Thousands strip off for London’s Naked Bike Ride + Manchester video + Brighton + York

In 2004 there were 58 rid­ers, in 2005 a cred­itable 250 rid­ers, ris­ing to a mas­sive 800 in 2006.

But in a scale that sur­prised even the organ­is­ers, more than five thou­sand peo­ple today took to Lon­don’s streets to protest against oil depen­den­cy, cel­e­brate body free­dom and curb car cul­ture.

Start­ing from Hyde Park, there was a slight devi­a­tion in route as pre­cau­tions were tak­en to avoid a col­li­sion with an Orange march (fea­tur­ing as scary a bunch of appar­ent loons and psy­chopaths as you’d ever not want to meet).

Halt­ed half way down Pic­cadil­ly the scale of the ride became appar­ent, as it still tailed back well into Hyde Park (first pic­ture).

Part of the fun took it straight through the heart of Lon­don’s tourist hell­hole, Covent Gar­den. But the roar of appre­ci­a­tion from the crowds made the cob­bly streets more than tol­er­a­ble.

Why so many? Well many of the rid­ers had been to last mon­th’s Crit­i­cal Mass, swollen to record num­bers as a result of State attempts to con­trol it and make it “ille­gal”. Empow­ered, as many put it, the next stage was to get their clothes off and take it up a lev­el.

“Roll on” as Rik­ki put in his report of that day “the next piece of repres­sive leg­is­la­tion”.

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Man­ches­ter 2007 WNBR evening Fri­day 8th:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEuDP7BOBUc

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On Sat­ur­day, more than 200 naked cyclists rode through Brighton and Hove in East Sus­sex. “Bikes and naked bod­ies harm nobody. Car fumes… are dri­ving us all to cli­mate chaos.”

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York: