If you’ve ever gotten a flat tire from riding your bike over a spiny burr, you might want to head over to what could be Boise’s weirdest annual event and commiserate with fellow bike enthusiasts.
For its fifth year in a row, people will come together at Goathead Fest to share their love of biking and hatred for the invasive plant that sticks to pets’ fur and flattens bike tires.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of bike you ride, what kind of neighborhood you live in, whether you’re a kid or an adult,” founder Jimmy Hallyburton said. “Goatheads are enemy number one.”
The idea for the fest first came to Hallyburton while trying to rally the biking community around a common cause: getting rid of the pesky ride-ruiner.
The Boise Bicycle Project organizes the free event which includes a parade, themed costumes, food, live music, and yes, weird bikes.
“That’s our motto: pedal-powered, wonderfully weird and Bona Fide Boise,” Hallyburton said.
The pedal powering part is literal. A stage with a DJ will power bikes hooked up to generators connected to speakers.
“There's a dance party that goes on at the same time,” he explained. “So you can kind of feel everybody getting involved and they start cheering on the riders on the stage.”
The organizers have partnered with the city to collect goatheads before the event and they encourage riders to pull out the weed whenever they see it.
“But don’t bring goatheads to the event,” he added. “We don’t want any flat tires at the festival!”
Biking starts Saturday, August 25 at 10:30 a.m. at Cecil D. Andrus Park.
