Sunday the 25th at about 4:30pm.

Hopefully we’ll get to see you at one of these amazing shows!

Sprockettes Mini-Tour: Now with Clowns!

The Sprockettes will be embarking on a tour of Seattle, Olympia, and Portland starting August 5th!

We’ll start off at the 15th Annual Dead Baby Downhill, the greatest party known to humankind. We promise an amazing performance, passion and power, and fire. The Dead Babies are a freakbike club in Seattle that have been gracious enough to welcome us into their caring arms for performances at the Downhill 5 years running. The party also includes pedal-powered carnival rides c/o Cyclecide, bands all night, burgers and dogs, and bike games and jousting. Check out a video of last year’s performance:

On the 6th, we’ll be doing some renegade shows in Seattle: watch out, noble denizens of Seattle! Your capacity for fun is about to expand by leaps and bounds!

On the 7th, we’ll be performing with Cyclecide‘s band and clown show in Olympia, Washington (and if we’re lucky, we’ll also see some amazing interpretive dance from Oly’s own Dance Lab!). We’re still nailing down the details, but this free show will include chaos, crowd participation, and collaborative performances. Check out our shows page for details.

Finally, on the 8th, we’ll be back in good ol’ Portland, Oregon for a show with Cyclecide at the Red Fox.

We’re looking forward to seeing you at one of these shows!

The Sprockettes Summer Girls’ Camp Was Awesome!

Thanks so much to all the girls, parents, and supporters who helped make the Sprockettes Girls’ Camp happen!  It was an amazing experience for all of us Sprockettes, and we hope the Sprocklettes who attended had a weekend they’ll remember for a long time.  They did amazingly well in the performance and practices, and we loved teaching them dance, bike tricks, and acro, putting on makeup, and generally sharing time with them.

Below you’ll find a video that our friend Tiago Dejerk made of the event, and a couple photos that Jonathan Maus of Bikeportland.org and Meghan Sinnott took.

Thanks again, ladies!

Sprockettes Summer Girls Camp

The Sprockettes are hosting a Girls Summer Day Camp and we would love to have your little ones be a part of the magic! We aim to share skills, learn self-empowerment, practice effective team-building, and dance our little pink hearts out!

What: We have many fun stations planned throughout the day and a variety of activities to participate in. These include stretching, riding bikes, team building, and learning an original Sprockettes choreographed dance.

Where: The camp will be located at one of the parks that will be featured during Sunday Parkways in NW. The second day of the camp will include a performance by our campers at Sunday Parkways!

When: Saturday July 23rd 11am – 4pm & Sunday July 24th, 11am – 2pm, with a performance at the Sunday Parkways. Group photo opportunities with all the girls afterwards.

Each registered little lady gets their own Sprockettes Camp t-shirt. Please list the size you’d prefer: S, M, L.

Cost: The Sprockettes perform largely for our community for free, and we would love to continue to do so. Expenses do come up however, and we need your help to keep fun activities like this camp happening in the future.

Please make your donation of $40- $150 sliding scale, payable by check or cash. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.

Thanks again, and we are really looking forward to spending some time with your little ones this summer!

To register or for more questions, email:
sprockettes@gmail.com

June <3

Hello Fabulous Bike Aficionados, and welcome to June with the Sprockettes!

We have been dancing through our shoes and concocting new tricks. And yes (!) you can come see them unveiled for the first time amongst old favorites.  Our numbers have risen and we have new Agents, all with differing and wonderful talents…Thanks to Dabe Alan for the awesome photo.

*not all Sprockettes are featured in this photo. You must come to a show to see all 12 of us*

On June 18th we’ll be having a benefit for our August tour, and pre-party for the World Naked Bike Ride (click here for more info):

Which will be followed that same night by a performance opening for Leslie Hall at Blow Pony:

We need your support at our benefit to help make our August tour a reality so come out and show us some love & donations!

Next up is our beloved birthday celebration and performance at MCBF on Saturday, June 25th. Can you believe it? It will be 7 years to the day since the Sprockettes were birthed. Awwww. And we’re just gettin more rad with each year.

That’s it for June, but look out for July: we’ve got a Sprockettes Girls’ Camp happening July 23rd & 24th. We’ll have a post up sooner than soon with all the info about the Camp, including registration.

Keep on biking and we’ll see you soon.

April!

Spring is here and we’re all so very happy to start seeing more of the sun!  Nothing beats going on a bike ride on a warm day.  Time to start getting our minibikes repaired and all decked out again, so we’ll be ready for an awesome summer.

Sprockettes have been practicing our little pink hearts out.  We have some new choreography and have added some new members.  Everyone’s soooo excited about the new girls-they’re all so amazing and talented.  Each of them bring something unique and special to the group.

Sprockettes are also happy to be collaborating with the Portland Women’s Crisis Line.  April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and they will be hosting an event, Bike Back the Night,  that takes place in conjunction with Take Back the Night at PSU.   To show our support we’ll be performing at the event.  It’s April 28th at the PSU park blocks from 6-9.

pwcl.org/calendar/event/233/

Hope to see everyone there!

Spring Blossomings!

Hey there virtual friends, fans and folk, of Rad Amerika, and beyond!

We hope this post finds you as energized and inspired as we Sprockettes have found ourselves this month! There are so many reasons to be stoked on life this month, and we’d like to share a few:

First of all, there’s nothing like a good time with your friends to foster inspiration, and thanks to February’s MiniBikeWinter events, the Sprockettes will be chock-full of good-time-friends-and-fun-feelings for quite a while! We had the opportunity to perform alongside our Bay Area Derailluers sisters this year, and even hosted a surprise, debut performance by Chicago’s new bike-dance team The Racketeers! The B.A.D. girls busted out some super-impressive moves and inspired us all to shoot for more pegs on our bikes, and in our lives, while the Racketeers reminded us of the courage it takes to get up and perform that first time, while simultaneously knocking our hot pink socks off! The day after our performances we three teams (including some reps from Vancouver’s B:C:Clettes) had an inspirational and unifying brunch summit, at which we honed our plans to revolutionize the world through bike-dance!

Then, after the craziness that is MinibikeWinter and after months of preparation, the Sprockettes decided to open our arms and welcome new prospective girls aboard our dance-train. We put the call out to several friends, and friends-of-friends, and now have a handful of new ladies trying us on to see if they want to rock the hot pink and black lifestyle. Their excitement has definitely inspired us to set a good example and to show them how hard we have to work to do what we do, but that it really all can (and should) be fun and games! Having been the newest Sprockette for going on a year now, it has been a bit surreal to be on the other side of things, telling new girls how business goes down in the Sprockettes, and acting the part of old pro. Yet it really is inspiring to take a moment and reflect on the development of a group that has honed its practices for 7+ years and is still functioning with such high levels of badassocity!

Lastly – but not leastly – in the world of inspirational new beginnings, the Sprockettes have decided that 2011 will be our year of intentional community participation as we reach out to organizations beyond our usual involvement and partner to support causes for which we advocate. What does that mean, you ask? Well it means that we’ve begun reaching out to organizations that promote positive self-image for young girls, health services for women, advocacy for sex workers, and safe, empowering environments for queer youth! We’ve sent a general call out to see if those groups would like the Sprockettes to perform at any of their big events this year, so that our powers may combine to fight for good! So far the response has been overwhelmingly appreciative and we really look forward to the collaborations to come.

On a final note, we really want to thank our friends, who provided us with such good times this winter, and every winter since we’ve been around. Our community, (however we choose to define it individually), is really what keeps us going, and we love you all from the bottom of our big pink hearts! As we enter April we enter blackout month – a time during which we drill all our songs for the summer, and create some new ones, while respectfully declining any invitation for performances. It gets tough throughout the month, since we all love to dance for you, but we’ll emerge better and brighter for you to enjoy all summer!

So thanks for stopping by and reading about your homegirls, the Sprockettes. We can’t wait to see you in May!

With a heart full of springtime adoration,

Agent Dirt Bag

Mini Bike Winter 2011

February rules!

And here’s why: Mini Bike Winter, one of Portland’s finest events is just around the corner, promissing loads of fun for the whole bicycle and Zoobomb community. There will be tons of bike riding, games, chariot wars, friends from all over hanging out and having a splendid time. And to celebrate it all, there will be a rocking party Saturday night. And you are invited!

And the Sprockettes will be bringing it with an awesome performance, including a brand new act! and, of course, a good selection of our favorites. We love performing to new crowds, but shows like this one, when our community is so active and involved, these are the shows that keep us pumping.

We cannot wait to bring it on and to see our home girls The Bay Area Derailleurs!!!

Don’t miss it, meet at the Zoobomb Pyle at SW 13th and Stark at 8pm sharp to ride to the show.  Plus, there’ll be an acro-tastic performance by Kazum on the way to the party!

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