“it was Portland before Portland” in part because of events like “Bicycle Weekends,” which the city has held since 1968, when The Rose City was home to loggers, not bloggers.
And perhaps the most respected, if not emblematic, Bicycle Weekends event is Bike & Scoot Sunday, in which the city’s Department of Transportation partners with local businesses and organizations to lend, free of charge, adaptive cycles to people with a variety of disabilities.
Imagine that such an event is disrupted when a boulevard closed for the event is turned over, not to folks on hand-pedaled or three-wheeled bikes, but to Rivian SUVs—for a photo shoot for a company ad campaign.
That is what capped off the penultimate Bike Weekend in Seattle. The film crew received permits from the city’s Office of Economic Development and Department of Parks and Recreation. It’s not clear whether the Department of Transportation was consulted. But, as Tom Fucoloro of Seattle Bike Blog points out, it wouldn’t have taken much research for the OED or DPR to do a bit of research.
The DPR claims it issued the permit “in error.”
