Rock The Bike: BLOG
El Arbol: The Bike Tree
This custom art bike, made and based in San Francisco, rides through the city at 12 feet tall, then sprouts roots, branches, and leaves at events, where it becomes a 2500-Watt double-stack main speaker at our Pedal Powered Stage. Integrated LEDs look stunning at night. The Tree has two seats and creates all of its own power using an integrated One Bike / One Speaker circuit.
Above, El Arbol in action at a 2014 San Francisco Solstice ride.
Aerialist Shredder performs on hoop from El Arbol’s trusty rear branch.
Tara performs on El Arbol at the start of the SF Marathon
SF Marathon. El Arbol + 1 sub is capable of entertaining 1000 people.
El Arbol without its Canopy of Leaves.The sound quality is incredible. By using the audio elements from 2 Modified JBL PRX loudspeakers, it has the ability to get music out at festival levels with very low distortion. We use El Arbol as half of our Pedal Powered Stage at the San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival. The height of the upper loudspeaker (9′ up!) helps the sound spread out easily out above a crowd, without requiring deafening volume levels for those in the front.
It’s fun and expands the notion of ‘Stage’ to include the pedalers.
We’re Pedal Power people.
A mom and her son Pedal Powering a music performance on a Mundo 500 generator at the Oregon Country Fair. Rock The Bike built the Pedal Powered Stage used at the Fair.
We help our event partners engage their communities to provide the greenest source of power possible. Read on to see how we do it!
Ride to Maker Faire with Rock the Bike
Ride 21 miles from Dolores Park to Maker Faire with the Rock The Bike crew!
Please RSVP on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=163941343661961
Thanks Sunday Streets! Highlights from the Pedal Powered Stage.
Many thanks to Rupa & The April Fishes, Cradle Duende, Izzy Wise, and Cello Joe for their performances. Also thanks to Tara Quinn who did an impromptu ground contortion routine shown above.
The crowd peaked at about 200-250. Rupa raved about the sound from our Pedal Powered Stage, saying “Our set at Sunday Streets sounded amazing, surprising power on his pedaled system.” Justin Ancheta, bandleader of Cradle Duende also thought we’d reached a new level of sound quality: “I think last year [after Sunday Streets in the Mission] I said it was the best I’ve heard, and this year topped it. The sound was great in front due to having Maya manage the board, monitors were working great.”
Above: Rupa Performs as two pedalers keep El Arbol powered up, along with 3 pedalers on stage right using Mundo 500s.
Crew Photo!
After Sunday Streets we hung out with a few new friends and did some social bike repair.
Pedal Power Spin Class
Do you ever walk past the big glass windows of your local gym and ask yourself, “What if?” What if those people on their cardio machines could be doing something useful with their power?
The moment is now for Pedal Power spin classes. Although some big challenges will keep the trend from sweeping the nation’s gyms — mostly the costs of replacing traditional spin bikes with power generating ones — the excitement for spin classes that create energy is giving way to real results.
Rock The Bike aren’t the only ones working on this project, but we’re the most dynamic. We combine beautiful lighting displays, great sounding DJ rigs, and an intuitive Pedal Power system that responds to the instructor of the class. Pedaling actually feels harder when the instructor calls for an interval, and easier during a rest. The classes are as theatrical as they are physically challenging. Participants really feel they’ve accomplished something together, and they have. The amount of power generated by a participant in a Spin Class may be twice what we expect from a pedaler at one of our concerts, over nearly 80 Watts a piece of continuous usable output power.
There’s a critical difference between a regular spin bike and the kind that Rock The Bike uses. Spin bikes generate heat by squeezing the wheel with what are essential large, smooth brake pads. Participants make it feel harder or easier by adjusting a knob on their handlebars. In a Pedal Power Spin Class, you can use any of our bicycle generators to allow participants to crank out usable DC power from the bikes. What makes it feel harder or easier is varying the amount of output load that is connected to the system. This can be as simple as flipping a switch and adding more wattage to the load at key moments. You can either turn on additional lighting or dump increasing amounts of power back into the grid to vary the load. The latter is the way to allow pedalers to directly offset the energy consumption of the gym. As soon as you flip on that additional load, the Pedalometer will drop. Pedalers have to work harder to keep it in the green. Simple as that.
The work in LA this January was the second iteration of our Pedal Power Spin Class. The first was was a 2-bike system done in collaboration with Pure Austin Fitness in Austin, TX. The two generators kept the sound system pumping a live mix by DJ Manny. The second was the 30-bike system shown above, handling power peaks of over 3500 Watts.
Rupa to headline as we Pedal power awesome local music acts at Sunday Streets in the Mission this Sunday!
This Sunday we’ll be Pedal Powering hours of live local music at San Francisco’s groundbreaking cyclovia program, Sunday Streets. Headliners Rupa and the April Fishes are an internationally touring band that calls San Francisco home. Be there as we Pedal Power this amazing quintet, as well as up and coming local ‘Klezmenco’ hoppers “Cradle Duende” (listen at http://www.reverbnation.com/cradledduende ) , the digitally enhanced Cumbia sounds of Bernal Heights’ Izzy Wise, and the hilarious singalongs of the world’s only beatboxing cellist, Cello Joe. After we’ve done all that, we’ll reconfigure our gear for a LiveOnBike performance by Fossil Fool, the Bike Rapper!
Our latest Pedal Powered Stage uses artful ‘Soul Cycle’ music bikes including the imaginative El Arbol and the stout Blue Whale. These custom fiberglass rigs are built on our exclusive Modified JBL PRX loudspeakers, so they sound great and make the most of every watt of available Pedal Power. You can see them in action in the video from Earth Day at USF below.
Location: 24th and Florida St. Many thanks to the Sunday Streets crew for this awesome spot in the heart of the Mission District.
Lineup:
12PM — Izzy Wise
1PM — Rupa
2PM — Cradle Duende
2:45PM — Cello Joe
3:30PM — Fossil Fool, LiveOnBike!
Sunday Streets is a revolutionary way to experience San Francisco car free. It’s one of the first american ‘Cyclovia’ events, in which large swaths of a city are closed off to cars and people can experience a human scale community, if only for a day. Rock The Bike has been participating in Sunday Streets since 2009.
Happy Earth Day from Rock The Bike! Get on the Bikes and Ride!
We have been focusing on Pedal Powering events in a big way this year. What excites us about this work are moments like this one from our event today at USF. Many thanks to the student crew including Brittany for the warm welcome.
So we say Happy Earth Day to you and yours. Yesterday we Pedal Powered the USF Earth Day event for the 2nd year and had a blast the students. The Pedal Powered Stage was a 4-person system that included both of the recent custom fiberglass Soul Cycles from Fossil Fool: El Arbol and The Blue Whale.
Tomorrow we bike to the Civic Center Earth Day Celebration to Pedal Power some of the speakers and bands.
Pedal Powering Awesome Local Music at Sunday Streets Season Opener March 20
We’re stoked to kick off our 2011 Pedal Powered Stage season with a performance by two Balkan-influenced San Francisco bands, formidable danceable groups with musical flavors from French, Spanish, and Balkan traditions. Check out the video above to see an example of this style of music. Come Pedal Power them at the March 20 season opener of Sunday Streets!
Live music will start around 12PM with a performance of Fanfare Zambaleta. The performance will be at East Park, a beautiful plaza along the Sunday Streets route with a view of the Bay, shown near the top of the map image at the bottom of this post. Assuming we all get out of bed on time, we plan to arrive and warm up the spot with Pedal Powered DJ music a little as early as 11 AM. Look for Rock The Bike cruising the Sunday Streets route towards East Park on our amazing Soul Cycle party bikes, including the newly completed El Arbol, around 11! After the show, ride back to the Mission District with Rock The Bike after the event ends at 3PM.
Last year at East Park, Rock The Bike was ensconced in Pedal Powered hot-wire foam sculpting of an in progress El Arbol (below). Now that El Arbol is complete and twice as tall, we’re stoked to return to the same spot and Pedal Power amazing Live Music for the assembled rollerbladers, tourists, bicyclists, families, and pigeons.
The performance is FREE, but we will be be busking for the band AND cranking out delicious Bike Blended Smoothies (with farmer’s market fruit) to benefit the Bicycle Music Festival, coming June 18 this year. So please, bring a reusable cup and some bills for the band!
San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival June 18, Be There!
photo: Space Cat
10 Bike Pedal Powered Stage, our largest LiveOnBike mobile stage, and amazing Musical and circus performances. Be There!
