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Portland decided to host Bikesummer thanks to seeing the newprint calendar for the Vancouver event. At that time, we were in need of a unifying event that would be less controversial than Critical Mass, yet more fun than the traditional non-profit based bike advocacy efforts. In short, we needed a strong dose of fun.

What a thrill to spend a month hanging out with people who understood our passion for bikes!

We followed an excellent event framework provided by San Francisco (the birthplace of so much bike culture!). This hub and spoke model allowed for a central organizing group to promote the month of events, but not have to do the heavy lifting of actually hosting events. We reached out to people with interests and encouraged them to host events. As a result, the workload was distributed based on skills, interest and time. We spent eight months organizing Bikesummer, and at the end of the month (August) we were not burnt out - we were jazzed.

This led to the formation of Shift, a grassroots bike culture organization that exists to this day.

We hosted Mini-Bikesummer the following year (a just two weeks of bike fun). Eventually the name shifted to Pedalpalooza. The festival still exists to this day, with more than 200 events over the course of 30 days every June.

Many of the events first conceived of for Portland Bikesummer still occur on a regular basis, including Breakfast on the Bridge, a signature Portland event that has been operating monthly since 2002.

[Filmed by Bike] grew out of Bikesummer, as a way to raise funds for a Bikesummer event. The film festival features the world's best bike movies and travels all over the world to strengthen bike communities and help cities raise funds for bike projects. Host cities keep 100% of the revenue from their events. Filmed by Bike showcases the work of an creative global community of filmmakers that is guaranteed to inspire people to ride.

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