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When Trump goes cruel, Portland goes weapons-grade weird.
So seemed the strategy of an “emergency” autumnal session of the World Naked Bike Ride. Typically held in the summer (twice this year, due to sparring factions of cycling nudist activists), WNBR announced a sudden October edition in response to President Donald Trump’s attempted deployment of the Oregon National Guard to either quell insurrection at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or bully a handful of outgunned elders and kids, depending how your algorithm puts it.
More than 400 people seemed to be in the latter camp as they ascended onto Convention Center Plaza between 2:30 and 3:30 pm, the ride’s announced and actual departure times. (A group of two dozen people, gathered outside a convenience store near Elizabeth Caruthers Park and observing the ride’s end, seemed to be in the former.) The turnout was markedly smaller than a traditional WNBR—but then the weather was much worse, at 55 degrees with intermittent cloudbursts.
Bagpipe music led cyclists to the Northeast Portland plaza Saturday afternoon. Brian Kidd entertained the gathered as the Unipiper, stripped down to his Darth Vader mask and tighty-whities as he rode a unicycle with roses wrapped around the spokes. Given the gray conditions, most cyclists chose a costume over their birthday suits, not that this was a unanimous decision by any means. Inflatable characters from axolotls to unicorns turned out in the style of Seth Todd, best known as the Portland Protest Frog, whose air nozzle was pepper-sprayed by ICE agents.
Randy and Andrea were respectively dressed as an inflatable bull and hippo.
“We’re here in solidarity, a little overdressed for the occasion,” she said. She and Randy walked instead of riding bikes or scooters, cheering other riders on from the sidewalk.
“Seeing the fun and the way Portland’s handling this whole situation compared to some other places, in our 30-plus years this is something that’s unique to Portland,” Randy says of why thinks people dress up at protests—WNBR is an annual protest against the oil industry, in case you forgot. “We’ve fallen in love with that over the years, and we think it’s a better response to what’s going on. I’m all for protesting, but we’ve certainly done it in a different way than other cities have over the past month, and that’s what makes Portland unique.”
Riders poured down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard toward the Burnside Bridge, cheering and blasting pop songs by Chappell Roan and Charli XCX along the way. Staging a die-in was the stated goal, and though some people did lay their bikes and bodies on the asphalt, the effort was less coordinated than die-ins of years past, as the back half of the ride laid down as the front half got back up.
Ian went nude for his first WNBR, encouraged by the anti-ICE cause. He was in good spirits albeit struggling slightly with the cold. “I’m shriveling up in places where it’s normal to shrivel up,” he said.
Ian chose to ride in response to outside media narratives about the city. “I travel for work a lot and I was getting asked if Portland is really as bad as they say it is.”
Traveling down Southwest Naito Parkway in classic Portland rain, WNBR effectively took a backdoor route to ICE’s front step. The last stragglers rejoined the group around 4:30 pm, perhaps 300 strong and mostly (though not fully all) riders. A dozen federal agents atop the ICE building watched as protesters heckled them. Three of them at one point fired crowd control munitions, though the reason was not immediately clear. The ride felt functionally over once Portland Police Bureau and the feds worked to clear the South Waterfront streets for vehicular traffic before 5 pm.
Wearing a rainbow fringe sweater, Nicole, who recently moved to Portland from Texas, said she rode because of the attention WNBR is bringing to antifascist activism.
“I feel like I can only imagine being in the shoes of the people who are really, truly affected by this, that it would make me feel a little better thinking of others standing in solidarity and helping bring attention to it,” she says. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot I can do about it, but this is one small thing that I think I can do to help support a more humane world.”
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