It’s three rides into the 2009 Denver Cruisers‘ season and I’m embarrassed to again show up on my 10-year-old mountain bike. It’s my faithful commuter with road slicks, a Sumo wrestler squeaky horn and J.R.”Bob” Dobbs-head sticker on the top tube. But it’s so out of place among the vintage rides and sweeeeet new cruisers from Nirve and Felt. I have some serious cruiser envy. I just hope my daily ride doesn’t hear about my disloyalty.

What kind of dweeb wears a necktie on a cruiser ride? Are they trying to show off the fact that they have a cubicle job? That they get paid more than the rest of us? Do they think they’re cool? Can somebody explain this to me?

Warning to girls wearing heels on a cruiser bike. DON’T stick the heel through the pedal! I broke BOTH heels off my red pumps.

Woah! The Circle of Death is a great way to sober up. Seriously. It works every time.

This will be the first of several Roll Out Parties nationwide. More details soon.

Boulder Cruiser Ride
A cruiser ride in the most eclectic college town in Colorado. Every Thursday.

Cruiser Cruise—Co. Springs
Okay, this is a one-time event, but it’s a start. Left Side Spin Shop, a cruiser-only bicycle store, is holding this event on June 6.

Golden Cruise
There’s more to Golden than Coors beer. The last Tuesday of the month, the locals hop on their cruisers.

Govnr’s Park Cruiser Club
It’s about time that Denver became a two cruiser-ride town. Govnr’s Park started this ride, held the first and last Thursday of each month.

Meet Denver

• The Ride
• The Mayor
• The food and drinks

Denver’s popular mayor on bike policy, cruisers and putting 100,000 miles on his Frejus

By Jacob Harkins/photos by Jessica Grenier

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is lauded as one of the most popular public officials in the country. He knows the people he represents and isn’t afraid to pull some nifty public relations tricks to promote causes that they care about.

Like jumping out of a plane for a commercial supporting a ballot initiative to fund schools with a tax increase-it passed of course.

Since getting elected in 2003, this local beer baron (he operated many popular Denver restaurants and craft breweries, including the Wynkoop Brewing Co.) transformed into a popular man of the people who is on several short lists of future candidates for offices from the Governor’s Mansion to the U.S. Senate.

Frankly, we’re fond of him because he likes to ride bicycles. Hick, as he’s affectionately known, commutes to work on his 1971 Frejus racing bicycle-one that he claims to have put more than 100,000 miles on over the last 38 years.

“The thing just goes; it runs like a top,” he says. He also has a Tour de France-ridden Felt hanging in his office.

Uncommon for a politician, but not surprising for someone who works so hard to turn Denver into the most bicycle-friendly cities on the planet. Yet, when we had him draped over a custom cruiser for a recent photo shoot, you could tell he wasn’t the cruiser type. “It’s the missing part of my repertoire,” Hickenlooper says.

We won’t hold it against him, considering he’s pushing an agenda we love. Part of the reason he took time from his busy schedule to drag his entourage to this interview was to promote his biggest bicycle initiative—the B-cycle program.
Denver is the pilot city for this public/private partnership that places townie bicycles in kiosks throughout the city, giving tourists and commuters alike an easy (and free or very affordable) means to get around town. Pick up a bicycle at one station, return it to another with the first 30 minutes free. It’s a pretty simple concept.

Currently there’s just one B-cycle station in Denver reserved for city employees. But by Earth Day 2010, the plan is to have 600 bikes and 50 B-cycle stations online with an additional 400 bicycles in the mix by 2011. It’s all part of Denver’s effort to get people out of their cars and turn 10 percent of its commuter trips into bicycle trips. It’s not an easy task.

The city has to change mindsets, not just offer easy access to bikes.

“It’s a matter of integrating bicycles every time I talk publicly,” Hickenlooper says. And perhaps getting said mayor out to one of the massive weekly rides in Denver, a chaotic gathering of hundreds of cruiser bicyclists that stampedes through downtown every Wednesday evening.

“I’d love to go on a cruiser ride,” Hickenlooper says. “What makes a cruiser ride so much fun for most people is you do it every week, you get to know different people; there’s a whole sense of community that grows out of that. I’ll never have the schedule, at least not while I am mayor, that allows me to do that on a weekly basis.”

Whenever you get that many people on the road at one time, it can turn into a logistical nightmare for city officials. But Hickenlooper sees the Denver Cruisers, and other community rides, as a big positive, even if the near parade causes a collective moan from the police and motorists.

“The first instinct of the police department was just say no, just say no,” Hickenlooper says. “Wait a second, we don’t have to just say no. How can we figure out how to do this? We have people wanting to do things in a group; that’s civic identity. It gets people to change habits. Having people wanting to ride bikes in groups is special.”

Basically, the mayor is all for anything that promotes bicycles, an attitude we can all get behind. His aggressive stewardship of bicycle culture is paying off, too, by showcasing the massive community rides, making it easier for folks to safely pedal to work each day and just seeing the mayor flying around town on his nearly four-decade-old road bike. Denver is most certainly a cruiser and bicycle-friendly city.

“Certainly we’ve spent a lot of time the last five years really focusing on how we make the city more useful and more accessible to bicycle enthusiasts,” he says. “I am not a competitive mayor in that sense, but we have 850 miles of bike paths in the metro area. There are not many cities that have that. I don’t know of another city that has the same level of bike potential because of climate and infrastructure—we have all the miles of bike paths and 300-plus days of sunshine.”

Meet Denver

• The Ride
• The food and drinks
• The other cruisers

Descending into the ‘Circle of Death’ with 600 of your friends

By James Burrus/photos by Nish Nalbandian

There’s a guy sporting a fire-engine red, pig-tailed wig that conjures disturbing images of a Wendy’s commercial; he would normally be shunned and openly mocked. Next to him, a tall, bodacious blonde wearing leather chaps has her hair cast in an eight-inch Mohawk and is sitting next to her stretch cruiser with Texas-styled longhorns attached to the handlebars. She looks like she could incinerate the self-esteem of any guy brave enough to flirt with her.

Early Halloween? Nope, it’s May 13—the first ride of the Denver Cruisers’ 2009 season: Wigs and Bad Hair. Most of the hundreds who show up got the memo; there are blond colonials, metallic purple pageboys, Mohawks, massive afros and everything in between.

The weekly costume themes serve the same function as booze, but without the negative side effects. When you’re wearing a sparkling pink wig and talking to a guy with a perfect Bon Jovi rug, who needs to be drunk?

“There is no self-consciousness about wearing ostentatious clothes,” says Chris Bretthauer, an architect who just started his second season with the Denver Cruisers. “The crazy outfits are great ice breakers; it gives you something to talk about. The cruiser ride has completely changed how I shop at garage sales. I go to thrift stores like Goodwill, and vintage clothing shops looking for stuff to wear on the rides.”

The tangle of bikes outside the Ginn Mill in Lower Downtown continues to grow, stretching down the block in both directions. It’s difficult to penetrate, but dozens stop to scope out some of the tricked-out rides. The Denver Cruiser regulars are here early showing off their signature machines-a vintage Elgin, a 9-foot stretch with a side car and a limo-long jet black frame with red rims. It’s just shy of 8 p.m., the supposed “start time” of the ride. The Ginn Mill is nuts to butts, but the riders keep coming. And coming.

Silver pink wigs, a man in curlers and a hair net, a Marge Simpson do and the ultimate bad hair/wig combo: a perfect mullet.

“Everybody’s a nerd, hanging out having fun,” Bretthauer says.

An hour into this costumed happy hour, Brad K. Evans-the self-appointed “fearless-leader” sporting a seersucker suit and Austin Powers wig-shouts above the din for the crowd to mount up and head out. As the founder of this eclectic collection of students, moms, brokers, stock traders, teachers, lawyers, ages, genders and ethnicities, he’s the one who gets to launch the Armada of riders.

The little structure there is to the Denver Cruiser Ride involves building a community around sweet cruiser bicycles, having fun with friends and braving the adrenalin-soaked madness of the dreaded Circle of Death.

From its humble beginnings with just a handful of riders five years ago to this year’s opening day that saw nearly 600 swamp the streets of Denver, the weekly event continues to attract fresh faces of bicycle enthusiasts wanting to have fun. Each week, the ride cuts through downtown on a predetermined route. For the start of the season, Evans adds a new twist to the ride, an impromptu pedal up a three-story parking garage. Once the crowd settles at the top, a mini party breaks out with a sound system blaring, and Nick Bruno shouting through an aging bullhorn.

“Denver Cruisers!” is about the only intelligible phrase, but it’s enough to draw a raucous roar. Yep, the fun and friendly atmosphere of the rides fosters more than a little loss of inhibition. Some of the ride themes are more risqué than wigs; it’s not uncommon to spy near nudity and abject male cross-dressing. “There are so many like-minded people here,” says Ed Ingram, a 31-year-old Brit. “The costumes are about embracing your alter ego.”

The scene is mildly horrifying to tourists or uninitiated locals who happen upon this rolling freak parade. It’s not uncommon for a group wandering downtown fresh out of a conference to snap out of their gaping disbelief long enough to take photos of the passing spectacle in a paparazzi barrage of flashes.

And as is the tradition-following a 45-minute stop at a second watering hole-the cruisers roll into Civic Center Park just a few hundred feet from Denver’s landmark capitol building and into the giant Greek amphitheater. It’s dubbed the ‘Circle of Death’ because hundreds of cyclists ride pell-mell into the amphitheater. Some go clockwise, some don’t.

Let’s just say the Circle tends to be a good measure of bike-riding skill, reflexes and courage. Tonight, the party at the center of the fiasco is the place to be. A sound system being towed behind one of the bikes is playing Britany Spears’ Baby One More Time, as dozens in the eye of the head-on mayhem spinning around them are dancing and passing around beers.

After about half an hour of this revolving game of cruiser chicken, we’re off to the third and last stop of the evening. The mood remains light and fun and the jocularity index unexpectedly high-assisted by yet another warm, dry, Colorado night. It’s about 11 p.m. and some of the working stiffs and students peel off for home.

A core contingent is still going strong and flock like geese back to the launch pad of the Ginn Mill. The original herd has thinned to a handful and order up nightcaps. I’m sober enough to know better, roll a 180 and head for home, wondering what twisted madness I can come up with for next week’s Hollywood-themed ride.

Meet Denver

• The Mayor
• The food and drinks
• The other cruisers

The Mile High City has a vibrant cruiser culture. Meet the ride, the mayor and the characters who make the scene…

The Ride
There’s a guy sporting a fire-engine red, pig-tailed wig that conjures disturbing images of a Wendy’s commercial; he would normally be shunned and openly mocked. More…

The Mayor
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is lauded as one of the most popular public officials in the country. He knows the people he represents and isn’t afraid to pull some nifty public relations tricks to promote causes that they care about. More…

The food and drinks
The drinks, food, people and places to know in the Mile High City.  More…

The other cruisers
Check out the cruiser communities in Colorado. More…