It's Saturday evening and time to hit the club. Jump in the shower. Do your hair. Pick your outfit.
Then hop on your bike, because this is a different kind of club.
Once a month through summer and into the fall, the Joyful Riders Club hosts a ride unlike any other. Starting from Perennial Cycle in Minneapolis' Uptown neighborhood, a rotating list of DJs blare dance music sets as hundreds of cyclists take to the streets and Midtown Greenway clad in vibrant colors and flashing lights.
The 10-mile, two-to-three hour ride goes at a leisurely pace with dance stops, such as the one in June on the Sabo Bridge straddling Hiawatha Avenue that included sunset views of downtown Minneapolis.
The rides are the brainchild of Joyful Riders co-founder Patrick Stephenson, Perennial owner Luke Breen and Eric Moran — also known as DJ Dev. It all started when Moran saw a video of UK-based DJ Dom Whiting with his rave ride setup.
A bike-centric electronic dance music event made perfect sense for a uniquely weird place like the Twin Cities, melding the vibrant dance and outdoor scenes, Moran said.
"You meet like your chosen family out there on these rides sometimes,” Moran said. “So having having this intersection of this dance music scene with the bike scene, it's been a bigger hit than I would have imagined it would be."
They expected they'd have 20 people show up for their first event in Summer 2022.
"We had like 50 to 75 people and it was clear we were on to something huge,” Moran said.
Everyone of all ages and skill level are welcome, so long as you like to ride and dance.
And if you happen to come across the club, feel free to join the party like Amanda White and Makai Catudio did last summer.
“We were like, I guess we're stopping and joining this party, and now we go every single chance we can get,” White said. “It's an amazing community.”
The next ride starts 7 p.m. Saturday from Perennial Cycle. A full list of rides is on the Joyful Riders website and social media.
