Seattle permitted a car commercial shoot in the middle of Bicycle Weekends and an accessible cycling event

Photo from a reader.

It's the Tom Flood meme come to life. Bicycles deliver the freedom that auto ads promise."

Sunday, a permitted commercial shoot for Rivian shut down a section of Lake Washington Boulevard during the penultimate Bicycle Weekends open streets event. It wasn't just any Bicycle Weekend day, though, it was also Bike & Scoot Sundays (PDF), an accessible cycling event in which SDOT, Lime and Bird partner with Outdoors for All to lend out adaptive cycles for free that people with a wide range of disabilities can ride along what was supposed to be a car-free Lake Washington Boulevard.

Readers immediately started sending us photos and messages about the closure. Bicycle Weekends is very popular, as it has been since 1968, and large numbers of people of all ages and abilities come down to the boulevard for the ten weekends per year that it is advertised to happen. Nobody would expect it to be closed in the middle, something that I can't remember happening before. The only vaguely similar incident I can think of was the time in 2022 when Seattle Parks forgot to put up the signs.

Nearby resident Braeden Van Deynze said the officer in charge of closing the street seemed exasperated by the sheer number of people he had to turn away or send down a very bumpy and skinny sidewalk. The shoot seemed to wrap early, and they probably did not get all the shots they wanted. Several readers said that when they asked about why the road was closed during Bicycle Weekends, they were told to take it up with the mayor's office.

The film crew received permits (PDF) from both the Office of Economic Development and the Department of Parks and Recreation. It's not clear at this point whether SDOT was consulted. I have questions out to all three agencies and will update if I learn more.

UPDATE 9/8: A Seattle Parks spokesperson said the shoot was permitted in error."

We talked to our permitting staff, and it turns out this was permitted in error. We apologize for this mishap, and the impact it had on the community and on the Bicycle Weekend event. We have explored why this happened and have a plan in place to tighten up our systems so this type of oversight doesn't happen again."

Left is the map from the commercial permit (lockup" is their term for points where police would close the street to traffic). Right is the Bicycle Weekends event map from Seattle Parks. I circled the overlapping area.

The permits cover a handful of locations and dates at once, but the details are all in there for Lake Washington Boulevard. September 7 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. They would load in at Stan Sayres Park, but the closed section would be to the north of that between Mount Baker Park and a point around Horton Street. The entirety of the permit is within the Bicycle Weekend area. There is no mention of Bicycle Weekend anywhere in the permit documentation. The Parks Department permit notes that they were not allowed to stop anyone from using any park space or sidewalks, and the number of people probably made shooting difficult.

From Qagggy! on Bluesky.

The permit seems fairly comprehensive. They spell out exactly how the drone shots and chase car shots will work. They even have detailed flight plans for the drone.

I want to assume that nobody checked to see if Bicycle Weekends were happening, though it's hard to imagine it and the nearby adaptive cycling event did not appear on any of the city's events calendars. I sure hope nobody scheduled this on at this time on purpose since it would already be closed to car traffic, though that is the assumption that several readers immediately jumped to.

UPDATE 9/8: I pressed Parks on whether the decision was on purpose, and they said it was absolutely not on purpose."

They didn't do an expansive enough search for conflicting events. And missed the conflict with Bicycle Weekend. Absolutely not on purpose."

Regardless of how it happened, it's a pretty big screw-up on a street that is at the center of political controversy already. The Parks Department bailed on planned safety upgrades along this exact strip of the street back in July (while hiding the cuts from the public), and then Bradley Hawkins was struck from behind in a hit and run last month in a location also within the filming area. It is insult upon insult to folks who have spent years trying to get the city to make this street safe for people biking and walking. Seattle Bike Blog even helped organize a bike rally for Katie Wilson's mayoral campaign in August because it is a clear example of a street where Mayor Bruce Harrell has stood in the way of safe streets. So to have one of the final Bicycle Weekend events of the year shut down without warning to film a car commercial, well, let's just say many of the messages I received today included some expletives.