The Dublin Cycling Campaign is an independent, voluntary lobby group that has been working to improve the city for all cyclists for over a decade and a half.
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St Patrick’s Day Parade 1999
The DCC seems to spend a long time each year talking about St Patrick’s Day. It’s a rare Campaign Spokes that doesn’t mention it. This is because it has become almost a tradition for the Dublin Cycling Campaign to have a float in the parade. We have always thought it worth the huge amount of work and cost to put on the best show we can because it’s one of the few days in the year that cyclists can take over the streets. It is said that the Parade is watched by over a quarter of a million people and as such the Campaign has a unique opportunity to become known.
In 1998 our piece in the Parade involved sixty witches dumping cars in a mobile cauldron and was as usual great fun. However the organisers have been cautious about letting the DCC enter in the 1999 parade for reasons that are not entirely clear - they say we are not big enough, that we lack colour, that we don’t interact with the crowd much. Contacts are being made to see if things can be smoothed out.
The DCC has always been keen to have bike-centred pageants. We have favoured human-powered floats as part of that and all the work is done by volunteers. Let us hope that as the Parade becomes more professional that they don’t eliminate community-based amateurs. (BS)
