Bike Parking by morganpdx

Everyone is invited to share Portland photography with the OurPDX community by participating in the OurPDX Flickr group.

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The Low-Car Diet Clinic is taking place tomorrow –Saturday, May 2, 2009– rain or shine!

• Location: Sunnyside School park / SE 34th Ave. and SE Taylor St., Portland
• Time: 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.
• Details: see the specifics at Upcoming. Don’t forget that Joe Bike will have plenty of cool cargo bikes (and cargo!) on-hand to test –not to mention free Voodoo donuts and coffee.

I’ll be leading tomorrow’s discussion, offering my personal family/utility cycling experiences as a foundation to help other individuals and families kick-off their own low-car transportation programs. Stephanie Noll from the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) will join me, kicking things off with a solid overview of Portland ‘rules of the road’, as well as best practices for safe family riding. I look forward to seeing you there!

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Spring has certainly sprung. The city is in full bloom, with endless rows of cherry trees coming into their own in a cycle of pure brilliance; as one tree gracefully halts, the next begins its surge.

map to the goods

For many in stumptown, springtime in Portland is marked by the start of the Portland Farmers Market. For those of who call Northeast Portland home, the start of the Hollywood Farmers Market serves as a call to start taking in the bounties of our local growers. Tomorrow –Saturday, May 2– kicks-off the season for Hollywood’s popular farmers market. Sandwiched directly between Grocery Outlet and the soon-to-debut Whole Foods (the ‘hollweird grocery nexus’), the Hollywood Farmers Market is located on NE Hancock St. between 44th and 45th Avenues in Portland. The market is open every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. until Thanksgiving.

The Hollywood Farmers Market is the city’s second largest farmers market, distinguished not only for its high-quality vendors, but also for its unique appeal to the surrounding neighborhoods. While the downtown Portland Farmers Market attracts people from all sectors of the city –as well as tourists– the Hollywood market is primarily the stomping ground of its surrounding residential burrows: Laurelhurst, Rose City Park, Beaumont, Irvington and Alameda –and of course the market’s lovely residential namesake, Hollywood. Due to its excellent proximity to the Hollywood transit center, the market is also easily accessible to folks from outer East or West neighborhoods, as well as downtown. What’s more, the 42nd Ave. bike boulevards leading from Southeast Portland upward enable many from the Sunnyside and Hawthorne neighborhoods to take-in a beautiful ride to the market.

During the first month of each season, crowds at the Hollywood Farmers Market have historically been quite manageable, especially compared to the impressive traffic at the downtown market. The height of the growing season typically brings out more visitors –especially during the strawberry harvest in late June. Thanks in part to a very manageable footprint, the Hollywood market is an attractive spot to take your time and enjoy a pastry from Fleur de Lis Bakery, or enjoy one of the many musical acts that keep kids engaged each week.

As with the downtown Portland Farmers Market, the Hollywood Farmers Market is also instituting a no-dog policy for this years market season. For the first two hours of each market day, dogs will not be allowed in the Hollywood market. This should help the more action-oriented get in and get out without the threat of a ‘leash trip’ or ‘bark-off’ –though you’ll still need to keep your eyes peeled for rogue stroller assaults.

Whatever direction you arrive from –or companion you arrive with– consider making your way to one of the city’s best farmers markets, nested in a landmark Portland neighborhood.

View the market’s vendor list.
View the calendar of events at this year’s market.

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Here’s what we’ve found as we’ve traveled the local PDX web (complete with our comments) for August 12th:

• Portland a quirky city :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Travel – It has the obligatory 24-Hour Church of Elvis mentions and Voodoo Doughnuts call-out, of course – but an acupuncture treatment for the entire city? Only in PDX…
• bikes for cheap, 8/16-8/17 – altportland (the Portland Guide) – The Community Cycling Center on NE Alberta is having a *monster* sale this weekend on previously-owned bikes. Hmmm…may just have to drop by there…
• Lelo in Nopo: It’s high time for produce in the Portland area – I *really* need to get out to Sauvie Island this weekend & freeze peaches for my prizewinning pie later this month…!

Note: you can share bookmarks back to our site if you have a Mag.nolia account – just join our group and then send relevant links to that group when you mark a site, article, or post!

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Portland took a big stride (so to speak) yesterday and closed six miles of city streets to car traffic, enabling bicyclists and pedestrians to stroll freely down the middle of the road with little fear of vehicular homicide or road rage. The event, named Sunday Parkways, lasted from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. –a mere six hours of freedom from automotive dominance on a small portion of the city’s vast street network. It is my hope that Sunday Parkways will help Portlanders understand that the pain created by $4.50/gallon gasoline does not have to be so severe. Yes, we all experience this pain indirectly through food and other transportation hikes, but a large portion of personal trips taken via automobile simply don’t require that we burn petroleum. In fact, 50 percent of all car trips are less than two miles in total distance. I love traffic stats.

Regardless of its scale, Sunday Parkways was six hours of immense joy and immediately brought to mind my experience strolling down the streets of Amsterdam this past March, mixing rather effortlessly with streetcars, bicycles, pedestrians and the occasional automobile. Yes, we Americans have a way to go before we can get some folks to shed all the unnecessary spandex (what is this, the Giro?) and over-engineered bicycles (carbon Rolf wheels on a bike that rarely leaves the garage?), but hey, one Sunday for six hours is far more than I ever imagined we’d ever take away from the petroleum lifestyle that touches us all.

For me, Sunday Parkways was experienced in a far different fashion than I originally planned. I was going to take advantage of the opportunity to show Yuba Mundo utility bikes, extolling the virtues of living with the biking industry’s answer to the Ford Super Duty. Instead, I made an 11th hour decision to simply spend the time with my family as a pedestrian. With family in town from Idaho, I thought it a far better use of my time to show them that Portland is much more than a bicycle town; it’s a town that often thinks well beyond the gas pump, considering all modes of transportation, including the most basic of all: feet. Armed with three out-of-town guests, my wife, two daughters, a stroller and a book of Tri-Met tickets, we hopped from the red line MAX to the yellow line, then hoofed it across I-5 to Peninsula Park. From this point we were able to see just what is possible when the city takes the gloves off and let’s people just exist in their daily environment without the fear of automobiles. It also let us experience what it’s like when you let people have open access to hula-hoops and pumping techno.

I don’t hate automobiles. Heck, I logged 12 miles in a Zipcar later the same afternoon. Sunday Parkways isn’t about the like or dislike of automobiles; it’s far more important than something so visceral. Sunday Parkways represents a community’s attempt at envisioning something more for their home than that which every other city has. Sunday Parkways represents an acknowledgment that communities exist at street-level and at human-speed. Sunday Parkways represents a step towards communities that embrace a life that doesn’t rely so heavily on an unsustainable, environmentally irresponsible way of living –a way of living that we have fostered for far too long.

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