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.
[youtube]1_12mty_XuE[/youtube]
[flickr]photo:3947102505[/flickr]
A scene from the race in Tokyo, Japan, in 2009. Photo by pistbiker.
[flickr]photo:6830036822[/flickr]
[This piece also runs on the environmental news website Grist.org.]
“It’s not that we don’t like straight people,” explains Jeff Rogers, president of the Windy City Cycling Club (WCCC), Chicago’s oldest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender bicycle group. “On the contrary: The biking community at large tends to be made up of very nice people who are very accepting of diversity in general. But gay and lesbian people have a comfort level with each other that’s different than with straight people.”
That sense of belonging is easy to see as we hang out at T’s bar, a buzzing lesbian, gay, and straight pub in Chicago’s LGBT-friendly Andersonville neighborhood, on a sunny February afternoon. A dozen or so club members, mostly women plus a handful of men, are gathered at an off-season social for Dykes Pedaling Bikes, the club’s monthly women’s ride. Ranging in age from late 20s to late 50s, they kibbitz over $5 hamburgers and tall glasses of hefeweizen with lemon slices as Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” blasts on the sound system. A couple of them wear the club’s jersey, featuring a bicycle wheel, the Sears Tower, the Chicago flag, and a rainbow banner.
Continue reading Out spokin’: The Windy City Cycling Club rides with pride
The street isn’t the only place for a traffic jam.
[flickr]photo:6969814235[/flickr]
People crowd onto the Lakefront Trail during every day in the summer, but especially during the air and water show. Photo by Michelle Stenzel.
[flickr]photo:4312773010[/flickr]
A Metra train “flies” over nearly perpetual congestion on the Kennedy (I-90/94) at Hubbard Street, as drivers enter “Hubbard Cave”, seen from Grand Avenue. Photo by me.
[flickr]photo:6239258636[/flickr]
A “crowd” of buses waits for the light change at Jackson Boulevard and Financial Plaza. Photo by Joseph Dennis.
[flickr]photo:6823693500[/flickr]
A jam of automobiles on State Street and Adams Street requires people to squeeze between them. Photo by Michelle Stenzel.
Next week’s Grid Shots theme is “sidewalks”, so add your photos to our Flickr group.
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.
[flickr]photo:6824033004[/flickr]
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!
[flickr]photo:6479487797[/flickr]
At the corner of Schaumburg and Barrington Roads in Schaumburg, Illinois, sits an unmarked crosswalk. Can you see it? There are no pedestrian signals here, so follow the signals for cars. Good luck.
I posted my “Can we cross Belmont Avenue?” story in full to EveryBlock to get some reactions from neighbors who would be familiar with that specific crossing. As I suspected, there would be confusion about what the laws in Illinois say about the required behaviors of drivers when they encounter people trying to cross the street.
From Active Transportation Alliance promotional materials (pdf), it says,
As of 2010, Illinois drivers must come to a complete stop for pedestrians in all crosswalks. Previous law required them to yield and stop when necessary.
[flickr]photo:3996816091[/flickr]
2012 fatality stats*:
Pedestrian: 3
Pedalcyclist: 0
Transit: 0
Updated March 16, 2012: I’ve recategorized this as a pedestrian death, and not a transit death. Also changed the deceased’s home location and corrected the Street View.
Gardenia Boyer, 23, from the Brainerd neighborhood, was struck and killed by an empty Metra train at 95th Street and Vincennes Avenue on the Rock Island branch going south towards Blue Island, Illinois. It happened on Wednesday morning, around 7 AM. She was walking east on 95th Street. There are two tracks here. Walking on 95th Street never seems like a good idea: the first fatality tracker post was about two people killed while crossing 95th Street. She had two daughters. Continue reading Fatality Tracker: Woman dies after being hit by Rock Island Metra train