Issue #47 of Momentum Magazine features a spotlight article on greater Miami (City of Miami and Miami Beach), written by local freelance journalist and green mobility advocate Dina Weinstein. In the article we get a fly-by look at the cycling core of the city, as well as a smattering of voices highlighting the various issues facing the south Florida cycling community as we go through our growing pains.

Overall I liked the article; short and sweet, it has a very upbeat tone that touches upon our constant battles but doesn’t miss the fact that Miami is a great place to ride a bike.

I actually pitched to write this article when it was announced to the Momentum writers, and when it was given to Dina, I ended up chatting with her for about an hour about cycling in Miami Beach. Though none of my actual quotes made it in, I can see some of the subjects we touched upon scattered about, and brought to attention by quotes from people far more in positions to speak with authority than I. Which is to say I am glad that it was to Dina that I lost the assignment, and she did an awesome job.

Slow Bike Miami gets a mention in the calendar of cycling activities at the end of the feature, and sadly, that’s where I spotted a factual error, as it lists us as organizers of leisurely weekend rides, which we do not organize formally. Slow Bike Miami is all about sharing our journey on two wheels in the greater Miami area.

If you arrived here via the Momentum feature, please accept our apologies for the misunderstanding. Though know that you can certainly find weekend rides on Miami Beach once a month with the Miami Beach Bicycle Center, as well as others organized by Emerge Miami, the South Florida Bike Coalition, etc., the info for which is all provided on the article itself.

Check out the Miami article online, or track down a printed copy by subscribing (I do!) or requesting your local bike shop to bring in free copies to distribute.

Things have been very quiet here at Slow Bike Miami for some time now due to me being busy having started a new college degree. Summer has arrived, though, so it’s time to get on the bike and ride to our heart’s content.

Slow Bike Miami will be re-starting with semi-regular posts as of next week. I had thought of merging this with my regular blog (which you can find at DMPerez.com), but I’ll keep them separate for now. If you want to know more about the other things I geek about, by all means feel free to drop by DMPerez.com and see what I write about there.

Catch you here next week, and we’ll go riding together. Well, after I get a new seat for my bike. But I’ll say more about that later.

On Sunday, April 25, we had the first Bike Miami Days event of 2010, held in Cocount Grove, one of the oldest and picturesque areas of Miami. As it was last year, the April event was co-sponsored by the Dutch Consulate in celebration of Queen’s Day, which means the Dutch community of Miami was out in full force (seriously, where are you hiding?) and, thanks to the free T-shirts they were handing out (Go Green, Go Dutch, Go Bike), the Grove was a very orange place. My wife and I missed last year’s event so were were especially happy to be able to make it and party with the Netherlanders, huge fans of the Netherlands that we are.

We actually rode our bikes all the way from South Beach to Coconut Grove, using the Metrorail for the middle part of the route. Taking the bikes on the train was, in general, no problem, except for the fact that bikes have to go in the last cart but there is no actual space for them to be parked comfortably, so they end up being right in the way (thankfully no one requested to see if we had the completely useless bike permit for the train).

People may say whatever they want about riding a bike on the Beach, but at least here people are used to them on the road. Riding down to the Grove from US 1 was a challenge; even with the presence of a Share The Road sign, people barely gave us the 3-feet legal berth they’re supposed to. As we neared the waterfront, the road narrowed so much and the cars were speeding by so fast that we took the sidewalk… only to be yelled at by a lady with a stroller who was talking with a guy blocking it. “Get on the road, that’s where you’re supposed to be, not on the sidewalk. It’s the sideWALK.” I had to bite my tongue so hard to not retort that while, yes, she is entirely correct in part of her statement (and we know this well, as riding on the road IS the way we prefer to ride), by law we are also allowed to take to the sidewalk if we feel the road is not a safe alternative, which at that moment we didn’t. Whatever.

At Peacock Park we were met with a sea of orange that was just fantastic! We saw tents for tourism boards from Aruba and Curacao, one for the Dutch Consulate where we got our orange shirts, one for the upcoming Dutch school and one for Gazelle Bicycles (and seriously, what gorgeous bikes these were!). We put on our shirts and took to the streets.

In general, riding around the Grove was very nice. The roads were not completely closed, though, and the route was not well marked, which created confusion and a few close encounters between cars and bikes. Later I learned that this was due to the last-minute hail-mary nature of how the event came to be and the not-so-complete cooperation of the City of Miami. Even with all that, it was a fun day.

In addition to riding around Coconut Grove, an area that we used to frequent quite a bit during our college years living in Kendall, we also rode down to The Barnacle, one of Miami’s oldest (and still in original condition) houses, right on Biscayne Bay. Lots of other riders did the same, which is great as more people should know about this treasure of Old Miami right in our midst.

To cap it off, we had a free Heineken and later chilled out a bit at the South Florida Bike Coalition fundraising after-party at Akashi. There we got to meet Maria, who is representing a company from Colombia called Cyclus, which makes bags and accessories from recycled tire inner tubes. Cyclus also employs poor people in Colombia in their manufacturing process, so not only are they eco-friendly, they are socially-friendly as well. Maria got to the Grove a bit late in the day so she wasn’t able to show he wares at the street fair, though the moment she opened up her suitcase people started checking out all the neat bags, especially the one nicknamed the “Armadillo.” I actually ended up buying from her a pannier for my bike, and I’ll write more about it later on. Cyclus is still setting up its online presence, but you can see the catalog at the website and contact Maria for pricing info and direct purchases.

After the event, we took the train south to go to Target (making this trip officially the farthest we’ve been from home on our bikes), then rode it all the way back to Downtown Miami, riding the bikes back to the house to cap it all off with a nice sushi dinner. Yum!

Many thanks to M.O.S.T. (Miami Open Street Team), South Florida Bike Coalition, the Dutch Consulate, and every single person/group/team/company that made Bike Miami Days in the Grove a reality and a success. We had a lot of fun, and want very much to see more events like this continue in Miami.

Rumors of me giving up my bike are greatly exaggerated.

I’m around, but my first semester back in university has been very busy. On top of that, having had my bike stolen left me grounded for a few weeks, though that isn’t the case anymore. However, I have realized that I need to reduce the amount of projects I have going in order to better follow through with them.

In the very near future (read: as soon as I get some time from school), I will be migrating Slow Bike Miami from its own website into a consolidated part of my personal site, DMPerez.com. I’ve already directed readers there for the last two posts I made, so I might as well just make it official. By doing this, I can blog more easily about my bike adventures alongside my regular blog posts about all the other stuff I’m into.

If you arrive here by going to www.SlowBikeMiami.com, that URL will redirect to the proper category on my blog. If you read this via the RSS feed, I will likewise redirect so you don’t miss anything. The disruption should be minimal, if all goes well.

And to make this more than just a newscast, let me introduce to you all my new bicycle, a metallic blue Electra Townie!

Yes, I like Electras. 

This morning, when I left the house and passed by where I park my bike, I realized that it wasn’t there: Elam was stolen overnight.

You can read the fuller account of the event at my personal blog.

Needless to say, I am angry and sad. I barely had four months with my bike and I had yet to get back on the bus-n-bike routine after it was hit by a bus three weeks ago.

A police report has been filed and all local area bike shops notified. We’ll see what happens.

At least for the time being, one half of Slow Bike Miami is sans bike, and thus on hiatus.

Last weekend, on Sunday, January 17, 44-year old Christopher Lecanne was killed in a hit-and-run accident while he bicycled on Key Biscayne, a popular area for road cyclists. The driver of the car was under the influence and after hitting Lecanne, dragged his mangled bike for about 4 miles before it became dislodged from under his car. He was arrested and charged, though a few days ago he posted bail and is currently out of jail.

The event has touched a nerve in the Miami cycling community and seems to be turning into that tragic catalyst that may fuel some actual changes in the city/cities/county of Miami. At least one hopes so.

I wrote an editorial for TransitMiami.com entitled The Tragic Catalyst. I hope it is the last such editorial I ever have to write.

There will be a Memorial Ride for Mr. Lecanne this Sunday on Key Biscayne. My wife and I won’t be attending because we’re both down with a nasty cold, but we certainly extend our sympathies and prayers to the Lecanne family and will be there with the great bicycling community of Miami in spirit.

I’ve been away from Slow Bike Miami for a bit because I needed a break and because I needed to just go ride my bike and remind myself why I love this after tackling some fairly weighty subjects here.

Along the way 2010 came around and I made a resolution to go car-lite/car-free during this year!

Today I took the first step towards that resolution, and had a most unfortunate accident as my bike rolled off the bus bike rack and was hit by the bus. You can read all the sordid details on my personal blog.

I’ll keep riding, but obviously Elam will need to visit the bike shop for a couple of days first. I’ll keep you updated.

Yesterday morning I took the scenic route back home from the synagogue, going down all of Lincoln Road Mall, to the Oceanwalk Promenade, then up 5th St before heading home (see the MapMyRide.com Map). On a whim, I decided to count all the bikes I came across my way, whether parked or with riders. Everyone knows we have a lot of bicyclists here in the Beach, but I wanted to have a very rough headcount. It was 10 AM, and the temp was in the mid 50s, so I figured I would see only those out exercising, and those on their way to/from/already at work.

When all was said and done, I counted 146 bikes, including me, with about 85 of them being spotted just along Lincoln Rd. I am no urban statisticians, but that seemed like a lot of bikes for a 3/4-mile long stretch, let alone for the 2.5 miles of my entire trip. And that fills me with joy.

Check out these pics.

What was really of note to me was where these bikes were parked: all along Lincoln Rd, they were near the various restaurants that line the pedestrian mall, restaurants which, at 10 AM, were setting up for a day’s work. These were the bikes of the workers that power touristy Miami Beach, people who for whatever reason use their bikes as the main form of transportation. I mean, check out that last pic of the guy with the makeshift bike trailer! And he’s far from the only one I’ve seen with similar cargo contraptions around here. These are the folks that truly matter when we consider and plan for bicycle infrastructure, the folks whose main form of transportation is their bike. It’s good to keep in mind who we truly are advocating for.

I did a review of the BFF as a show and of the first eight short films presented at the screening. Below are the reviews for the remaining nine short films from BFF Program 3.

Urban Bike Shorts

Pixel Gear Bikes – A short 1-minute video of 8-bit Paperboy-like bike riders doing stuff like riding in the city blowing red lights, pulling tricks and eventually crashing against a car door that opens suddenly. 1980s Nintendo synth music completes the package. Cute.

Cooking Up Bike Co-Ops in Los Angeles – This 5-minute documentary was just fantastic and represents another part of why I like film fests, the chance to see pieces that introduce people to situations they may not be aware of. The doc takes us to discover the Bicycle Kitchen, Bike Oven & Bikerowave, three different bike co-ops in LA, non-profit spaces where volunteers help people learn how to repair their own bikes, and the amazing community that has gathered around them. A short but inspiring film, you can view it in its entirety at Streetfilms.

Some Things Ride A Bicycle – Another 1-minute little animation, this one of chalk-drawn things, like an octopus, kittens, a tree or a tornado, riding a bicycle. Silly but very amusing.

What’s A Girl To Do – This video by Bat For Lashes is plain gorgeous all around. The song has this captivating ethereal quality that is expressed in the video by the dark, misty road with only Natasha on her bike in the tenuous spotlight. I have no clue whatsoever what do animal-headed BMX riders pulling tricks has to do with the song but it doesn’t matter because it works. If the photography is superb, the editing is just phenomenal; the animal riders emerge and fade behind Natasha all in the same shot with nary a cut in sight. Unexpected, but very pleased this was included in the program. Catch the whole video on YouTube.

Belle Epoch – There’s a guy in Italy that apparently one day woke up and said, “I want to ride my bike up a mountain, without using my hands, while playing four different musical instruments.” His name is Giuliano Calore, and this 3-minute film shows clips of that precise stunt, along with others he decided to do just because he could, like ride up a mountain without having a handlebar or brakes. It’s old footage, but fascinating; you find yourself joining in the crowd that lines the roads, cheering Calore on.

Ski Boys – Let us all go back to 1970s rural Ontario, Canada, and join the Ski Boys as they pass the time riding custom-built freak bikes and wheeled skis and toboggans, and jumping off barn roofs onto piles of (hopefully soft) who-knows-what. For the grand finale, check them out riding a bike up a steep ramp and flying off into a pond. Billed as the “lost reels of the Ski Boys” (I’ve no idea who the Ski Boys are, but it is the same director as Where Are You Go, shown in Program 2), this was a romp through the carelessness of childhood. See the entire film on Vimeo.

The Scraper Bike King – I learned about scraper bikes last year when someone linked me to the Scraper Bike music video on YouTube. This documentary gives us a snapshot of the creator of the Scraper Bike concept and how it has grown in his home of Oakland, California. Even if you are not into tricking out your bike with aluminum foil-covered rims, the idea of these kids (and not so kids) in such a dangerous city as Oakland finding a creative outlet is something to cheer for. I’m also glad this was included in the festival because it shows another (and the far more numerous) side of urban cycling, regular people on regular bikes, fairly often because that’s what they have as their form of transport. Scraper Bikes have become a movement far beyond the city limits of Oakland, though I’ve yet to see one in Miami. Who’ll be first?

Broadway Bomber/Bridge Battle/Monster Track – If Empire disgusted me, this pastiche by director Lucas Brunelle of three illegal bike races through the streets of New York revolted me to the core. It’s one thing to pull tricks while riding alongside traffic, but in the alleycat races depicted here, we see riders going full speed without any regard besides getting there fast and first. Riders regularly weave in between moving cars, blow intersections, zig-zag in between pedestrians and ride any kind of horizontal surface they can in devil-may-care fashion. We see riders slam against people crossing the street (including an old lady stepping off the sidewalk at a crosswalk), barely miss people stepping off a bus, and one rider try to take a red light only to wipeout when the car with the green light starts to move. I wish I could say this was a film showing the dangers of illegal bike racing, but it wasn’t; it was a celebration of (to quote the blurb on the program) “urban cycling at its finest.” Anyone who in any capacity normally works to improve the bicycling environment in their city should be appalled by the glorification of illegal bike racing and condemn it. If these had been people on racing cars instead of bikes the outrage would be through the roof, but because it’s bikes it’s ok? No. And much like with Empire, a large part of the audience ate it up, which is also revolting to me. Miami has alleycat and loose cannons races monthly, and the alleycat co-branded with the BFF was filmed by Brunelle so it might show up in 2010’s BFF, much to my distaste.

Anima D’Acciaio (Soul of Steel) – Even for someone who doesn’t really know anything about the sport of Cycling and bike racing, the name Ciocc rings a little bell. This portrait of bike builder Giovanni Pelizzoli, nicknamed Ciocc (the name he also gives to the bikes he makes), is a great window into the craft of frame-making by hand. It is when witnessing Ciocc bend over the tubes that will form the bike frame that you can truly understand how a bike can be a piece of art; Ciocc is a sculptor and steel is his medium. Even more interesting is the juxtaposition of the Ciocc, the old bike builder who’s created racing frames that have been Olympic winners (1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics), creating a new freestyle fixie for GOrilla Bicycles. It’s a shame that this angle wasn’t pursued more as it would have made a very compelling film subject.

There you go, some great, some very much not. I’m hoping the festival does return next year and we see a much wider picture of the bicycling world. Looking forward to BFF 2010.

Yesterday I reviewed the BFF as a show, so now I’d like to review the 17 short films that I saw in Program 3. Short films are one of the things I like most about film festivals, as you rarely get to see them otherwise and they tend to pack a lot of variety of subjects, exploring the whole gamut of the topic.

Overall, the ones shown at BFF were entertaining and interesting, and in various cases, great conversation starters (for better or for worse).

I’m breaking the reviews up into two posts for easy reading; here are the first eight of the bunch.

Urban Bike Shorts

On Time – From 1987 we get this undergrad student film about Jimmy, an unlucky bike messenger in NYC trying to deliver a package on time. Jimmy runs into every calamity you can imagine, ending up carrying his bike by the middle of the short film, only to realize his luck right at the end when the package he had to deliver at 2 PM sharp turns out to be a bomb that blows up the recipient. The film is exactly what you would expect out of a film school project, but that also gives it a kind of rough charm. It’s also interesting to see 1980s New York via this bike messenger’s ride through the city. It also confirms that bike messengers have always ridden like asses (see Empire).

One Less Horse – This is a 3-minute video of two polo teams, one on horses and one on fixies, getting ready to throw down in a game. (Apparently bike polo is a popular sport, as it shows up on a couple more of the films.) There is no real narrative to this film except the preparation of the teams and then them throwing down in a game, but it is well photographed and interesting in its parallels between the two kinds of steeds. At three minutes it is about as long as it needs to be, which is great.

Safari London – A 4-minute, time-lapsed, atmospheric film of a riders evening through the streets of London set to a nice techno-beats soundtrack. Also well shot and edited; the fast-forwarded streets of London provide beautiful light shows that frame the simple lines of the bike rider crossing the city.

An Apology – The Neistat Brothers submitted a film last year about how easy it is to steal a bike in NYC. They got a morning show invitation out of that, and they decided to play a prank where one of them filled his chest pocket with packs of ketchup which he exploded as he leaned over the portable circular saw his brother was using on the demonstration. The TV reporter obviously freaked out, even more when she found out it was a joke. This film was their apology. Funny, but really, that’s all it was.

Empire – The blurb reads “Empire is a film about having fun riding your bike in the city.” To which I would add “while being a complete asshole and endangering lives all around.” Though Empire is not online, you can see a sample of the kind of “fun riding” we’re talking about in another video from the same group on YouTube, just for reference. I cannot begin to express my disgust with this film, not because it wasn’t nicely shot (it was ok), not because I dislike fixie riders doing tricks (I don’t mind the tricks themselves) but because I dislike with a passion fixie (or any) riders doing tricks while in the middle of traffic, opening themselves to an accident or worse, possibly causing one in which other people get hurt. Fixie tricks are neat (see Paris Vision and Kant), very neat actually, when they are done in a separate area away from traffic or bystanders. Not content with pulling tricks while riding along fast-moving traffic on the streets of Manhattan, these riders also pull off mind-bogglingly stupid moves weaving in between cars and pedestrians. The celebration of this kind of riding revolted me, though not as much as the enthusiastic reception it received from the crowd. As I said in my previous post, I was clearly in the minority.

Barend Jam – Pure BMX fun in the woods somewhere in the UK. The photography is elementary but it captures the fantastic jumps and twists of these BMX riders perfectly, including great shots of rider after rider going up and down a series of ramps, looking like a choreographed dance on wheels. There are awesome tricks and ouch-worthy wipeouts in these three minutes of fun in the dirt. More of a very short doc-style piece than a narrative, but a nice window into competitive (and fun) BMX riding.

Paris Vision – It’s hard to make Paris look bad on film, but the photography on this short didn’t take that for granted and showed, through the association with the fixie riders featured, a new side of the City of Light. The riders are followed through the winding streets of Paris, from Montmartre to the Île de la Cité, shown from various angles, sometimes as independent subjects, others as part of the panoply of the city. Something I keenly noticed, especially after Empire, was that when they showed the riders pulling tricks it was always either in a set-up shot (slow-mo across the shadow of Notre Dame or the Eiffel Tower), in a separate area or in an empty street with no cars or pedestrians in sight. Whenever they are shown riding alongside traffic, they just ride, normally, safely. It made the scenes with the tricks that more powerful because you could just concentrate on the skill and form of the rider and bike (not to mention the shots were just gorgeous). This was certainly on my Top 3 of the festival shorts.

Kant – More fixie riders (sensing a theme here?), this time in Yokohama, Japan. Much like the other fixie films, it involves groups of fixie riders pulling tricks, though again like in Paris Vision, these are shown doing so in separated areas (with a couple of exceptions), which makes it all about the trick itself. Fairly cool are the very simple yet effective parallel moving shots of the bikes, achieved by cameramen on skateboards. Japan is *the* epicenter of the whole idea of subcultures, and they do fixie hipster stylishly. Check out the trailer and another video from the same crew on Vimeo.

Tomorrow I’ll finish with the last seven short films.