The Minneapolis version of a biker brawl involved some cyclists, three PedalPubs, squirt guns, and water balloons, but the results were, in their way, nearly as disquieting as the Waco incident—the thin veneer of society cracked like a cranium under a billy club. It seems Minnesota nice ends when you hoist your keister onto a PedalPub stool.




Here’s how it went down. On Saturday, May 23, Minneapolis-based haters of the 16-seat drinker-powered mobile pubs could contain their loathing no longer, posting a call on the local “I hate the Pedal Pub” Facebook page for fellow haters to meet at a local park at 1 p.m. with bikes, squirt guns and water balloons. They would then go all Mad Max on some unsuspecting PedalPubs. Trouble is, since Facebook is a public forum, PedalPub warned Minneapolis police about the planned malfeasance.

Nothing happened at 1 p.m., but later in the afternoon, some cyclists rolled up on a PedalPub, squirted a pilot in the face, sprayed a second beer-buggy driver and hit a female pedaler with a water balloon, and were approaching a third mobile bar when the beer-fueled passengers of that third jitney jumped off their stools and went all police-state on the unsuspecting PedalPub haters. Or rather, off-duty police state. Six of the pedaling suds guzzlers just happened to be off-duty cops from Burnsville, a suburb of Minneapolis. They were able to get into situation mode very quickly, as this Youtube video shows:

Minneapolis police, the on-duty ones, arrested six people in the fracas: Five of them were water-armed cyclists; the other miscreant was not identified. All six will have their day in court on June 4th.


Comments on the Star Tribune article and on the I Hate the Pedal Pub Facebook page are vitriolic in the extreme, revealing what a hot-button issue PedalPubs truly are. Clearly, this war has just begun.

