New Belgium’s Tour de Fat Raises $54K for Local Bicycling Nonprofits

On Saturday, May 31, New Belgium’s Tour de Fat rolled into DC’s Yards Park. The traveling festival is a celebration of beer and bicycling with 10 stops across the country in 2014. This year’s festival featured plenty of beer, a bike rodeo, numerous bike-related interactive displays (bike wheel kaleidoscope, anyone?) and multiple stages with all kinds of entertaining acts.

Notable about Tour de Fat is that all of the proceeds from beer and merchandise sales and donations from the bike parade go to local charities at each stop. The DC area’s beneficiaries, according to a press release, were the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) (http://www.waba.org), Black Women Bike DC (http://blackwomenbikedc.tumblr.com), Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling (http://www.fabb-bikes.org), Mid-Atlantic Off-Road Enthusiasts (MORE) (http://www.more-mtb.org) and Phoenix Bikes (http://www.phoenixbikes.org).

All in all the event raised $54,000 for these organizations (up from $19,000 in 2013). The