✨T H E F E S T I V E 4 2 0 ✨
Established in 2017, the Festive 420 is a passion project started as a spoof on the Rapha Festive 500 (if you’re not aware of what this is, no problem)— no shade to Rapha, but we found it a little ridiculous to ask people to ride 500km during the final week of the year. We respect those that rise to the occasion — these are the shortest and coldest days of the year (unless you’re in the Southern Hemisphere) and these days are generally reserved for spending time on the couch, with family and eating/ drinking until one feels as if they might explode.
However, after attempting it several times ourselves, we decided that we needed to create something for the rest of us — enter the Festive 420. If you’ve coveted one of the Festive 500 roundels (RIP) but could never get time off of work, your mom, children, husband guilted you for taking several hours of your day to ride, or you simply had no desire to ride in the frigid cold then this is for you. The title is Festive 420, implying that you could shave 80km off of the traditional 500km Rapha expects of you, or you could do nothing but ✨SAY YOU DID✨ (aren’t words beautiful?)
The real message of the Festive 420 (we’ve decided after 5 years of doing this) is to bring together those that love bikes, having fun, and don’t take their lives too seriously. Cycling for us is the enjoyment of exploring new places, some fitness, but mostly the friends we’ve made along the way — the people that we have met through this project have shaped our lives in a way that we really couldn’t imagine at the outset of this project. Not to get too sappy, but the Festive 420 is what made Crawley Softpen and Bummerland. This event gave use the confidence to create for you all and what a beautiful thing!
We’ve met folks across the globe, we’ve made lifelong friends, we’ve heard stories of triumph, of injury, of heartbreak — we’ve seen our patches sent to State Bicycle Co., Specialized, Rapha, Cervelo — and while we are still a small, grassroots type of deal, we feel love from our community and want to give back even a small fraction of the love we have received over the last few years. This year we will be donating proceeds of the patches to the Last Prisoner Project — an organization dedicated to setting cannabis prisoners free.
If you have any questions for me, Crawley Softpen (Molly Lofton), please feel free to DM me, I’d love to make some new pals— @crawleysoftpen.