My friend Jeff, in town for the weekend, wanted to celebrate his 50th birthday Saturday night with a Rays game. Tampa Bay won in spectacular fashion, blowing a two run lead in the ninth, then coming back in the twelfth to defeat the obnoxious and annoying Boston Red Sox -- but that's another story.
On Saturday morning, Jeff, his daughter Rachel, and I rode to the Trop to pick up tickets. Taking the opportunity to show off our fine waterfront, we cruised around the fountain at the USF St. Pete campus, stopped to admire the glass blob that slithers outside the Dali, bought tickets, and pedaled a little further down the Pinellas Trail to check out the pottery center. (Rachel is taking ceramics at school and was very impressed.)
On the way back, we hooked a right at the Dome, picked up a new trail through Campbell Park, coasted downhill to the Third Street bike lane, and made it home before a mid-afternoon shower hit.
Here's the point: St. Petersburg looks great on a bike.
Lately I've been reading David Byrne's book, Bicycle Diaries, which is as much about bicycles as it is knowing the world. The globe-trotting former Talking Heads frontman makes a good case that the best way to learn a city is to pedal it. And today's NY Times Sunday Review ran a piece on Bicycle Visionary Sadik-Khan, the transportation commissioner who has doubled the number of bike lanes in the city. Sadik-Khan has drawn no amount of scorn, as the article notes, but visionaries often do.
Long story short. Sleepy St. Petersburg has a chance to put itself on the cutting edge. Much has been made about defeats to light rail in the Tampa Bay area. And the current political climate gives little reason to hope for improvement to our woeful bus system. (Welfare on wheels -- more on that later.)
But biking is cost efficient, surprisingly safe in downtown St. Petersburg, and fun.
While riding through St. Pete with Jeff and Rachel, I could not help but feel -- dare I say it? -- civic pride.
Our local government has laid terrific groundwork for creating a bike-friendly 'burg.
Let's face it. Real transportation alternatives are not coming here anytime soon.
So why not direct energies towards expanded bike lanes? It's a solution that Rick Scott and garden-variety liberals like me can agree on.
I agree! If the powers that be won't give us workable public transportation, we can make our own public transportation. The more the better.
ReplyDeleteI agree, with one caveat: better lighting in midtown and better slopes off the sidewalks at intersections.
ReplyDeleteWay before the trail ventured into downtown St. Pete, I enjoyed riding all through downtown on Sunday morning. It had all the feel of an abandoned city after the bomb dropped.
ReplyDeleteBTW.. have you seen the trail construction now that goes past the sewer treatment plant, the entrances to Eckerd College and Marina Bay? It should be done in a few weeks.
Twenty years ago, okay twenty-three years ago, I rode regularly with a group of brassy Pinellas County deputy sheriffs. We all had expensive bikes and the full riding regalia, though theirs included packing a gun next to their spare tire tube (I once stood on the side of Indian Rocks Road at rush hour openly holding a Glock while one of the deputies fixed his flat). Needless to say, they had no fear of red lights and stop signs, or the law patrolling in other jurisdictions. One weekend morning we whooshed into downtown St. Pete from Seminole via the beach. We were probably hitting close to thirty and blowing through every red light as if they were demarcating the SunPass lane on the Florida Turnpike. I already had three DMV points on my driver's license for having recently ridden through a red light in Largo (I was without my deputy friends at the time), so I was a little nervous. But the draft was too sweet to let go. Sure enough, a St. Pete cop started chasing us in his Impala cruiser. He pulled around in front and slammed on the brakes, forcing us to stop. My deputy friends were on their third, very-loud chorus of "What the f--- does this ---hole want?" when he jumped out of his cruiser without putting it in park. The Impala, as it was supposed to do when still in "D", started driving off. He chased it down and slammed it in park. When he exited the car again, his belt radio caught the the door frame and went sliding across the lanes on 1st Ave South. By that point, he had been redesignated by my friends from "---hole" to "dumb----." In addition to being red with anger, he likely thought he had met his quota for the week. But my friends quietly pulled out their badges one by one. He looked at me, and I shrugged my shoulders and said I was with them. Stammering, he said if we were so eager to get ourselves killed, we should do it in the county's jurisdiction, not his. We loaded up and continued on with the same above-the-law abandon as before. All this is to say that I am in keen favor of St. Pete turning bike friendly and sharing the road with cyclists, though maybe not those with guns.
ReplyDeleteWell that's a story! What is it about glocks that brings Ted Nugent to mind? Hard to believe he hasn't settled down here ....
ReplyDelete