…On whether Dallas wants to kick its car addiction:
We’re effectively subsidizing land at the edge of town. Cheaper land in order to get further away, and thus, we have to drive everywhere. When 96 percent of trips are by car, but then we’ve got 20, 25 percent of the population is below poverty, we’re then pushing people and forcing people to have cars just to participate in the local economy in a way that they can’t afford right now.
Some cycle in sneakers, some cycle in heels…and others cycle in flip flops. Well if the beach is your destination why not?
Summertime in Copenhagen. Flip flops are the preferred footwear for bicycle users and pedestrians. I’ve been wearing them for a month non-stop now… it’s going to be hard to put on normal shoes again.
Of course, your neighbourhood “avid cyclist” will probably tell you “oooh… can’t cycle in THOSE. Need some proper cycling shoes blahblahblah”
I’m already a big fan of Jimmy’s Food Store (even had the Cuban there) and Ten Bells (I need to write an entry on Ten Bells) in Bishop Arts. Some of these others look great too.
Cuban Sandwich from Jimmy’s Food Store, Dallas, Texas
Seating out on the street at Jimmy’s Food Store.
Sidewalk Entertainment at Jimmy’s Food Store, Dallas, Texas
Happy Birthday remains the most profitable song ever. Every year, it is the song that earns the highest royalty rates, sent to Warner/Chappell Music (which makes millions per year from “licensing” the song). However, as we’ve been pointing out for years, the song is almost certainly in the public domain.
A five thousand dollar Dahon folding bike… wow. I don’t feel so bad about the cash I spent on my Xootr.
Stock Xootr Swift – I only added the seat bag and bottle cage (click to enlarge)
The basic fold on the Xootr Swift. It basically folds in half – and it only takes a few sconds. Not a tiny package – but small enough to make the bike more practical to transport or store.
I drive a tiny car – a Toyota Matrix. I always liked it because I could fold the rear seats down and get a bike (barely) into the back of the car (never liked exterior bike racks). I ways surprised at how small the Xootr Swift folded down. I was able to fit it easily in the small space behind the rear seat. Now I have a four-passenger car again.
My Xootr Swift bike with picnic supplies loaded in the pannier.
A really useful list of local restaurants… tied to a map. Of course, there are plenty worthwhile that aren’t on here, but I’ve been to about half of them and they are all deserving.
ABD AL-RAHMAN III was an emir and caliph of Córdoba in 10th-century Spain. He was an absolute ruler who lived in complete luxury. Here’s how he assessed his life:
“I have now reigned above 50 years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity.”
Fame, riches and pleasure beyond imagination. Sound great? He went on to write:
“I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: They amount to 14.”
Here’s an interesting article about a little movie that I always thought was great. I didn’t realize it had reached cult status and was so hard to find – I’ve seen it on cable several times.
Well-done drone video of the city I live in. It’s crazy how few people are visible in these shots – I only saw one guy on a bicycle going by the Perot Museum. Yes, I’ve ridden my bike on that same sidewalk – but it can’t be me, the place was crowded when I went by.
When my life came crashing down I took shelter on my farm, surviving with 11th-century tools like the sickle and scythe
This is a very interesting article – sort of a postmodern Walden vibe.
I’ve been to Rocky Mount and I used to read Omni – so I feel a very tenuous connection. Oh, and from my experiences – I concur with his opinion on the versatility and usefullness of a good mattock.
When I was a little kid I loved a book about archaeology called Gods Graves and Scholars. I was always fascinated by this photo from Chichen Itza
Chichen Itza – from the book Gods, Graves, and Scholars
A decade or so ago, I found myself in the exact same spot – sort of cool. It turns out that photo was taken from the top of the great pyramid.
Chichen Itza
New York Times article from sixteen years ago – long before anyone ever thought of the word “blog.” The best I could tell at the time I started (July 1996), I had the somewhere around the thirteenth “Online Diary” in existence – now there are an estimated (by Wikipedia) 156 Million Blogs in.
In college, we managed to score a keg of beer that had been left behind from a Fraternity Party in a cafeteria cooler. It has sat there for well over a year. We threw a big party, tapped the keg, and realized it had gone bad.
“What are we going to do?” my friend asked, “The beer is bad and all these people are coming over.”
“I know,” I said, “Let’s tell everybody it’s Lone Star.”
People would complain about the beer and I’d tell them it was Lone Star – they would nod knowingly and keep drinking.
Have you ever dreamed of leisurely peddling on your bike without having to subconsciously worry about traffic? Ever wanted to walk down the middle lane of a typically busy street to get to Klyde Warren Park? Well, your dream will become a reality this Memorial Day!
Uptown Ciclovia (if you don’t know about it yet, Ciclo-what should catch you up to speed) is a car-free experience that will connect the Katy Trail to Klyde Warren Park via Cedar Springs Road on May 26th. By closing the street to automobiles, people may enjoy the street however they so choose- run, walk, bike, skip, hop, dance, roller-skate, etc. The best part? There will be no cars to get in your way. I repeat- there will be NO cars! Have you ever been on a Dallas street and without seeing cars? Exactly.
I am really looking forward to this.
The last Dallas Cyclovia was a couple of years ago on the causeway over the Trinity River. It was a lot of fun and this one looks even better. A Cyclovia in Uptown will be cool.
We need to rethink our urban areas. They need to be redesigned around a new set of values, one that doesn’t seek to accommodate bikers and pedestrians within an auto-dominated environment but instead does the opposite: accommodates automobiles in an environment dominated by people. It is people that create value. It is people that build wealth. It is in prioritizing their needs – whether on foot, on a bike or in a wheelchair – that we will begin to change the financial health of our cities and truly make them strong towns.
A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies looks at the salaries of top administrators at many of the public universities around the country and draws some very interesting conclusions that any graduates of these schools with high debt loads will not be surprised to know. The most fundamental of these is that high pay of university presidents goes hand in hand with lower pay for faculty members and higher student debt on average.
Bike lane merging with right turn lane at Beltline road.
It is possible, even probable, experts say, because of the way Americans have designed their streets for hundreds of years — essentially viewing pedestrian fatalities as the cost of doing business, as the collateral damage of speed and progress.
“Traditionally we build assuming that drivers and pedestrians will do the right thing even though we know that humans are flawed,” says Claes Tingvall, the director of Traffic Safety for the Swedish Transport Administration, in an interview with Yahoo News. “You don’t design an elevator or an airplane or a nuclear power station on the assumption that everyone will do the right thing. You design it assuming they will make mistakes, and build in ways that withstand and minimize error.”
For nearly 20 years, Sweden has been building on that latter assumption, rethinking and revamping its transportation system, both the philosophy and the nuts and bolts. They call this 1997 legislation Vision Zero — meaning the goal is to reach zero pedestrian deaths in all of Sweden — and under the program people are valued over cars, safety over efficiency. Streets have been narrowed; speed limits have been lowered. Above all, the Swedes have declared an end to the argument over whether safety violations should be punished or prevented. Voting for problem solving over finger pointing, they view collisions as warnings that some fix — a differently timed light, a better lit intersection — is needed.
Reading about this terrible tragedy made me think of the near misses I’ve had lately. They all were in the same situation that killed that poor boy. Crossing in a crosswalk with a green light and the little walk light is a death trap for a pedestrian or a cyclist. The problem is that the left-turning cars are not looking in the crosswalk – they are looking at the oncoming traffic. They say to themselves, “I can make this turn if I hurry up!” – step on the accelerator and turn into people in the crosswalk.
One cause is the poor design of intersections. The root cause is people driving too fast. Both can be solved with better road design, but it takes a paridigm shift – one that I think can only occur in someone that is walking and/or biking a lot in the city.
A terrible string of fatal bike crashes in the Tampa area in late 2011 and early 2012 left the local bike community reeling.
As they shared each awful tragedy with us, we too felt frustrated and powerless. We also realized how little we really knew about the circumstances of serious crashes between bikes and cars, and how woefully inadequate (and late) the available data was at the national level.
For a 12-month period, we set about the grim task of tracking and documenting every fatal traffic crash involving a bicyclist captured by relevant internet search terms. We also wanted to offer a place to remember the victims and raise the hope that their deaths would at least inform efforts to prevent such tragedies in the future.
Believe it or not biking does not have to be a full-fledged cardio workout every time you go for a ride. In fact, a lot of countries seem to be on to something that many of us in the States have yet to fully embrace, the idea of a “slow ride.”
My whole idea of cycling is to ride as slowly as possible (and still get to where I need/want to be). Unfortunately, a lot of this is the fact that the engine on my bicycle is old and worn out. I like riding slowly, but I do miss having the options.
How does George R. R. Martin do his actual writing?
Using a separate computer for writing is brilliant. I wouldn’t go back to Wordstar – I’d use Wordperfect 5.0 – the best word processing program I’ve seen.
I like his rant against auto-correct – “If I had wanted a capital, I’d have typed a capital.”
I have no sympathy for Mesquite in this deal. I lived there, years ago, when the DART vote went down. Mesquite voted no. The reason I heard was, “If we get a train and a bus system, poor people will move here.” Wrong. Young professionals that work downtown and are looking for affordable housing will live there and take the train to work. And when the young profesionals move to other suburbs (with dense, transit-oriented development) what do you have left?
There are plenty of bad spots in Dallas. Here’s one that I particularly abhor. It would be a very useful route to get from Downtown/Cedars to the Santa Fe Trestle Trail… if it wasn’t a death trap. It looks like there are sidewalks and stairs too – don’t be fooled, they go nowhere… fast.
Bill Chance 