Riding a bicycle gives people the opportunity to burn calories, save money and win the Tour de France.
It can also power a live concert.
The Chico Bicycle Music Festival will be held Saturday from 10 a.m. until midnight. The event is free and open to anyone who has a bicycle.
This is the first time this kind of event has been held in Chico, said coordinator Samantha Zangrilli. Other Bicycle Music festivals have been held in San Francisco and Portland.
Zangrilli attended last year’s festival in San Francisco, she said
“It was awesome,” Zangrilli said. “Everyone was so enlightened by this idea and I got enlightened by it as well.”
The San Francisco festival was Zangrilli’s model for organizing this one, she said.
The festival will use bicycles as modes of transportation and to power generators for the electrical instruments.
Any audience member can jump on one of the four bicycles to run the generators, Zangrilli said.
“There’s no energy being used, there’s no oil being used and there’s just you in the full experience,” she said.
The festival will flow through four different venues, starting at Third and Flume streets and ending at the GRUB Cooperative.
All attendees, performers and an audience members, will travel from venue to venue on bikes, Zangrilli said.
There will be 16 bands performing during the 14-hour festival. All but three bands are local acts.
The Ginger Ninjas will be traveling all the way from San Francisco on bicycles to perform.
Zangrilli had the opportunity to tour with the Ginger Ninjas to five different states, she said. In keeping with the spirit of the festival, the band tours on bicycle and powers its concerts with generators.
“It’s like a totally new way of playing,” Zangrilli said.
Some of Zangrilli’s close friends will be volunteering at the festival.
One of them is senior Ryan Laine, who will be in charge of medical support and crowd control.
It’s uncertain how many people will show up to the festival but if there is a massive crowd, Laine said he wants to make sure the bicycle crowd and the car crowd passing through won’t conflict with each other.
“We want to try to keep something civil,” he said.
Zangrilli’s roommate, Stephanie Williams, is the timekeeper of the event.
She will be in charge of timing the breaks that will allow the cyclists to travel to the next venue, Williams said. This also allows the musicians to gather their gear and get to the next stage on time.
When she became an “avid bike rider” four years ago, Williams discovered how convenient it is to ride a bike, she said.
Williams found parking easier and liked how much money she was saving on gas, she said. It has helped reduce her carbon footprint as well.
“There’s no excuse to not be on your bike,” Williams said.
David Wangberg can be reached at
dwangberg@theorion.com
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