Uneasy Rhetoric

Reed College, alma mater of Barbara Ehrenreich, Gary Snyder, and yours truly, bests the previous historical record by one month. A scholar, researching an article for the alumni rag, stumbled across an old recording in the Reed library of Alan Ginsburg reading the first section of “Howl.” This recording predates the previously believed-to-be-earliest recording by a month.

Listen to the recording.

I was fortunate today to be working where I work. I strolled out onto Capital mall and waited for the cyclists to go by (sorry Maya, that’s where I was going, not for coffee). Waited 15 minutes for 30 seconds of fun, but oh what fun. I’ve never seen a live bike race before, so this was quite a treat for me, even if they were running late coming in to town. And I only stayed to watch the peloton go by (no one had broken free at that point).

The sound of the peloton going by was eerie. A whoosh, a hum, I can’t exactly describe it.

My other observation: it certainly takes a lot of motor vehicles to support a race like this.

It’s been out for a week, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the California Budget Project released the latest edition of Locked Out (pdf), a report that looks at housing in California. Much of the news in it isn’t new, but it is useful to know the numbers behind some of the statements we’ve been hearing about housing prices, affordability, and especially foreclosures. Also, the report includes a discussion of the impact of California’s housing woes on renters, a story that is often muted by the overwhelming outpouring of emotion from homeowners and the Realtor community. It also includes significant discussion of homelessness, another muted voice, and a brief discussion on commutes.

Although the report is state-wide, it includes a supplement of county-by-county data. Did you know, for example, that renters comprise almost 40 percent of households in Sacramento County? Or that 16.7 percent of homeowner households and 27.1 percent (corrected, 2/18/2008) of renter households are paying more than 50 percent of their income in housing costs? Or that the median Elementary School Teacher can’t afford the median home?

Good stuff.

As the Amgen tour gets ready to roll through Sacramento (or at least the tiny part of it between the Tower Bridge and Capitol Mall), attention turns to bicycling. According to yesterday’s Bee, Sacramento ranks sixth among large cities in percentage of trips by bicycle. At 1.9 percent, Sacramento has a skosh over half as many trips by bike as the mighty Portland, Oregon, the city that wrote the book on bicycle friendliness.

What would increase Sacramento’s share? The article states:

Advocates who push for amenities such as bike lanes and racks make a difference, and so do cities and counties that hire people primarily to be responsible for bike issues, said Walt Seifert, executive director of the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates.

Is that what makes Portland so different?

Partly. Portland’s transportation department does have bicycle specialists. Portland also has a program to help business owners install bike racks. Portland also has plenty of bike lanes and an inherent understanding of what a “bike route” (a designated street without a bike lane) is — “bike routes” in Portland will have minimal controls such as stop signs in the directions of travel. Not so, Sacramento, at least not in the residential parts of the grid, which I call “land of the four-way stop.”

But really it’s about attitute. Portland is:

Hippy-dippy. Portlanders take their environmentalism seriously. The city that was originally self-righteous about its recycling was determined to maintain its lead once other metropolitan areas got in on the act. What better way than to become self-righteous about, er, promote cycling? Heck, even former city commish and current Congressman Earl Blumenauer commutes by bike.

All wet. Portlanders say you call tell a native because he is the one without an umbrella. Even though that’s basically bullshit, it is true that Portlanders have learned to cope with doing more outdoors in mildly crappy weather, including bicycling. You’ll see ponchos, fenders, people packing towels, even the occasional cyclist with an umbrella (stupid, but true). If you watched the Blumenauer video you heard a quip about weather in Portland.

Prone to mythology. Almost every Portlander either knows someone who, or knows someone who knows someone who, took a Kryptonite lock to the windshield of a pickup truck from Gresham. See also cyclists who compare speeding tickets at the local coffeehouse.

I think a little mythology couldn’t hurt, but I’m not suggesting that Sacramentans suddenly become patchouli-wearing, bongo-playing, hippies or that we flagrantly disregard the danger of riding in century-mark heat.* Instead, I think we need to be more aware of what we have: a city that is increasingly catering to cyclists, that is flat enough that poor, overweight me could do a 50 mile ride in summer heat without training and without any lasting side effects, that has a strong cycling community already (groups like SABA, the Bike-Hikers, and Bicycle Kitchen), and that has plenty of wide, suburban streets (they must be good for something). There is also the American River Bike Trail, which is far more than a park with a ribbon of asphalt. It is a bicycle highway connecting suburbs to downtown (albeit not as efficiently or safely as it could), a training ground for cyclists of all stripes, and the best publicity a city looking to increase its cycling profile could ask for.

*It can be done. Ride slowly, keep hydrated, wear your sunglasses, change into something more comfortable, and feel free to stop and smell the roses, or chat with the neighbors, or sit and have a cup of iced coffee at Peets, etc.

My son Jack took his first steps yesterday. He’d been toying with the idea for a while, but the closest he’d been so far was putting one foot in front of the other and then falling back into crawling position — he is an exceptional crawler. Yesterday, he took a few shuffling steps forward in order to lean on my knees. This evening, he did the same thing in order to reach the legs of a chair he had knocked over. He’s getting there, for sure.