He Kept A Community's Wheels Turning

I love a beautiful bicycle as much as anybody does.  All you have to do is look at Dee-Lilah or Zebbie, my Mercian Vincitore Special and King of Mercia, to see how I care  about fine workmanship and finishes.  At the same time, I appreciate and respect the technological refinement of modern bikes and components.  I avail myself to as much of it as I find useful--and affordable.

But I also understand that what if the current bike boom, fueled by COVID, is to continue, it won't be on the wheels of bikes sold in boutique shops for more than workers in the developing world make in a couple of years.  Wherever the bicycle is seen as an integral part of the transportation network, let alone as a way of life, people are riding utilitarian machines (think of Dutch city bikes) to work or school, or bikes that are sportier, if not much pricier, to the park, seashore or market.  And, in such places, bike shops and mechanics concentrate on keeping those commuters and recreational cyclists on the road (or getting them there in the first place).  They don't spend much, if any, time working on the electronic shifting systems of $12,000 bikes.

In other words, those mechanics are like Joe Haskins who work in shops like the one that bears his name.  He bought it from its founder, his aging uncle, in 1958, when the shop was still known as Tampa Cycle--and he was 17 years old.

Joe Haskins.  Photo by Kelly Benjamin

He never left, literally and figuratively.  Over the years, the shop moved to several different locales, all within the same area of Tampa--and, most important of all, serving the same sort of clientele:  basically, anyone who needed a bike or repair.  Sometimes his services had nothing to do with bikes or cycling:  Former Tampa Bay Times reporter Alan Snel (who writes the Bicycle Stories blog) noted, "every mayor has their downtown pet projects, but the essence of a city is the neighborhoods and small businesses like Joe's bike shop that help everyday residents with everyday issues."

So, when the driving force/guiding spirit of such a business retires or passes away, as Joe did last Saturday, it leaves a hole in the community.  But it seems that the shop will continue:  During the past few years, as Joe's health declined, family members stepped in to keep the shop's unwritten mission alive.

Tampa's All Love Bike Crew will honor his memory with a ride on Sunday.  Somehow I don't think that many Crew members will be riding $12,000 bikes or $300 helmets. 

A Ride To Visit Shirley

What's the best thing ever built on a dump?

I may have cycled to it yesterday afternoon:

Shirley Chisholm State Park opened in 2019 but was only recently named in honor of the woman who represented my Congressional district (albeit with different boundaries) for seven terms. In 1972, she became the first woman to run for Democratic party's presidential nomination, and the first black woman (she was born in Brooklyn to West Indian parents) to run in either major party.  

I would love to know what she'd think of the park's location:  In addition to all sorts of substances not meant for human consumption, various rumors had it that the Mafia, other crime groups and individual criminals disposed of bodies there.  I wouldn't doubt the veracity of those stories, and I'm even willing to believe that one reason the location was used was, in addition to its remoteness from central parts of the city, its chemical composition:  Supposedly, the bodies dissolved quickly in the toxic stews and soups that festered there.

Ms. Chisholm, though, probably would be pleased that it's been turned into a park.  It's officially been part of the Gateway National Recreation Area since the 1980s, when the dump closed and cleanup began, but was off-limits to the public.  Some trails and a really nice loop for walkers and cyclists opened recently, and there are exhibits that explain the kinds of wildlife and fauna living in the area.  

What would please the park's namesake most of all, I think is that the park borders East New York, one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the United States.  Not surprisingly, nearly all of East New York's residents are black or brown.  An adjacent neighborhood, Brownsville, is like East New York but even  poorer and tougher:  One of Brownsville's projects (what the Brits call council flats), the Pink Houses, gave the world Riddick Bowe and Mike Tyson. 

Oh, and the park's entrance opens onto the bike/pedestrian path that runs along the Belt Parkway from Howard Beach, Queens to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.  As it happened, I rode in and around the park on my way to Canarsie Pier, where I've taken many a ride.

Shirley Chisholm overcame many obstacles.  So it's kind of ironic to see this:

A steep hill?  A bump?  Only sissies are intimidated by such things.  I am a transgender woman.

Spoke Folks Picks Up And Delivers

Trash collection and waste disposal aren't the most environmentally-friendly industries.  Every aspect of it is, if you'll pardon the pun, "dirty," from the vehicles used to collect garbage to the ways in which our throways are destroyed or disposed.  

Perhaps it won't be turned into a "green" industry any time soon.  It seems that the best anyone can do is to transform one stage of the process at a time.  Justin Bondesen and Jess Cooper recognize as much.  Their efforts, says Bondesen, might be "really small" in "the scheme of things" but, he hopes, that it will show that thinking creatively about waste disposal is possible.

He and Cooper founded Spoke Folks. The Norway, Maine-based company is using bicycles instead of trucks to pick up trash.  

Bondesen admits that this change is "nothing compared to" what will need to be done "to undo global warming from depending on trucks for decades."  His and Cooper's work, they say, is part of their mission to get residents and businesses to rethink what, and how, they discard.  

They think that working from bicycles instead of trucks "is a lot more personal," in the words of Cooper.  And, getting people to think about the environment starts, for her and Bondesen, with their connections to their community.  Those ties have been reinforced by their hiring of two additional cyclists to haul trash, and by making their company a co-operative that is locally- and employee-owned.

In other words, they understand that caring for the environment is inseparable from strengthening communal bonds.  Scientists, policy makers and thinkers have been saying as much for decades, but people are more receptive to just about any message if it comes from someone with whom they perceive as one of their own.

In addition to carting garbage, Spoke Folks is expanding their philosophy of replacing gas pedals with bicycle pedals:  They are offering a delivery service.