Zombie Bike Parade: Davis Gives the Undead Wheels

The dead pedal so children can ride.

The Zombie Bike Parade Festival returns to Davis, California, on Saturday 31 October 2026, its eighth year and the first to land on Halloween Day since 2021. It is a free, all ages day of costumed riders, live bats, a BMX show and a skydiving finale, run by volunteers from the Davis Odd Fellows Lodge, The Bike Campaign and the Davis Bike Club. The money goes mainly to NorCal Trykers, a charity that builds custom adaptive trikes for disabled children. It also sits a short ride from the city where the zombie walk was born. That link, and what it says about the most social monster horror ever made, is the story here.

Horror has used the dragged foot and the stiff knee as shorthand for menace for nearly sixty years. Davis dresses its riders in that broken gait, puts them on bikes, and uses the money to buy children a way to move. The costume is a body that will not work. The cash buys one that does.

The zombie is the only monster you can turn up in the thousands, and on Halloween Day a small Californian city will use that fact to buy bikes for children who have never ridden one.

It starts at 11am at Community Park in Davis. Riders in rotting make-up, blue wigs and skeleton paint set off on a loop of just under five miles to Mace Ranch Park and back. At the halfway point they stop to watch a BMX show. By 2.30pm, if the weather holds, skydivers in zombie paint are dropping out of the sky into the park. Nobody pays to get in. The money comes from sponsors, and most of it goes to NorCal Trykers, which builds custom trikes for disabled kids. Since 2019 the parade has raised more than $50,000 for them and funded 42 trikes.

That is a neat bit of civic good. It is also, I think, one of the smartest things anyone has done with the zombie in years.

Where the Zombie Walk Was Born

Davis did not stumble onto the undead by chance. Cross the Yolo Causeway and you reach Sacramento, where on 19 August 2001 the Trash Film Orgy crew staged what they billed as “The Zombie Parade”. It was a stunt to sell their midnight film festival, and the idea came from Bryna Lovig. It is the event most often named as the first of the zombie walks.

What came next spread fast. Toronto coined the name “Zombie Walk” in 2003, with seven people. In 2006 Pittsburgh took it to Monroeville Mall, the very mall where George A. Romero shot Dawn of the Dead, and Guinness counted 894 walkers. Britain got the bug too. Nottingham set a record of 1,227 on Halloween 2008, and in August 2009 the market town of Ledbury pulled in 4,026 of the dead.

So a zombie parade a short ride from Sacramento is a homecoming of sorts, eighteen years late. The difference is the thing Davis added. The walkers walked. Davis gave them wheels.

Why the Slowest Monster Needed a Bike

There was never any doubt it would be bikes. Davis has called itself the bicycle capital of America since 1964. It was the first US city to stripe a bike lane, the first to win a Platinum award from the League of American Bicyclists, and it is home to the US Bicycling Hall of Fame. Its city logo is a penny-farthing. It has 108 miles of bike lanes and 63 miles of bike paths. In Davis, Halloween was always going to have pedals.

But put the Romero zombie on a bike and something odd happens. That zombie is a body that will not move the way a body should. The shuffle, the stiff knee, the foot that drags behind: horror has used that gait as shorthand for menace since Night of the Living Dead in 1968. The threat was never speed. It was numbers, and the patience of something that cannot stop.

Now look at what Davis has built. Hundreds of riders dress up in that broken gait and climb onto bikes, thousands more come in costume, and the day pays for children who could not ride to do it for the first time. Families of kids with custom trikes have ridden behind a NorCal Trykers banner since the first parade. The costume is a body that will not work. The money buys one that does. I doubt the team planned it as a comment on the zombie film. It works as one all the same, and once you see it you can’t unsee it.

A Horde That Builds Trikes

The festival grew out of a failed world record. The Davis Odd Fellows Lodge ran a World’s Greatest Bicycle Parade in 2010 and 2011, chasing the record for the longest single line of bikes. Lodge members Dave and Lea Rosenberg then pitched a zombie version, and the Lodge hoped Guinness would make a new category for it. Guinness said no.

There is a dry joke in that. The same record book had been counting zombie walkers in their thousands for years. It would not count them on bikes.

At about the same time, a physical therapist called Gill Williams came to the Lodge. She had founded NorCal Trykers in 2017, the first Northern California chapter of National AMBUCS, and she wanted help to fund adaptive trikes. The Lodge put the two ideas together. Aaron Wedra, then an ad rep at the Davis Enterprise and a fan of The Walking Dead, was asked to chair it. He told the paper he was “dying to do it”, and he has run it every year since.

The first ride, on 20 October 2019, drew about 250 riders. It was the only year they paid, $5 each. The rules were simple: look like a zombie, ride the whole route, and say “brains” at both ends. That year raised enough for two trikes. In 2020 the pandemic turned it into an open ride on the 12 mile Davis Bike Loop, and about 1,000 people came anyway. By 2022 the crowd hit its peak of about 3,500. In 2025 the festival gave a record $9,451 to NorCal Trykers. Dave Rosenberg put the point plainly in 2019.

It gives these children freedom. They can be mobile for the first time ever.

The Davis Halloweekend Schedule

Everything on the day is free. Unless the list says otherwise, it all happens on Saturday 31 October at Community Park, 1405 F Street, Davis. Riders should be there by 10.30am.

Saturday 31 October, hour by hour

• 8am to 10am: the Monster Run, a timed run with a laser shoot. The Davis Fencing Academy runs it.
• 11am to 12.30pm: the Zombie Bike Parade, from Community Park to Mace Ranch Park and back, about five miles. The BMX stunt show is at the halfway point in Mace Ranch Park. Riders under 18 must wear a helmet.
• 11am to 3pm: the festival in the park. There are more than 35 stations, train rides, music, fair food and the Zombie Kingdom Quest.
• 12.30pm to 2pm: the Monster Skate Jam at the newly rebuilt skate park. It is free to watch.
• 2.30pm to 2.45pm: the big finish, as the Skydance zombies drop out of the sky.
• 3pm to 5pm: the Downtown Trick-or-Treat Trail, with sweets from dozens of shops. It starts at Davis Commons, 500 1st Street. The UC Davis Marching Band plays its way through town while it runs.
• All day: the Zombie Mash party at Woodstock’s Pizza on G Street. There is no cover charge.

The parade itself is for bikes, and for scooters or anything else that can keep pace. The park is for everyone, on anything. Wheelchairs, powerchairs, prams and skateboards are all welcome, and most of the day happens there rather than on the route. You do not need a bike to take part.

Back at the park, expect zombies on stilts, a Halloween marching band, live bats, fencers and a robotics team. There is even a zombie video game, made by teens from a local game design club. Also new this year are a pumpkin launcher and a bout of Zombie Defense Training. The costume contest now has more than 50 prizes. At the time of writing, the festival was still a few thousand dollars short of its sponsorship target and still looking for volunteers.

The rest of Halloween in Davis

The festival’s schedule also rounds up the rest of the season in town. These are the Davis events from mid October on.

• Until 31 October: Bohème Bewitched at 300 E Street. Entry is $4, which comes off anything you buy. Its Enchanted Evenings run from 7pm to 9pm on 23, 24 and 30 October. They cost $10 to $15.
• Saturday 17 October, 10am to 11.30am: Make a Bat!, a leather craft class at the Davis Arts Center, $35.
• Saturday 17 October, 2pm to 4.30pm: the Trunk or Treat from Mirror Image Dance Company at 2121 2nd Street. A quiet, sensory friendly start runs from 1.30pm.
• Monday 19 October, 5.30pm to 6.30pm: Brew Your Own Potions: Cooking Concoctions at the Davis Arts Center, $35.
• Saturday 24 October, 5pm to 8pm: the Halloween Block Party at the Davis Food Co-op. It is free, and there are costume and pumpkin contests.
• Sunday 25 October, 2pm: a free screening of Halloweentown at the Mary L. Stephens Davis Branch Library.
• Wednesday 28 October, 4pm: a Halloween puppet show from the Fratello Marionettes at the library. It is free. Come in costume.
• Thursday 29 October, 9pm: INSTIGATE, the Davis Rave Co Halloween party at Sophia’s Thai Kitchen. Free.
• 29 October to 2 November: a self-guided Día de los Muertos altar at the Davis Cemetery District and Arboretum. Free.
• Sunday 1 November, 2pm to 5pm: drop-in Día de los Muertos crafts at the library. Free.

The full list also takes in towns such as Winters, Dixon and Woodland. You will find it on the Zombie Bike Parade Halloweekend schedule. The festival keeps it up to date, so check it before you go.

The walkers in Sacramento shuffled so a film festival could sell tickets. In Davis the dead pedal so a child can feel the wind in their hair for the first time, and I cannot think of a better use for a horde.

For more info shamble over to here

https://www.zombiebikeparade.com/