Woman on Bike at Boobs on Bikes Parade
Photo © Tim Hales/Getty Images
August - 2008
New Zealand's Boobs on Bikes Parade has become an annual event in Auckland. The estimated 100,000 onlookers (mostly men, duh!) clearly enjoyed the spectacle, but Bureaucrats tried to block this year's event. It was only after a female judge ruled in the eleventh hour that the parade was not legally offensive that organizers got the go-ahead.
Once a year, New Zealand gives a whole new meaning to "drag queen" as topless porn stars, transvestites and all sorts of exhibitionists cruise through Auckland in the annual Boobs on Bikes Parade.
An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people line the streets of the country's busiest city, as traffic is ground to a halt. "I think that's the entire male population," says Reuter's ace blogger Robert Basler, who alerted me to the event. "But don't hold me to it."
Boobs on Bikes is part of New Zealand's "Erotica Expo," and this year's parade held some intrigue as feminists, bureaucrats -- and commuters who just wanted to travel to work in peace -- tried to block the event. It took a judge's 11th hour OK for the event to go off as planned.
Organizer Steve Crow -- the Kiwi Larry Flynt -- vowed to go through with the parade even if he was denied a permit.
"I'm glad to see people are exercising their freedom of expression," Crow told the AFP news service.
"I told the girls beforehand to keep the jiggling to a minimum and not to do anything that would be deemed offensive."
In her ruling, District Judge Nicola Mathers said the bylaw the Auckland city council introduced to stop the parade was "questionable."
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