Benefield: Santa Rosa’s Taco Tuesday ride takes the prize

It was all Santa Rosa from the moment Juan Chavez said let’s roll.

In the first (of hopefully many) Taco Tuesday battles among three bike and taco-loving California cities, Santa Rosa’s ridiculously fun parade of bikes and bike-loving people rolled to a resounding win in the most participants category Tuesday night.

The idea to pit three cities against each other in a good-natured battle for bike culture supremacy came from Warren Wong, who runs a similar event in Riverside.

“It was more like a friendly ‘Hey let’s do it and see what happens.’ It wasn’t competitive, like ‘Our city is better than yours,’” he said.

That said, there were judges. And trophies in three categories (most riders, best tacos, best bikes). And a group chat on Facebook. And photos of all three cities’ events were flying back and forth.

But it was all in fun. Plus, Wong readily acknowledges the difficulty of judging the deliciousness of tacos from photos alone.

“The judges won’t even know what it tastes like,” he said, laughing. “This really is not dictating on who has the best tacos.”

That said, Riverside won the taco division.

But the most riders, which to my mind translates to biggest fun-loving community, went to Santa Rosa.

How could it not?

Last July I did a column on the Taco Tuesday rides. On that ride, I reckoned there were 25 or so riders making the slow, meandering journey from Humboldt Park in Santa Rosa at 6:15 p.m. to the taco trucks on Sebastopol Road near West Avenue and back.

It felt like the best kind of party.

Now imagine 10 times that many riders doing the same thing. That’s the number of people who showed up Tuesday night.

There were leis and Hawaiian shirts. Boom boxes blasting R&B from the ‘80s. A rider wearing a homemade Tahitian mask and straw leggings. A woman whose bike was so lit up with lights it looked more like a Christmas tree than a bicycle.

Kids. Tricycles. Recumbents. Stretch bikes. Bikes 8-feet tall.

It’s the happiest scene you’ve ever seen.

“I love it. It makes me smile even when I’m all by myself,” Kelly Evans said — and she wasn’t even riding.

She was standing in her front yard on Beaver Street, hooting at the riders and telling the guys with the speakers to turn up the volume.

“It brings joy,” she said. “It’s just a laugh. They are playing music and having a good time so it makes me have a good time too … I think everybody loves it when they come by.”

Evans’ point was made time and again Tuesday night. People stood on lawns and porches waving, and cars honked — in a good way.

A guy enjoying a drink in the outdoor area at the Beer Baron, not knowing I was chronicling the scene, gave me an enthusiastic fist bump when the parade stopped briefly on Fourth Street.

“You guys know how to do it,” he said.

He was from Virginia.

The ride, in all of its crazy glory, was the brainchild of friends Juan Chavez and Chad Hunt.

Bored and feeling penned in during the pandemic, they started the Tuesday night rides as a safe way to get together, get food and stretch their legs.

Immediately, they knew they were onto something.

Kids came. Guys with super expensive stretch bikes came. Moms with no biking experience came. Hunt’s mom came.

Don’t have a bike? Hunt runs an informal “lending library” from his garage, Chavez said.

“It doesn’t matter how old you are and how young are, just come and follow along,” he said. “We have very experienced riders watching out for everyone and riding with us.”

The group has grown so much that traffic and traffic lights can be an issue, especially as the group tries to ride in one safe bunch.

On these rides there are ambassadors who stop traffic at key intersections, hustle riders through and keep the group in one mass.

If anyone was ticked about missing a light Tuesday night, I didn’t see it.

“My job was helping people cross the traffic stops, making sure everybody was safe,” Roseland University Prep junior Shayla Orneles said. “Everybody is having such a great time and everybody is laughing. We are just a big family.”

The family grew by one member in recent weeks. Regulars Jess Hess and Justin Kim, drive up from Walnut Creek regularly to ride and eat with the group.

The couple had son Jai seven weeks ago. Jai was swaddled and buckled in a trailer Tuesday night.

The family feel is real, Hess said.

“We have built a community with these people,” she said. “People are amazing. People have given us stuff for the baby. The outfit he’s wearing today another couple here mailed to us for him to have. We’ve become friends with these people.”

That was always the goal, Chavez said.

Yes, some of the bikes are amazingly cool, but so many here aren’t riding custom frames. They are just riding and smiling.

And the communal dinner? Where else are you going to get this kind of mix of people?, Chavez asked.

“Sitting down and breaking bread and having a conversation with somebody you’ve never met” is the reason they started this in the first place.

Others felt that need too. It has grown steadily in the year they have hosted them, largely rain or shine. Only a downpour, and we really don’t get those anymore, cancels a ride.

“It’s its own beast now,” Chavez said.

For his efforts to introduce all comers to bikes, and buoyed by the sustained popularity of the Tuesday night rides, Chavez was named “Bike Champion of the Year” in April by the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition.

Lupe Dominguez of Santa Rosa has been riding with the group since the beginning. Her son, Juan Rios, was an original backer. Her husband rides.

On Tuesday night, she was almost emotional about how much the night has taken off, about how many people feel the need for this kind of community.

“I look around and I see people chatting and talking and drinking and having fun and I told my son, ‘Look what you created, you created a new community,’” she said. “It’s just amazing and touching.”

After dinner, the massive group turns on their lights. There are the standard red blinky bike lights, but many opt for strands of multicolored festive lights, making the mass look like a rolling carnival as it moves out at dusk heading east back toward downtown.

Typically the group ends up at Yogurt Farms for dessert. But many pull off early as things get dark.

Just a few blocks from Yogurt Farms where about 50 remaining riders gathered for one last hurrah Tuesday night, Lea Goode-Harris peeled off and rolled into her driveway.

She immediately started to wave good night to all of her Tuesday night friends.

“I try to be in the front, partly just so I can wave to everybody,” she said. “They say ‘Good night,’ ‘See you next week,’ and call out my name. Where do we have that anymore in the world?”

Goode-Harris has roped her neighbor and friend Lynette Coster into the fun. They are now regulars. Their bikes are bedecked in lights.

“The fact that Juan and Chad had this idea and a couple of friends and it’s grown into this?” she said. “It’s joy. Complete joy.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.