Life Cycles

Matt Kowal’s a busy guy. When he’s not occupied with his band, the Reals, he’s working as the Tour de Fat Creative and Sustain Director at New Belgium Brewing Company, aka the Tour de Fat impresario. In that capacity, those big old clown boots he wears oblige him to make sure that this year’s Tour de Fat is, as always, a true cycling circus that’s partly what he calls a “cooperative critical mass” and partly pure whimsy.

If you haven’t been before, rest assured that the 2009 Tour de Fat Denver, taking place today at the west end of City Park (and marking the tour’s 100th stop over the past ten years), will be all this and more, by featuring two stages of live music and what we’ll tamely call “entertainment,” as well as food, family fun, bike art and competitions and lots of New Belgium beer. Performing acts include ambient folkie Sean Hayes, Brooklyn band the Pimps of Joytime, the Loyd Family Players (a fierce worldbeat dance band from Oakland), the Sprockettes all-female synchronized mini-bike dance troupe, the Honeymoon Cabaret vaudeville show, our own Bela Karoli, the Handsome Little Devils and the Squirm Burpee Circus, among others, but after the opening costumed bike parade and in between acts, the main event will be the Carpocalypse Now funeral procession for the car, which ends with a big ceremony honoring people who trade in their cars for a bike. Whoa!

The solar-powered, joyously pro-bike party rolls on from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the York Street end of the park, north of 17th Avenue; admission is free, and proceeds from all beer and merchandise sales benefit Bike Denver, Flight for Life and the Derailer Bicycle Collective. For a full schedule, visit www.newbelgium.com/tour-de-fat.
Sat., Sept. 12, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., 2009