If you happened to be out on Milwaukee Ave about 2 hours ago (as I was), you would have been lucky to see a huge mass of naked cyclists bike past right in front of you.

June 11th is World Naked Bike Day, and Chicago is among the participating towns. From the WNBR site:

On June 11th, 2005 over 50 cities across the world will experience the naked joy of the worlds largest naked protest against oil dependency and car culture in the history of humanity. It is time to stop indecent exposure to automobile emissions and to celebrate the power and individuality of our bodies! Naked Bicycle People Power!

It was a pretty awesome spectacle, especially since we weren’t expecting it and the party we were at had pretty much sucked up until that point. Something about a huge crowd of nekkid people just manages to make your night better. For my money, the dude of the super high bike that looked like Jesus was the absolute epitome of awesome.

After the ride had passed us, we started discussing how something like this could be legal. Surely it isn’t, but wtf are cops gonna do with a huge crowd of naked bikers. Turns out that the WNBR site has some guidelines to help save your naked ass…

The laws on nudity, for the most part are incredibly vague and difficult to enforce. You probably don’t not need to cover up an awful lot to be legal. With the incredible transforming powers of a little body paint, or liquid latex, or a strategically placed sock, or a piece of duct tape you too can transform the average city streaking naked wild cyclist into “the legal city streaking naked wild cyclist”. Be creative a little imagination can change everything.

A nice aversion to the law, but the majority of riders that we saw were naked as they come. Good for them.