Ciclovia - For the local bohemian

In Portland last Sunday (6-20) PDOT or Portland Dept. of Transportation ran an event called Sunday Parkways. For the morning and part of the afternoon 6 miles of roads were shut down to cars. People ran, biked, and walked between like 5 event centers where there were bands, DJs, Cliff Bar booths, discount helmets, jugglers, food vendors, other community related booths.

PDOT based this event on Ciclovias, which were started and are still done in Bogota, Columbia.
http://bikeportland.org/2007/07/31/more-on-ciclovias-from-bogotas-former-parks-commissioner/

http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/06/north_portland_tries_enginefre.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/121426711658461.xml&coll=7

http://npgreenway.blogspot.com/

So what I helped with is a non-profit that does a thing called Safer Routes to School, these are former bike messengers or bike enthusiasts that go to local schools and teach kids how to ride their bike safely and observe traffic laws. What they were doing at the ciclovia was getting people that wanted to check out a bike and a helmet and ride to another park as a group. I just rode along and hung out, I should have been trying to get more people on bikes.

Where the story turns to become "for the local bohemian" is when I meet up with Jonathon, it was cold and sprinkling when I got there early Sunday morning. Jonathon suggested we go to his place to get some coffee and pick up some jackets, I was like sweet! So we go to his house and his house mates are sleeping outside on the sidewalk to protest a local ordinance that allows cops to roust homeless people and then they can't get a restful night sleep. For some reason I was reminded of a similar Sacramento experience.

The other thing that I noticed was a ton of fruit flies in the kitchen, then I noticed they were coming from the open indoor composting. It was a little gross.

I don't know how many of you like to whisper to dogs, I'm not a professional but I like to whisper nice things to dogs like: "Your a good dog, yes you are." At Jonathon's place there was an old and very friendly German shepherd that I whispered to and petted he liked it, I miss having a dog.

Jonathon made some coffee for me and another guy and set out some hummus he'd made. I didn't have a travel mug so he grabbed a jar with a lid for me to use for the bike ride to the next park. That jar wouldn't hold hot coffee much less me even handle it for more than a fraction of a second. He found another one of his travel mugs and we were off. Jonathon could also speak Spanish pretty fluently with some young women who were interested in the Safer Routes program.
My pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47943073@N00/

If you went to this please support the next one by email the city council members:

mayorpotter@ci.portland.or.us
dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us
samadams@ci.portland.or.us
Nick@ci.portland.or.us
rleonard@ci.portland.or.us