Buffalo cancels naked bike ride after threats of violence
Organizers said people threatened to throw projectiles at riders and hit them with cars, canceling what would have been the ride’s eleventh year
The World Naked Bike Ride Buffalo, scheduled for August 1, has been canceled after organizers received threats of violence and death directed at riders and organizers.
“With the outpouring of overwhelming disapproval from concerned community members, and the threats of violence and death towards organizers and riders, it is unrealistic to ensure the safety of our wonderful supporters,” organizers wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on July 20.
The threats were specific. Enough people said they would seek riders out to throw projectiles, hit them with cars, and use other deadly weapons that calling off the ride was the safer course, the statement said.
The opposition came entirely from social media, an organizer told Planet Nude in an email. A few prominent Facebook accounts posted about the ride and went viral locally. Once the group began promoting the August event, it drew roughly 500,000 post engagements in 48 hours and more than a thousand comments, shares, and subposts, most of them negative, according to the organizer. Recurring themes included accusations of pedophilia, frustrations over race relations in Buffalo, and direct threats of violence.
In their Instagram statement, organizers said the ride’s message had been lost in the oversexualization of nudity and in false claims about participants, and drew a line between the nudity and the conduct the ride actually polices. “Nudity is not inherently sexual,” they wrote. “Nudity in the context of protesting is federally protected under freedom of speech.” The ride bars sexual behavior, harassment, and conduct that makes others uncomfortable, they said, and anyone who violates those rules is removed and banned.
Organizers also addressed claims tying the ride to predatory behavior, calling them false and harmful. “This event is not about children, and children do not participate in the ride,” they wrote. The organizer who wrote to Planet Nude returned to that point. “What is frustrating to me is that something so harmless as simply being scantily clad on a bike can be weaponized and used to vilify an entire group of people just trying to bring attention to an issue that affects everyone on the planet. To me, I think it takes away from actual victims of that heinous crime and cheapens the word to mean something less than it actually is.”
It’s the first time organizers have called off the Buffalo ride over safety concerns. They described the canceled event as the ride’s 11th year. The first ride was held in 2015, with Buffalo Rising billing the following summer’s as the second annual. Last year’s, on August 2, was the tenth.
The ride typically covers 10 to 13 miles through the city, with the route unannounced in advance. Participants arrive clothed at a check-in point, then are directed to a departure location where they hear the ride’s mission and safety rules before undressing. Nudity is optional. The 2025 event description had already signaled awareness of hostility: organizers refused to disclose the check-in location until days before the ride, saying they wanted to limit “crowding of the creepy variety.”
Organizers did not report any of the threats to Buffalo police, and said they would not. “We have never and will never collaborate with local police as that goes against the ethos of protesting,” the organizer wrote. They said the Buffalo Police Department has grown less tolerant of the ride in recent years, and that participants have had insults hurled at them, been threatened with violence, and been detained. “I do not trust them to keep us safe.”
In place of the ride, organizers said they will collect donations for local organizations serving what they called the most vulnerable members of the community. They said they have distributed more than $3,000 to East Side organizations over the past three years.
Rides in other cities have been called off this year for unrelated reasons. Cape Town’s ended after 18 years when the city demanded a fully clothed event, and Brighton postponed its 20th edition after two opposing political demonstrations were scheduled for the same day. Los Angeles moved its 2025 ride from June to September, citing safety concerns following ICE raids and protests downtown. The rides are organized independently city by city, sharing a name and a set of themes rather than a common organization.
Violence against riders is not unprecedented. Riders have been attacked during rides in Coventry, Colchester, and Chelmsford, in England. The man who punched a rider off his bicycle in Colchester last August, and who told the court he considered the cyclists perverts, received a suspended sentence in December.
Whether the ride returns is undecided. The organizing team has not determined whether to continue, the organizer said, and if it does, it will need to find a way to promote the event without social media. 🪐
This is so disheartening. What a bummer.
This is a sad example of how quickly ordinary non-sexual nudity can be turned into a moral panic. The threats matter, and the organizers were right to protect riders, but the larger loss is cultural: when people cannot distinguish a peaceful body-positive protest from sexual misconduct, public conversation becomes less safe for everyone.