A naked cyclist on a LimeBike in the Fremont Solstice Parade in Seattle. (GeekWire Photos / Kevin Lisota)

People who use bike-sharing services are often criticized for not wearing bike helmets, but that was the least of the issues Saturday in Seattle.

The traditional naked bike ride at the outset of the Fremont Solstice Parade appeared to get a boost from the urban bike-sharing phenomenon, as even more people than usual shed their clothes to take part, many of them taking advantage of the proliferation of Ofo, LimeBike and Spin bikes in the city.

Some of them put protective coverings on the seats, and others, well, let’s just say you might want to take a wipe the next time you rent a shared bike in Seattle.

The Solstice Parade runs directly in front of GeekWire world headquarters, so naturally we felt obligated to give this story full coverage, and put our Photoshop blurring skills to the test.

For the record, we contacted the bike-sharing companies to find out about their clothing policies, not that it really matters.

Ironically, even as they took off their clothes, some of the cyclists covered up the Spin, Ofo and LimeBike logos, as in the photo below.

In case you’re unfamiliar with all of this, the naked cycling tradition in Seattle’s Fremont Solstice Parade dates back more than 25 years.

As noted by MyNorthwest.com, the tradition is legal, and the city even encouraged the use of its former Pronto shared bikes for the purpose in years past.

Thanks to GeekWire photographer Kevin Lisota for braving this assignment, and to headline guru Kurt Schlosser for his epic puns.

Postscript: We spotted this Saturday evening.

Update, Monday June 18: Ofo, for one, says it was prepared for this: “While we don’t have a policy mandating that people must be clothed when riding our bikes, we anticipated the possibility that there might be unclothed riders during the Solstice Parade so we had our local Seattle operations crew on hand to sanitarily clean the bicycles afterward.”

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