Pedal Powered Porno
Bike Smut Comes to Town
Ball bearings might not be what comes to mind when you think ‘sexy.’ For some, a close-up of a crankset is like a dress zipper coming undone, a bra hitting the floor. Enter Bike Smut, a project created by a Portland, Oregon native Reverend Phil that uses ‘film and performance to promote sexual and transportation liberation.’
In 2007, Phil launched a film called ‘The Pornography of the Bicycle’ in Portland. When more than 500 people showed up to the 250-seat theatre, he decided he was on to something. Since then, he and the Bike Smut crew have been travelling and sharing their message of ‘better sex and better transportation’ across 23 countries in Europe and North America. This year’s installment is the sixth in the ongoing bike porno chronicle and includes 12 short films made around the world.
Part of the Bike Smut mandate is that the films be shown only at screenings on their own tours, they’ve never even made a DVD. That’s because it’s not only about getting off but about sharing an idea.“Human-powered transportation and sex-positive culture are a simple way to improve your quality of life,” says Phil.
The screenings provide the locale to do just that. By making the films only available in this fashion, their goal is to break away from the technology-induced isolation which can cast sex as an obscenity or something we’re afraid to talk about. Watching bike porn together, as a community, “can help redefine our boundaries and inspire better communication, better art, and better sex”.
Phil says the relationship between sex and bikes goes beyond just the physical strain, sweat and maybe a little yelling. “Some people think that the nature of cycling, its graceful lines and simple ergonomic efficiency […] is sexy, others think bikes themselves are sexy and fetishize lugs and bearings,” he says. “Others might just think bikers are sexy and would like to fuck them.” Or all of the above.
Call these people bike-sexual, if you will. There are actually definitions out there, but Bike Smut Creative Director and filmmaker Poppy Cox explains it pretty well. “The more I rode my bike, the more I was attracted to other people who rode bikes, til I realized I was primarily attracted to people who rode bikes,” she says.
Cox’s way is just one of many, and she’s authored a list that attempts to capture the wide variety of bike-sexuals out there. Those who love their bike above all are the ‘Pee Wee Herman’ variety, exclusively interested in a “relation with their own bike and not other bikes of people”. The ‘SpokeSlut’ on the other hand are those who are “interested in sexually engaging with lots of people […] but only if they use a bike as their primary mode of transportation”. And for those who fall in love with a bike-sexual but don’t bike themselves, there’s still hope. ‘The Conversion’ variety includes those who “take up cycling only because the person they are interested in is already a bike-sexual”.
Whether you’re a bike-sexual or not, though, Bike Smut wants to see you. Along with the films, there will be song and dance performance by Revrend Phil as well as a live Q and A.
Turning Trixxx Bike Smut 6 / Oct. 16 / Café l’Artere (7000 Park Ave.)
