John Greenfield – Page 17

Gangster rap: an interview with bike style icon Lorena Cupcake

[This piece also appeared in Checkerboard City, John’s weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets in print on Wednesday evenings.]

In a Midwestern town where folks dress conservatively, bike style icon Lorena Cupcake stands out like a handful of Skittles scattered across the Wall Street Journal. Easily spotted by her candy-colored outfits, rainbow-and-lollipops tattoo and messenger bag emblazoned “Cupcake Gangster,” she’s also an astute commentator on the local cycling, drinking and foodie scenes via her frequently updated, often hilarious Twitter feed.

But Cupcake, 25, is far from just a hipster gadfly. A frequent participant and volunteer at “alleycats,” underground, messenger-style checkpoint races, she runs the bike event Twitter calendar @chicagoholdup and helps stage the annual Bicycle Film Festival. Last year she and a few other petite fixed-gear enthusiasts formed Tiny Fix, a bike gang especially for women under 5’2”, which organizes bar nights, dance parties and now their first alleycat, last weekend’s Tiny Fix Ace Race.

I recently caught up with Cupcake, fresh off her day job as a bank teller, over $3 cheeseburgers at the Blue Frog, a messenger bar at 676 N. LaSalle in River North. She gave me the skinny on Tiny Fix, the upcoming race, and the things she loves and hates about biking in Chicago.

Continue reading Gangster rap: an interview with bike style icon Lorena Cupcake

CDOT unveils draft Streets for Cycling plan, but there’s still time for input

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On Tuesday at the first of several community input meetings before the Streets for Cycling 2020 plan is finalized, the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) unveiled a draft map of locations for the 110 miles of protected bike lanes (PBLs) and 40 miles of buffered lanes to be built during Rahm Emanuel’s first term.

However, the meeting focused on a new concept, the Citywide 2020 Network, a comprehensive plan for 640 miles of bikeways to be created over the next eight years – more details on this in a minute. CDOT also unveiled a draft map of this larger network at the event, held at the Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence in Jefferson Park.

Although the Streets for Cycling community input process is nearly complete, there’s still time to provide feedback before the final plan is unveiled at the Bike to Work rally on Friday, June 15. After you finish reading this post, take some time to study the two maps. If you have suggested edits to the proposed bikeway locations, see the bottom of the post for several ways you can make your voice heard.

Continue reading CDOT unveils draft Streets for Cycling plan, but there’s still time for input

Streetcar desire: John Krause wants trams on Clark Street

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Krause is tired of going Nuts on Clark waiting for for the slow-moving #22 bus.

[This piece also appeared in Checkerboard City, John’s weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

Acid jazz pulsed on the sound system as a group of stylishly dressed transit fans clinked wine glasses last week at Vapiano, a sleek Italian restaurant at 2577 North Clark Street in Lincoln Park. They were there to launch the Chicago Streetcar Renaissance, a campaign to create a world-class streetcar line on Clark from the Loop to Wrigley Field, and eventually add lines in other parts of the city.

“Our mission is to grow the economy and the population of Chicago every year while reducing traffic congestion and making the city easier to get around,” says John Krause, 45, the architect who founded the movement, nattily attired in jeans and a dove-gray sports jacket. “That means every year there will be more people and fewer cars, more commerce and less congestion.”

He has a vision of the clogged traffic and the notoriously sluggish buses on Clark replaced by efficient, comfortable streetcars, more pedestrian traffic, on-street cafés and broad bike lanes. “The only way you can get rid of cars is to replace them with something better,” he explains. “In a car paradigm everybody assumes the city is going to grow more and more congested. But a public transit system is the opposite. The more people who use public transit, the better it gets.”

Continue reading Streetcar desire: John Krause wants trams on Clark Street

A post about posts: why CDOT took out bollards along the Kinzie lanes

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Messenger John “Blunt” Robbins rides in a section of Kinzie without parking, where every-other post has been removed.

It was a little mysterious when the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) recently removed more than half of the flexible posts (AKA bollards) that separate the Kinzie protected bike lanes from parked cars and moving traffic. So I called CDOT bikeways planner Mike Amsden, to get the skinny. He explained the motivations for taking out the posts, and also pointed out a few recent upgrades to the street I hadn’t noticed before.

Continue reading A post about posts: why CDOT took out bollards along the Kinzie lanes

Can bike shop deserts be eradicated on Chicago’s South Side?

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Johnny and John Stallworth at John’s Hardware & Bicycle Shop.

[This piece also runs in Urban Velo magazine.]

Pedaling down Halsted Street into Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, I smell the unmistakable aroma of Harold’s Chicken as I pass an outpost of the South Side chain whose logo features a chef chasing a rooster with a hatchet. After an SUV speeds by me booming hip-hop, I pull up to John’s Hardware & Bicycle Shop, 7350 S. Halsted, and admire the old-fashioned, hand-painted sign, featuring John Stallworth’s smiling, bearded face and his no-nonsense slogan, “If we don’t have it you don’t need it.”

Continue reading Can bike shop deserts be eradicated on Chicago’s South Side?

Ira David Levy’s “Pedal America” show pushes pedaling to a broader audience

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[This piece also appeared in Checkerboard City, John’s weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

As a sustainable transportation devotee, sometimes I have to remind myself that not everyone in this country is as fanatical about biking as I am. But “Pedal America,” a new travel series on PBS created and produced by Chicagoan Ira David Levy, aims to spread the gospel of cycling to the unconverted. “I think that with a lot of bike advocacy, we tend to talk to each other, people who are already enthused,” he says over drinks at a Gold Coast café. “But if you’re going to reach the masses you need to find a way that does not come across as overly political. So I work in a little bit of advocacy in each episode but I try not to be too preachy.” Continue reading Ira David Levy’s “Pedal America” show pushes pedaling to a broader audience