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Sun shines on Tour de Fat in LA's Cornfield park
Tour de Fat's an event sponsored by Colorado-based New Belgium Brewing Company to promote bicycling culture. Proceeds from sales of Fat Tire Beer, among other things, benefit local cycling groups.
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L.A.'s shutdown of more than 10 miles of city streets Sunday isn't the only bicycle friendly event this weekend. Organizers expect hundreds of people on two wheels at Tour de Fat, a parade and festival in the Los Angeles Historic State Park on Saturday. New Belgium Brewing Company's Matt Kowal says proceeds from sales will benefit the Bicycle Kitchen, Cyclists Inciting Change through Live Exchange (C.I.C.L.E.) and the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.
"Those groups show up here and provide us with love and volunteering," he says. "We have 100 volunteers that come and make this event happen. So we're like flowers and bees: we need each other."
Last year, according to New Belgium, local bicycle activists split about $10,000 in proceeds from the one-day event.
New Belgium brews Fat Tire Ale, named, according to the company's website, for a co-founder's biking trip through Europe. Tour de Fat is in its 12 year nationally; in Los Angeles, it's just the second year for the festival.
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One component of the event is a car-for-bike swap. A Long Beach woman has taken up the company’s challenge to swap gas power for pedal power this year. New Belgium's Kowal says this is the second annual car-for-bike trade in L.A. County.
"This year our trader is Jessica Alexander. She is trading in a 93 Cavalier," he says, with a sound that could be a snort-laugh. "She's getting a pretty sweet bike. It's a hand made bicycle from Fort Collins, Colorado. it's made to be a commuter. she's going to have a pretty sweet ride."
Black Sheep Bikes custom-builds the bicycle, based on a design that retails for several thousand dollars.
Alexander will take possession of her new ride at Tour de Fat Saturday at the Los Angeles State Historic Park.
Two stages will feature music and circus-like performers. They're provided by Southern California based Sustainable Waves, which specializes in solar-powered staging for festival events. The company's Mark McLarry says a 3 kilowatt system powers the stages and sound. "Basically, we can store up to 2,000 amp-hours of power," McLarry says. That means on a sunny day, "we may be bringing in more power than we're using, which is called floating; the system might float," he points out. If that happens, Sustainable Waves wouldn't tap into on-site batteries at all.
Tour de Fat kicks off with a bicycle parade at 11 a.m Saturday.
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