You’ve probably heard of the “write what you know” theory, or the “know what you write” rebuttal, which has probably lead to a precipitous rise in both memoirs and cursory internet research. But a lesser-known strategy is the handy “write about what you did when you were drunk,” which steers me—apparently by way of my own incipient desire to examine (alas) what I write—to the sketchy and often-maligned history of the pedal pub. Or the Party Pedaler. Or the Pub Cycle, the Trolley Tavern, Party Bike, Beer Bike, Bar Bike…
Or as the Van Laar brothers, Zwier and Henk, christened it back in 1997 when they invented this monstrosity to promote their Netherlands bar during a parade, the “Fietscafe,” which Google is telling me translates as “Bike Café.” It seems like these crazy contraptions peaked about 6 or 7 years ago, or at least that’s when the majority of the news reports are from regarding noise complaints, tipsy skirmishes, or just general hand-wringing about imposing some sort of regulations to (literally) curb all that “Whoo-hooo-hooing” up and down the quiet neighborhood streets of our mid-sized US cities. This is also right around the time when adult entertainment and drinking activities seemed to be evolving into something a little more physical: trivia competitions morphing into Escape Rooms, chess boards suddenly being used as Axe Throwing targets, darts boards traded in for Fight Clubs. Incidents seem to have tapered off though, which probably speaks to how effectively these Rube Goldberg wagons (highlight on “rube”) will eventually exhaust any revelers who saddled up to pedal away their troubles. I mean, if someone else does the steering, how long can you really drink and ride a bike? Or pat your head and rub your stomach? The science is still out!
For those who somehow have missed the trend, the typical Pedal Pub consists of a dozen or so passengers, plus a “driver,” who is in charge of steering and braking and, presumably, obeying traffic laws (2 years ago in Atlanta, a pedal pub driver got drunk right along with the pedalers and flipped their steed at the bottom of a fairly steep incline, resulting in serious injuries all around). Ten of the seats are usually designated for pedaling, plus a handful of non-pedaling seats over the rear wheel (most pedal pubs warn you that any hills with a 5% gradient or higher “may require everyone to get off and push,” which seems like a much more effective bonding method, to be honest). The “Pittsburgh Party Pedaler,” however, is an even more impressive feat of engineering, boasting a whopping 16 pedaling passengers and spots for 3 more non-participants, as well as one seat smack-dab in the middle for the “VIP” to soak up the maximum amount of attention. But what most people discover once these machines are in motion is that everyone is a VIP, and anyone on board will quickly be afflicted with from what has more recently been diagnosed as Main Character Syndrome.
As many people soon realized, once you take the party outside and on the road, it’s very easy for these mobile revelers to act like the rest of the world is focused on them, and, to be fair, they probably should be. It’s a crazy sight, all that gleeful exertion. In the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, desperate to get their expired quaaludes to kick in, hop on some exercise bikes and start pedaling in a frenzy to get the chemicals cruising quicker through their bloodstreams. Apparently, something very similar happens on a pedal pub. I’m no doctor, but I’m guessing all the conspicuous vomiting that always seems to accompany such outings (according to the Reddit threads which tirelessly chronicle such misadventures) likely has something to do with this combination of booze and labor. But who knows, maybe this is actually a win/win, as any carefully timed expulsion of beer could increase your velocity and get you up those biggest hills.
So maybe it turns out that the oft-cited Foucauldian surveillance falls apart when the subject is just a bunch of intoxicated aerobicizers who no one actually wants to see, but who really really need to be seen?
For anyone out there wondering if the public ever turned the tables on this invasion, they actually turned the spigots on them instead. At first glance, it seemed to be a victimless crime: take the infamous 2015 Minneapolis pedal pub ambush, when five bicyclists wearing what has been reported as “Mad Max-style outfits” went after a pedal pub populated by off-duty Burnsville cops (oops!) armed with an array of squirt guns and water balloons. And this was two Mad Maxes ago, before they started to tone down the leather and feathers in favor of bodypaint and gasmasks (but with the sideways cellphone footage of the battle, it’s hard to see if there are any football pads or feather mohawks under those cops’ knees). The drunken cops pinned them to the ground until more sober reinforcements arrived, and the colorful attackers were arrested and charged. I’m not sure what their ultimate punishment was (you look it up, I’m still pedaling), but the (post) apocalyptic meltdowns captured on film seem to confirm what we always suspected about some cops: they are supremely delicate flowers who will not be disrespected on a giant community bicycle! Strike that, maybe they’re not really flowers, because a squirt gun would probably be a flower’s best friend. After just one splash of water, those particular police officers burst into rage, then (probably) a gentle shower of coins.
But seriously, I could have told them that if it’s one thing a cop cannot abide, it’s a squirt gun. When I was a kid, my brother and I would ride around on our ridiculous one-person bikes with our 1980’s, extremely-realistic pump-action squirt guns to hose down passing cars. Thankfully, someone called the police on us, who came knocking on our door during dinner to confiscate our alarming-looking toys. I’ll never forget the all-business officer who had us stand in the yard as he squirted our driveway, then reported solemnly into his shoulder: “I have discharged the weapon into the asphalt and determined it is a replica.” Sure, my brother and I may have learned an important lesson that day, but one unintended consequence was a reoccurring fantasy where a special unit of police officers crashed through door after door, tackling our Christmas tree and gathering up our toys to determine whether they were real or not. “Stand down, men. Strawberry Shortcake is not really cake. I repeat not really cake.”
Side note: after diving down the rabbit hole of that whole incident, I’m not saying I cracked the case or anything, but in retrospect it kinda feels like entrapment. A Facebook page titled “I Hate the Pedal Pub” organized the Minneapolis balloon and squirt gun ambush, so the pubs with the pedals certainly knew it was coming. Now I can’t prove they stacked the bike with off-duty cops to roll around town, beers and feet chugging away, finger crossed they’d get attacked, because who’s to say that’s not where they went every night when their shifts ended anyway, but you have to wonder.
Anyway, hearing about these fiascos, I finally had to experience one for myself. Friends and family were game, and I was as surprised as a cop experiencing a “Mad Max-style ambush” to discover that it was a blast! No pun intended. Eventually, I had to try them all. Axe-throwing, escape rooms, table-top bowling, until…
The final boss was the “party bus” in Louisville, Kentucky, which was actually a modified 1973 American LaFrance Pumper fire engine with a hot tub in the back, ideally suited for putting the party on display. Both the Nashville Party Bus and the (now defunct) Louisville Pool Party Express featured surprisingly roomy tubs to slosh around in while you got sloshed, bubbling away in a sun-soaked cauldron until the whole party was properly stewed. Now we were cooking with meat. We cruised around Louisville in this contraption for what felt like hours. I didn’t get as drunk as my fellow passengers, sticking to Monster Energy drinks throughout, which was somehow worse. And I don’t know if I grew out of it during that last party bus cruise or what, but sometime around the third mile whooping it up in the rolling hot tub I began to wonder what would happen if that truck never pulled over? This led pretty directly to my novel Shallow Ends, which I hope treats the whole craze more fairly than I did here (it doesn’t).
In the novel, the characters experience the ultimate recreation; a rolling party that never ends. Hopefully, this sounds as terrifying to you as it did to me.
But I am pretty confident I’ve gotten all of these misadventures and misdemeanors out of my system now (remind me to tell you how our group set a record on the Pittsburgh Escape Room, only to have it stripped away when the cameras caught me “cheating” by forcing open one of their doors without solving the puzzle to earn the key. Talk about entrapment!). I guess I’ll never recapture the magic, or to paraphrase Chris Cornell, “the water’s always greener, where the Monster Energies are peeing”? But who knows. Even though the 13 party-goers who climb about the party bus in my novel are certainly forever changed, I, myself, am incapable of learning anything this late in life. So really, I can’t wait to jump on some kind of manual motorized mayhem again.
I mean, how can you hate anything that makes you have to work so hard to have fun?
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