On a bright Saturday morning in Norfolk, a curious sight rolls down the Elizabeth River Trail: a couple dozen cyclists, all sizes and ages, trailing the steady thump of hip-hop beats. No cars, no crowds, no stage — just bikes, and the music that follows them. This is the LIVE.LIFE.FRESH Boombox Bike Ride, a weekly ritual that has turned an ordinary city trail into a moving dance floor.
The ride gathers on Saturday mornings, weather permitting, and sets off from the Freshtopia shop's neighborhood on Norfolk's 35th Street. From there, the group cruises a casual loop through Norfolk, weaving along bike lanes and the Elizabeth River Trail. It is free, it is family-friendly, and it is open to anyone who shows up at the trailhead. For newcomers, the ride doubles as a gentle introduction to the trail and the city's bike lanes — a chance to get comfortable with the routes in the company of riders who have done it all before.
The man behind the magic is DJ Bee, a veteran DJ and turntablist who keeps his real name private. Bee founded Fresh Radio, an online station spinning classic and progressive hip-hop, R&B, soul, reggae, funk, pop, disco, and boogie around the clock. He and his wife opened Freshtopia, a record store and retail shop inside the Fresh Radio studio on Norfolk's 35th Street. It is one of just a handful of Black-owned brick-and-mortar record stores in the country.
But it was something mundane — a pair of painted lanes — that sparked the ride. Freshtopia's home on 35th Street sat along the only center bike lane in Norfolk, a lane that also connects to the Elizabeth River Trail. As May 2019 approached, Bee and his wife noticed that no Bike Month activities were planned for the street at all. "May is Bike Month and we decided to do a weekly bike ride and when the month of May in 2019 ended, we continued," Bee told WTKR's News 3. So on the first Saturday of that May, a group of friends met, mounted up, and rode out using the bike lanes and the trail.
That first May ride was meant to mark Bike Month, but when the month ended, the ride simply refused to die. The event largely paused during 2020, but it returned that March and has been rolling ever since.
The ride's name is more than a gimmick. The Boombox Bike Ride is rooted in a deep love of the boombox — that iconic, shoulder-slung cassette radio that defined a generation of street music. Here, the spirit of the boombox lives on not in a single device but in the collective energy of the group, the music blasting as the wheels turn.
For Bee, the ride is about far more than exercise or entertainment. The route, he says, "takes you through places of Norfolk you might never have seen before," and new riders are constantly surprised. "Every new rider is like, 'I didn't know this is back here, this don't look like Norfolk.' So it's good, they get to see the city." He's also a practical evangelist for two wheels. "You start thinking about things. You're being careful and making sure you don't get hit, but you're also coming up with ideas on the way to work and you'll be able to tackle the day a lot better I think, with a clear mind."
That vision sits comfortably on the Elizabeth River Trail, a path with its own remarkable history. The trail's roots go back to 1994, when a shared vision brought together the West Ghent Civic League, the Norfolk Historical Society, Norfolk Southern Corporation, and the City of Norfolk. The civic league wanted to establish Plum Point Park on a former dump site and create a walking route linking it to West Ghent, while the historical society hoped to improve access to historic Fort Norfolk, a fort dating to 1807 that fended off the British in the War of 1812. The neighborhood of Atlantic City grew up around the fort, supporting an icehouse, a knitting factory, cotton warehouses, and lumber mills, and became part of Norfolk in 1890. It was reached by rail in the early 1900s when the Norfolk and Western Railway extended its Atlantic City Spur along the waterfront — a spur that would eventually become the trail itself. After decades of urban renewal wiped away much of the neighborhood, the Norfolk and Western tracks (by then owned by Norfolk Southern) sat idle. In October 1999, Norfolk Southern donated 3,500 feet of the Atlantic City Spur to the city to create the first segment of the Elizabeth River Trail.
Since 2003, the trail has connected segments of Norfolk's working waterfront, stretching 10.5 miles through 28 neighborhoods, past historic landmarks, parks, and local gems. The Freshtopia shop, with bicycles hanging on the walls alongside the vinyl, is the heart of what some call Norfolk's Soul District on 35th Street.
The ride itself has become part of that fabric of connection. For anyone who shows up on a Saturday morning, the invitation is simple. Meet at the usual spot, bring a bike and a helmet, and join the casual cruise. The pace is easy, the group is welcoming, and the music is guaranteed. As Bee likes to say, every new rider's first thought is surprise at what they'd been missing — and every returning rider knows the feeling of having found something worth coming back to. On the Elizabeth River Trail, the boombox never really went away. It just learned to ride.