Tour de Fat is Cancelled for 2008

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The Tour de Fat is not going to happen in Flagstaff this year. And it may not ever happen again.

I’ve known this for a few weeks now, but wasn’t sure what to say about it. Or how.

But, Melissa with FBO has put up a post that lays it all out:

Our friends at New Belgium Brewing have decided to cancel the Flagstaff Tour de Fat for 2008.

Since this event represented almost 50% of FBO’s income, this is a tremendous financial hardship for FBO. We will immediately begin brainstorming for funding ideas, researching grants and planning events to help supplement our revenue to continue with our bicycle advocacy efforts in Northern Arizona. If you have funding ideas, or would like to help, please contact Melissa at melissa@flagstaffbiking.org.

FBO’s funding is going to be severly curtailed in the future. And, therefore, the events FBO puts on are going to have to be scaled back. I’m not sure what the answer is going to be, but I hope FBO can continue to advocate for Flagstaff’s diverse and storied collection of cyclists as they have for years. (full discloser – I have served as a Board Memeber of Flagstaff Biking Organization in the past)

And, to be honest, we’re all going to miss what was one hell of a party. The keg count over the last few years was completely fucking ridiculous.

2005: 132 kegs
2006: 184 kegs
2007: 187 kegs

It’s a real shame to see it go. But I can understand why: Nearly two hundred kegs of beer served in under six hours in a park that can’t be more than a half an acre is just asking for trouble.

This is part of the official notice from New Belgium:

To all the members and Directors of Flagstaff Biking Organization and Northern Arizona Pride Association;

It is with sincere regret that after 8 amazing years, we have decided not to bring the Tour de Fat back to Flagstaff in 2008. We never thought the day would come when our flagship show could cause such a ruckus… nor did we ever see the Tour de Fat growing into the behemoth that it has become. As more and more folks discover the TDF, sadly not all of them have come for the purpose of moving the bicycle to the forefront of transportation. Instead they have focused on pushing revelry to new heights.

As we saw in 2007, this has put all stakeholders in a potentially dangerous situation. While the core of our mission is to help, the risk of calamity has become more imminent. Since Wheeler Park is sadly no longer an option, we have lost the ability to host the show downtown. We have also lost the confidence of the City of Flagstaff to host an event that enhances the town as opposed to putting it at risk. These are the major factors in our decision not to return. Without a suitable venue, or necessary permitting, we are without promising options. Know that this course of action was not taken lightly by our crew, the Brewery, or our Distributor in AZ. The TDF is a loss all parties will miss.

Sincerely,
New Belgium Brewing and Team TDF (the now sad Clowns)

This is from a post on flagstaffbiking.org

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About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

6 Replies to “Tour de Fat is Cancelled for 2008”

  1. “Nearly two hundred kegs of beer served in under six hours in a park that can’t be more than a half an acre is just asking for trouble.”

    Ya think ??

    Holy shit….how did I miss that party ??

    Oh right. I was probably drunk. ha ha

  2. I love the audacity of TDF but I for see that this is the future. TF pushes the boundary of organized public behavior and soon a city will kick them out. Sad but true.

  3. The woodstock of biking.. man.. 200 kegs, sweet!
    man needs 3 things.. bikes,biotchs,beer.. the order changes daily.
    hehe

    peace,
    Joe
    snow-ville

  4. What about Pine Mountain Ampitheater? It’s in the county so you don’t have to deal with the holy city of Flagstaff. Or even better, organize an event in the forest a la Burning Man of the desert. I know they let a thousand drunken bikers (motor bikers)camp in the woods for some event this summer on Observatory Mesa. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Build it, and they will come. I’m out of cliches, but the party has sucked ever since lines began forming.