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Originally Posted by TheGreatBelow
I was at the Portland WNBR. It was HUGE! I've been to to Burning Man and this was second to it in the amount of nude women. I estimate 2000+ nude riders.
It was dark and my camera was having a hard time focusing. So I was able to a few pictures. Also, a lot of other photogs were being hekled at the staging area. So it was not a camera freindly event.
Also Sara Underwood from Attack of the Show was filming there. I said Hi and she smiled and said hi back. 
Here are a few pics I'll post more later... |
Thanks for the originals TGB and the info. It's worth saying again how fantastic it is to have riders share their own photos with us, instead of just finding pics on flickr.
Clearly the Portland ride is the biggest and best in the States and possibly the world (though numbers aside it's tough to beat London as it's a daytime ride). However your account hits on something that really frustrates me about this ride.
Despite the size, finding decent Portland pics is damn near impossible (and again, thanks so much for providing yours). Why is it that of all the WNBR participants world-wide only the Portlanders are so averse to photography? The Brits clearly don't mind it. The smaller American rides don't seem to mind it. Chicago and Philadelphia, the other "big" U.S. rides (though not nearly as big as Portland), deal with it just fine. Philadelphia produced thousands of great pics, and no one seemed to mind except for the whole Wild About Philly debacle, and that was only because they were weird about it. As I've pointed out previously, Chicago actually deploys official and semi-official photographers to make it a part of the experience.
As it says on the Chicago WNBR web site, don't ride if you absolutely can't stand the thought of being photographed. Or just make sure you obscure your identity enough so it won't be a liability. When you see the other rides, everyone seems to get that. Some of the participants paint their faces, some wear hats, and a few clearly self-conscious individuals put on masks. Easy enough.
After reading your account, and Klondike's previous accounts of this hostile attitude toward photographers, I can't help but wonder why the Portland rides are so different?
Also, on a related note, c'mon Sara Underwood. The entire world has seen your nude body. Pasties and bikini bottoms aren't going to cut it when you're surrounded by thousands of naked people. I assume they went with that so they wouldn't have to blur it out in the video (I believe pasties are allowed for basic cable in the US). But at some point get your kit off! Anything else just seems lame.