The most bike-friendly music festival in New Orleans kicks off this Friday evening. Mid-City’s Bayou Boogaloo is a free music, food and arts festival on the banks of Bayou St. John. Festival organizers encourage attendees to bike, streetcar, even canoe down the bayou rather than drive and clog up the Mid-City neighborhood where the festival is held.

The festival will feature three stages of local music including Bill Summers and Jazalsa, Benny Turner, Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes, Ernie Vincent and the Top Notes, and BeauSoleil with Tab Benoit. [NOTE: In the Weekly Beat, we reported that Honey Island Swamp Band would be performing as well. They’re not; we regret the error.–ED.] The music on Friday will last from 5 to 9 p.m. (giving everyone time to get off of work), and continues all day Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday.

Bayou Bicycles on Toulouse even entices bike riders with beer — they host a pub crawl before the music starts on Saturday. “It’s like a second line on bikes; they visit different neighborhood watering holes to make it more fun to ride your bike,” Jared Zeller, the Bayou Boogaloo’s director, says.

The festival’s location at the end of Jefferson Davis Highway also makes it more accessible for bike riders. “Jeff Davis has the only bike path that crosses I-10. That makes it the safest route to take,” Zeller says.

Bayou Boogaloo is not just about the music, though; it is about the people who attend. The festival was created by the MotherShip Foundation during thepost-Katrina recovery period to give residents a chance to relax andreinvigorate the recovery effort. MotherShip’s goal today is to improve the quality of life for locals by promoting the arts, recreation, and culture.

Bayou Boogaloo also emphasizes community and sustainability by ensuring as little disruption and mess as possible for the neighborhood around it. Organizers ask that food vendors to abide by zero-waste guidelines, which include using disposable products that are recyclable or compostable to reduce the festival’s impact on the local environment.

Bayou Boogaloo is trying to grow its sustainability efforts as the technology becomes available. “Right now we are using donated mobile trailers from South Coast Solar that have back-up batteries, so we can operate the stages along Dumaine Street with solar energy, but there aren’t any tech vendors with solar stages in the area,” Zeller says. “Maybe I’ll just build my own solar stage.”