Thanks to Brandon Gobel for tipping us to this commercial about Chicagoan Christina Peck prepping for the Cycle Messenger World Championships which will go down at Soldier Field on August 4-5, 2012.
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A scene from the race in Tokyo, Japan, in 2009. Photo by pistbiker.
Last night John and I attended the Bike Winter closing party and fashion show, at the Gala Gallery (1000 N Milwaukee Avenue). Al Schorch was hilarious as the emcee, as usual. The event was one of many fundraisers throughout the year for West Town Bikes, a community DIY and learning bike shop in Humboldt Park.
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Ian tests the brakes on a Civia Halsted (Minneapolis) cycle truck cargo bike wearing Levi’s 511 Commuter jeans. I was going to buy some that evening after seeing how cool they are and levi.com didn’t have my size! Continue reading Bike Winter fashion show: Pretty bikes and the clothes were nice, too!
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Meet Maggie Martinez. She was the final commenter at last night’s final public meeting for the development of the Bloomingdale Trail framework plan*. And what a final comment she made. If I had known it was going to be a rousing call to action for supporting youth in arts and cycling, and the benefits of the project for the Humboldt Park and nearby communities, I would have filmed it. Instead you get this (pretty good) photo, the audio of her speech, and a transcript.
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I put the audio of Maggie speaking to a basic slideshow of photos from the meeting. Watch it on Vimeo. Continue reading Rallying the community around the Bloomingdale Trail, a project for open space, art, and active transportation
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This is the first article published in “Checkerboard City,” John’s new column about sustainable transportation that will run in print in every issue of Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.
“Bikers of Chicago unite! You have nothing to lube but your chains.”
—Suggested manifesto for Comrade Cycles
First there was Atomix Café, with its giant mural of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, then Revolution Brewing, with a red star logo and tap handles shaped like upraised fists. By opening Chicago’s newest communist-themed enterprise, the three worker-owners behind Comrade Cycles hope to make their Marx on the local bike scene.
Continue reading Pedaling revolution: Comrade Cycles seizes the means of production
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Photo from the October charrette.
The results of all the two previous public meetings for the Bloomingdale Trail, a three-day charrette in October and a meeting in December, will be presented Thursday in the “framework plan”. What is the framework plan? The Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail website, now operated by the Trust for Public Land, has a handy FAQ (pdf):
A framework plan is a document that sets the overall vision for a project without necessarily making specific design decisions. When a project is particularly large or complex, as is the case with the Bloomingdale Trail and Park, framework plans are an essential first stage in the design process. The basic principles established in the Bloomingdale Framework Plan can then be taken and used to drive the specific design decisions that will be made in the next phases of the project.
For example, the Bloomingdale Framework Plan will suggest ways to maximize the use of the limited space available on the top of the Bloomingdale Trail and Park, detail the basic layout of the Bloomingdale’s pathway, and create general guidelines for incorporating the arts on the Bloomingdale Trail and Park.
Continue reading Important Bloomingdale Trail meeting about framework plan is Thursday
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Randy Neufeld, Even Jennings, and Mike Amsden. Photo by Eric Rogers.
Thank you to the tens of people who visited the Grid Chicago table at the Chicago Bike Swap in the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse on Saturday. We thoroughly enjoyed talking to current and (hopefully) new readers of our blog. We handed out pins, business cards, and demonstrated the site. Since there was no wifi or electricity available, we improvised: we showed off the website with an iPad and a mobile hotspot. MobileCitizen generously lent us the mobile hotspot for the day. I was also able to talk to people about the Get Lit campaign.
In addition to the myriad organizations signing up interested guests, and shops selling bike parts, handlebar smartphone holders, and cycling caps, there were many great presentations. I filmed two: a Q&A on bicycling with kids with three Logan Square parents called “Kids in the Saddle: Raising the Next Generation of Cyclists”; and “Decade of Revolution: the Rise of Bicycle Transportation in Chicago”. The videos will be up later this week – each are longer than 30 minutes and will take some time to edit for publishing. Continue reading The Bike Swap on Saturday was an informative event