SF Bicycle Film Festival Street Party

Photos/Words: Chris Riesner

The Bicycle Film Festival is a showcase of bike related films that travels all over the world and for a few days at a time brings together the different bike cultures in a community to celebrate the greatness of bike riding.

The third day of the Bicycle Film Festival (San Francisco stop) kicked off with a street party in a small alley near Mission street. There were some grind boxes, rails and a lot of people from different bike communities gathered in the street. It was a pretty good time, but for me the highlight was when Ron Wilkerson rolled through with his trailer that folded out into a 9ft quarter.

This was the first time I’ve experienced riding a ramp in a setting like this. The quarter was staggered in the street with a narrow run up between two apartment buildings. Pedaling through an alley, hitting a curb cut tabletop and roasting this huge quarter pipe with people gathered round was pretty amazing.

Later in the evening held the final showings of the festival. The films were played at the Victoria theater which is one of the oldest running theaters in SF. This theater and all it’s strong character was the perfect place for the diverse line up of showings. The films were all pretty interesting and ranged from kids in Africa creating their own unique styles on BMX bikes to competitive underground street races in New York and LA. There was a lot of great cinematography, some strange concepts but an overall interesting display of bike culture. If the BFF ever comes to your city I would strongly suggest making it out to the festival to party with bike riders and watch some bike related films on a big screen.