Viva la Ciclovía!

LOTS of bikes to give away!

LOTS of bikes and locks from Master Lock to give away…

Milwaukee’s open streets event, Ciclovía MKE and Southside Bicycle Day, closed out our Bike Week in the 414. I got up Sunday, made coffee and immediately loaded up the camera gear I wanted to bring. As soon as I was packed, had formatted my cards, charged the camera batteries and cleaned the camera sensors, I headed straight to the office to pack up our portable Saris event racks (donated by Eppstein Uhen Architects) in our Sprinter van and went directly to Walker’s Square to help all the staff and volunteers get ready. We had more than 500 bikes, helmets and Master Lock cable locks to give away, so I skipped my usual routine of reading the Sunday papers. I had so many details on my mind, I never even turned on the radio in the van.

The bikes were all donated used and fixed up by volunteer mechanics over a number of nights in the Rebel Wipes warehouse where the bikes were collected. The whole bike giveaway was overseen by our friends at Rebel Wipes, who take the short ends of industrial cleaning clothes destined for recycling and instead package them for sale with 100 percent of the profits going to the bike program. The volunteer mechanics came from a number of area bike shops, clubs, and teams.

Dad made a very cool DIY top-tube child seat for this cutie (and no, I don’t mean the stilt-walker, sorry).

In fact, while the Bike Fed staff got the whole idea for an Open Streets event in Milwaukee going a few years ago with some funding from Bikes Belong, the event has really been taken over by members of the Walker’s Point and Walker’s Square neighborhood associations, the Chavez Drive Business Improvement District, The Sixteenth Street Community Health Center, Bradley Tech High School, the City of Milwaukee, the Zilber Foundation and other organizations. Mirtha Sosa from our staff is one of the lead coordinators, but Ciclovia MKE has become a real community-driven event.

We had bikes for kids and adults of all ages.

This year the route went from Chavez Drive, east down Washington Street and turned the corner onto S. 3rd Street. Last year we crossed S. 2nd Street and connected to the Kinnickinnic River Trail. We had to turn our route at 3rd Street this year because Milwaukee’s Pride Fest Parade was taking place at the same time on S. 2nd Street. All the organizers actually thought the two events would have some great positive synergy since Ciclovías are kind of like disorganized parades. I saw quite a few people from the Ciclovía riding on 2nd Street after the parade had passed by and the street was still blocked off. I saw them when I did exactly the same thing.

Route

There were quite a few families on cargo bikes of all kinds this year.

Our Ciclovía ended at 4 p.m. and I packed up the van with the now empty bike racks and put them back in the basement of our office. Pedaling home from our office after such a successful day, I kept reliving the smiles of all the cute kids, the infectious beat of the Zumba, and generally basking in a day that made me proud to work for the Wisconsin Bike Fed and be part of such a wonderful, healthy, community building event. It was one of those days I couldn’t imagine living anywhere but Milwaukee.

Then I got home and my wife told me the news about the mass shooting in Orlando. I was shocked. I can’t believe our event and the Pridefest Parade overlapped and yet I had no idea of the horrific attack on the LGBT community the night before. It took me awhile to write about this. At first I felt guilty for being so self-absorbed that I missed learning about the biggest mass murder in our nation’s history while busy with a “bike event.”

Mariachi powered smoothies from Voces Y Cuerdas De Mexico!

After some reflection, I now feel like what we did at Ciclovia MKE and Southside Bicycle Day was even more important because it happened in conjunction with the Pridefest Parade. We started Ciclovia MKE to help improve bicycling on our South Side, in a mostly Latino community where our Milwaukee office is now located. We believe that bicycling is part of the solution to our segregated society’s complicated problems. Bicycling improves people’s health, saves money and reduces congestion and pollution.

Of course we had live Mariachi for the ceremonial opening of the Bublr Station at Washington and Chavez. Thanks to Alderman Perez for all his help getting the Ciclovia approved and the Bublr station installed.

But perhaps most importantly, bicycling helps build community, strengthens neighborhoods and puts smiles on people’s faces. It allows people to travel down streets while still feeling part of the neighborhood they are riding through. When you ride a bike past someone on their porch, you say hello. When you stop at an intersection and someone walks through the crosswalk in front of you, you can comment on the weather or they might say “nice bike.”

The Zumba was off the hook.

Everybody wanted to Zumba.

Events like Ciclovia MKE also break down stereotypes, proving “cyclists” are not all middle-aged white guys in lycra and Milwaukee’s neighborhoods are mostly filled with nice, hard-working families. Ciclovia MKE promotes all the good that is bicycling and the good in our community. It turns out if you put them on bicycles, the Walker’s Point hipsters and LGBT community get along great with their working class neighbors in Walker’s Square and they all enjoy and benefit from the thriving business district on Cesar Chavez Drive.

That smile is why I do what I do.

Families made up the biggest part of the participants this year.

We probably could have used a few more bikes with training wheels, or maybe taken the pedals off some bikes and taught kids to balance that way. Many kids learn in 20 minutes.

So while we did give away 500-plus bikes, helmets and bike locks, at the end of the day, Ciclovia MKE is really about much more than bicycling. Thanks again to the Bike Fed staff, to all the sponsors (listed on the route map above), to shops Wheel & Sprocket, Southshore Cyclery, DreamBikes, Coast In Bikes and to the Boys and Girls Club for supplying top-knotch wrenches to do repairs, to Bublr Bikes for opening a station on Chavez, to the hundreds of volunteers, Alderman Jose Perez, Mayor Tom Barrett and the staff at the City of Milwaukee, and especially to the neighbors and business owners who make Milwaukee a wonderfully diverse and inclusive place to live. Viva la Ciclovia!

It’s about the art!

It is not about the bike.

It is not about the bikes.

At least it is not about the Bi-cycle…