The Combat Zone’s been cleaned up and paved over. The days of the porn-movie house went out with the Internet. But if you still want to view steamy cinema in a public setting, we have a festival for you. Provided, that is, that you’re okay with hot bike-on-bike action.
Bike Porn 3: Cycle Bound, The Backlash Tour is rolling into Boston (well, Cambridge, at the Brattle Theater) on April 21, with its fusion of fetish-fueled erotica, art-house amateurism, and bikes. Not to be confused with the Boston Bike Film Fest or the Bicycle Film Festival, this freaky tour’s curator, Reverend Phil Sano, and his posse literally roll into each of the 50 cities it is visiting, as they come in on two wheels. Often that bicycle parade collects a mass of fans and other riders transmuting the tour’s arrival into an impromptu carnival on wheels.
The event itself is a collection of a dozen or so short films containing “bikesexual content.” Many are kitschy and play up the silly aspect of the coinage “bike porn,” though some do take it to a very NSFW place. The lineup features such titles as Sperm and Cyclelust. All, as part of Reverend Phil’s credo, are “armature” efforts. The evening caps off with a live burlesque performance by the good reverend and his madcap troupe.
If you’re still not getting a good picture of what Bike Porn is all about, that’s by design — the tour likes to play coy. But you can glean some information by checking out the trailer on YouTube, which artfully compiles lascivious tongues licking bike frames and some more bizarre behavior that is difficult for the non-bike-fetishist to comprehend.
This is the third year for the Bike Porn tour, but the first time it has come to Greater Boston. Boston organizer Aliza Shapiro, who heads up Truth Serum Productions and CineMental, thinks it’s about time. “Boston is still fairly repressed sexually.” Given her ventures with TraniWreck and Dr. Sketchy, she should know.
When I ask Reverend Phil, who hails from Portland, Oregon, about the origins of Bike Porn, he gives me a pat rundown about a venue for filmmakers to take risks and be inspired, but quickly adds, “As for the beginning of bikesexuality, people have been getting on bikes as long as they have been getting off.”
If there’s been any knock on the tour, it’s the lack of gender representation. “Where is the dick?” a fan posted on Bike Porn’s Web site. To which Reverend Phil responded, “To be clear, we love all our bold women, but it would be great to see more men inspired to create and share.” But then again, according to Reverend Phil, many women have come up to him and confessed their bike-triggered orgasms, “and it’s usually when the saddle is really uncomfortable.”
For tickets and more information about the April 21 event, or events in Providence and other locales, go to bikesmut.com. For more specific info about the Boston date, go to truthserum.org or brattletheater.org. Should the idea of making bike porn rouse your inner filmmaker, the submission deadline for Bike Porn 4: Play is May 10.
