Bring the element of Social Biking to your next event with the Biker Bar, now available for rental in both New York and San Francisco, and for sale or DIT (Do It Together) kit purchase in other places.  Better than solar panels and biodiesel generators, the Biker Bar gets people talking and pedaling together as they power a concert, a rally, or whatever your creative mind envisions.

Three regular people on a Biker Bar can deliver a steady 200 watts of clean AC power, and up to 500 Watts at peak moments. That may not sound like much when you compare it to an incandescent lightbulb, but that's the point. We should be celebrating things that can use less power. And music, fortunately, is one of those things.

The wattage ratings of audio equipment such as amps and speakers will always be higher than their average power consumption. This is because music is spiky in nature. When  the beat hits or the bass is heavy, instantaneous power consumption is high, but between the beats, the power use is low. So three pedalers on the Biker Bar do have the power to get people dancing.

The Biker Bar is a patent pending invention, so please make an arrangement with us regarding your intended use before reproducing the design.

The Biker Bar is a modified 8' Bikes At Work Cargo Trailer that can carry 250 pounds of music equipment, Bike Blenders, food, supplies, etc. Bikes At Work have been building trailers since 1991, and are active members of the bike community in Ames, Iowa. When we first mentioned to them that we were planning to use their trailer for a Pedal Power platform, the reply was "Cool, I'm writing this email on a pedal powered computer right now."

You can tow the Biker Bar with any bicycle, but if you live in a hilly area and intend to use the Biker Bar to carry equipment to and from events, we recommend an Electric Mundo, as shown above.

The Biker Bar can also be used as a mobile stage for LiveOnBike rides. Above, SHAKE YOUR PEACE! perform at the 2009 Bicycle Music Festival in San Francisco. 

Here's how it all works. After you arrive at an event with the Biker Bar and unload it of your gear, you pull the floor sections off it and set it on the ground as walkways people will use to get on and off the bicycles.

Doing so reveals three rear swingarms and the bar itself. Lift up the swingarms. Remove the trailer wheels with a simple cotter pin, and set the Biker Bar on the ground, on its vibration-isolating rubber blocks. 

Now take three bikes -- almost any geared bicycles in good working order will do -- and imoblize them on the bar using the sturdy swingarms. Pumping up the tires is essential to acheiving an efficient transfer of power to the bar itself. 

The most democratic, grassroots way to power your event.

Up until now, the model we and others have used for pedal powered stage events is that special people bring special bikes to an event, each having its own generator. The public then takes turns powering the concert on the special bikes. The bikes' outputs are coupled electrically, using wires. This model gets ordinary people pedaling, reminding them of their long lost bike love.

The Biker Bar allows you to use ordinary bikes, which takes it to the next level. Everyday people not only power the concert, they save the concert, by supplying the last, critical piece of gear, their bicycle.  And the power, rather than being coupled electrically, is now coupled mechanically by the bar itself, making the Biker Bar an extremely intuitive system to understand. This makes the Biker Bar the most grassroots way to power your event's stage.

Photo: XtracycleInc

Three rear wheels transfer power to a 2" aircraft-grade steel tube, perfectly round and straight, that floats on precisely aligned bearings (skateboard trucks).

The large permanent magnet generator shown above quietly converts pedalers physical effort to electrical power. With 150-250 Watts of average power and the headroom to reach 1000-Watt peaks, you can run a respectable Pedal Powered Stage that gets hundreds dancing at a music festival, including mains, monitors, mixer and lighting. And you can easily haul it all there with the Biker Bar. 

photos: RockTheBikeNYC