James Howard Kunstler - "The Long Emergency"

Bikescape talks about the efffects of peak oil with James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century .

"The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work. Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local. Daily life will be far less about mobility and much more about staying where you are. Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap energy props that support bigness fall away."

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Other books by Kunstler include The Geography of Nowhere and The City in Mind, Notes on the Urban Condition.

Sustainability is big in corporate America today.

The fight goes on to stop the suburbanization of urban spaces in San Francisco. This time its Home Depot.

Market St., San Francisco's "Main Stem"

Bikescape takes a long (51 mins!) look at San Francisco's main drag, Market Street. San Francisco Bicycle Coalition program director Andy Thornley and in a cameo appearance, Robin Levitt of Octavia Blvd podcast (scroll down) fame take us for a tour of the street cyclists love to hate.


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If you observe vehicles parked illegally, you can call the DPT Enforcement Division directly at 553-1631

Bike polo!

San Francisco's Bike Kitchen needs a new home

Ride the double (yes double!) century around the San Francisco Bay. Register here.

Bike Summer, LA Part 2

Another Bikesummer day in Los Angeles and more bike fun ensues. This week bikescape presents impressions of LA's nascient bike culture as manifested in in one of the big group rides, Critical Mass.

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Midnight Ridazz doesn't seem to have a web site but you can read about it here. It was covered in the LA Times and blogged at Cicle.org.

Critical Mass ended at Hollywood and Vine were we attended the Bicycle Film Festival where Still we Ride, a film about New York Critical Mass was featured.

Joe Linton, the guy that was hawking his bike tour of LA's historic bridges wrote a book on the subject.

For those of you reading this in the "info" page on Itunes, here's the link to the shownotes with the links intact.

http://www.bikescape.blogspot.com

Bike Summer LA Part 1

Bikescape takes the Calshuttle to LA for a few days of Bike Summer, a month of activities designed to promote biking and bike culture. We meet with the folks at the Bicycle Kitchen and the volunteers of Times Up! We also met with Tomatoes who led a single speed cruiser race.

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Send an email to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to demand a pedestrian oasis in Golden Gate Park!

Trust your mechanic

This week we go to American Cyclery to visit with mechanic Bike Dave. We talk about bike lanes, bike theft, how to keep your chain clean and lubed and so much more.

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Beware of stolen bikes at some used bike shops!

Transportation for a Livable City would like help promoting some assmbly bills in California.

-j

Heavy pedal cyclecide!

This week Bikescape takes the family to the County Unfair and we walk the pedal powered midway. Then we take in the Life-size Mousetrap game.

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Esmerelda Strange performed. Meet her and get some of her songs here.

Señor Coconut

More links to come in a coupla days.

-j

World Environment Day

The United Nations returns to its (and Critical Mass's) birthplace in San Francisco to stage World Environment Day. Bikescape takes a walk through some exhibits and attends the Green Cities panel discussion.

We look for something to be hopeful about and come up decidedly short.

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The Scrap House was built by the San Francisco Building Inspections Dept and Public Architecture.

The SF Weekly ran a great article about the connection between housing and biking.

Wonderwater Rain Catchment Systems


City Car Share

Nelson Nygaard Consulting

Transportation for a Livable City

Leah Shahum from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition wrote this op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.

World Naked Bike Ride! June 11

Kibitzing with kash

This week Bikescape goes to the ballpark to visit with bike valet extraordinaire Kash and his kids, Iris and Zoe. We talk about car free living with kids in the 'burbs and in the city, ballparks without parking, car free vacations to Yosemite and a lot of other things.

Then, as usual, we look at news and events in the world of cycling.

The podcast of the Scavenger Scramble alleycat race is still to come. It's going to take some time to make sense of the hours of audio I accumulated that day!

I will post links in the next few days.

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Bike to work day

Bikescape joins the legions of workers as they bike to their jobs on Bike to Work Day. We meet few of the ones who are not in any particular hurry and get their thoughts. Chris Carlsson was one of them.

Then, as we do each week, we look at news and events in the bike world.

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Scott Mace contributes a segment from San Francisco suburb El Cerrito on the new bike parking set-up at BART Stations.

Still we Speak event in NY.

Reverend Billy supports NY Critical Mass with a benefits in NY and San Francisco.

The San Francisco Housing Action Coalition will host a bike tour led by bicyclist and architect David Baker.

If you're reading this now you missed a great party at the San Francisco Bike Kitchen featuring Cyclecide.

"To get an idea of what, exactly, the Cyclecide folks do, imagine Cirque du Soleil. Now take away the grace and beauty of a hundred seminaked French people and replace it with a bunch of surly, moonshine-swilling, outlaw types wearing monkey boots and moth-eaten clothing." August 2003 SF Weekly

..."contraptions that look like Salvador Dali dream- cycles riding through a psilocybin hallucination...." May 2001 SF Chronicle

"One of the group's mottoes is ``No brakes, no problem.'' These people aren't anti-safety, but safety isn't a major priority. Or a fleeting consideration." August 2000 SF Chronicle

-jon

Robert Moses and the Birth of Car Culture

"At the very moment… that we have torn down our elevated railways, because of their spoilage of urban space, our highway engineers are using vast sums of public money to restore the same nuisance in an even noisier and more insistent form. But what is Brooklyn to the highway engineer - except a place to go through rapidly, at whatever necessary sacrifice of peace and amenity by its inhabitants?"
- Lewis Mumford, The New Yorker (1959)

Did you ever wonder how we got this way? Bikescape examines the legacy of Robert Moses, the man who manipulated government to conform to his vision of the modern city.

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The Gowanis Expressway as it looks today

Transportation Alternatives and the community have sued to prevent the reconstruction of this highway in favor of a tunnel.

Robert Caro's book about Moses, The Power Broker

Robert Moses' Response to Robert Caro's The Power Broker

Jack Thurston's archive of bike shows on London's resonance fm radio. He's got some of his shows mp3'd on his blog. Jonathan at Podbike tells me he's now got a podcast feed.

Cars by The Desperate Bicycles and others of thier songs can be found here

(Gosh, I wish I could get rid of these italics...)

-j