Giacomo inspired me to some hacking over the summer. I started thinking about our upcoming visit to the ocean and how the nieces and nephews would be chasing crabs around in the evening with their little under powered flashlights. If you ever done this it gets a little weird walking around with little pools of light fluttering around. So I thought instead of a tight flash light beam how about a flood light?
I think it came out pretty good.
I've been wrestling with why bike paths, hell riding bikes, are so controversial. On the face of it bike riding would seem to be the most harmless activity in the world. Fresh air, exercise, sunshine! What's to hate.
But for some reason commuting by bike draws more angst than anything else in the city after the streetcar.
It got me to thinking about society and laws. Because what else binds society together besides rules, spoken and unspoken? And the unspoken rule is apparently that contributing members of society have to own and drive a car. I don't make up the rules but too many people have told me that my friends and I need to grow up and buy a one.
Could it be as simple as the entire issue is sour grapes over cyclists getting out of the car payment and road rage game?
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At the end of 2013 Urbancincy proposed a cycle path on Elm St. "Elm Street... has some of the least congestion of any north/south street in the Central Business District..."
I thought of this when the city closed two lanes of traffic for All Star fest at the convention center. When I saw the barricades the first thing I thought was wow, if we wanted 5' for a bike lane people would be screaming. But during the 5 busiest days of traffic that downtown has seen in years, if ever, the intersection of 5th and Elm never got too congested. Now that it has unintentionally been proven that Elm St can survive losing two lanes all we have to do is wait until our current mayor is gone then we can go about making Urbancincy's vision a reality.
These picture were taken about 5:30 pm on a weekday before the All Star craziness began. As you can see on an average day there isn't much happening on Elm during rush hour.
Do you know about Pleasant St? Pleasant St is a direct link between Washington Park and Findlay Market. You can literally see one of them from the other over the 5 blocks it spans. We use it all the time and its a relaxing stress free bike ride between the two places. Not that you have to ride a bike, Pleasant is a one lane narrow street and the cars that do use it are traveling at very low speeds. I have been hearing scuttlebutt since the beginning of summer about somehow making this link more official, or trying to highlight it somehow. Well it turns out that somehow is UC's Metrolab. If you remember last year UC Metrolab created some amazing placemaking structures for Walnut Hill's Five Alley Popup and now they've turned that attention to the community to Pleasant St. The students who make up UC Metrolab have created a series of Parklets and while Pleasant St was closed to traffic a couple weekends ago, debuted them to the neighborhood.
What is a parklet? A parklet is designed to provide a public place for passersby to relax and enjoy the atmosphere of the city around them, in places where the existing sidewalk width is not large enough to accommodate vibrant street life activities.
Judging by the people crowding around each one I'd say they were successful. But knowing how UC's Metrolab operates this won't be the end of the process, they'll fine tune the designs over the course of the summer before they have a finished product. The end game of this is to combine all these units into one big super parklet. Once the permits from the city are approved this will happen, hopefully before the end of the summer. I talked with Michael Zaretsky, the professor/activist heading up the Metrolab, about some of the challenges, one of the biggest I feel is pedestrians vs. Liberty. A person needs to traverse seven lanes of traffic to get from one side to the other. Seven lanes is a huge psychological barrier that needs to be crossed. Mr Zaretsky assured me the traffic department was aware of the issue and was working on solutions. But he said, it probably won't happen soon.
Anther cool tie in to making Pleasant more, ah pleasant is The Field of Greens, a wiffle ball field sponsored by People’s Liberty. Every time I've gone past there have been neighborhood kids in there having a blast.
The flashy new bars and restaurants are cool, sure. But it is these placemaking and community building that make a neighborhood.
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A couple times a year Margy and Mel organize a big group ride. An excuse for everyone to get together and decorate their bikes and themselves. This ride had over 120 bike riders meandering around downtown and OTR. Even though downtown was slammed with All Star people all we saw the whole time were smiles. People in cars laughing waving honking and people on the sidewalks stopping and shooting pictures and videos. These things are so much fun.
The highlight for me was a well dressed couple on Red Bikes that fell in with us asking a million questions. They were from Mt Lookout and had no idea and thought the group ride was amazing. As we rolled into Washington Park someone mentioned that's where the ride ended. The woman hearing cried nooooooooooooo I don't want it to end, I don't want it to ever end.
Well put and my thoughts exactly.
I get questions about what kind of bike and equipment is needed for riding in the city. I keep telling people you don't need a special bike, special clothes or special equipment. Just get on the bike you have and ride. You'll figure out what you need. I've been adding one of two specialty things every year to make my life easier, but there is no reason to do it all at once.
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July's Second Sunday on Main, held on a day when there were many competing events downtown was slammed, I couldn't get over the solid expanse of people from 12th to Liberty on Main St. It was crazy. It had to be their biggest event yet although I haven't heard any estimates.
