Beacon Hill Bike Group Gets Organized. And Gets Cash.

They should look at bike boulevards on some of the low traffic streets as another option in addition to bike lanes on the arterials.

I’m generally anti-cyclist, but I really like the focus of this group. This is a way to convert us sinners!

I tried one weekend to ride from Rainier Beach to work on Beacon, just to test it out.

And I never, ever did that again.
Even with the Chief Sealth, Holgate and that road over I-90, you are nuts to commute that way. And if you live there, you are stuck riding around on the tip of an iceberg

I like the Jefferson Park idea, especially after all the post-reservoir stuff is done. But the center of Beacon Ave, south of Columbian Way, is kind of a special place for the Asian old folks to walk, hands behind backs, in peace.

I think the Ave is enough for bikes right now, but might be made better by improvements around the station.

Yawn……

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com

But anything to gentrify the southend is good cuz the only time you see the natives on bikes there it’s either a. DUI and b. a 10 yr old about to jack yo ass.

If your last name starts with Q…

f**k Q!

I don’t know how much this means to people outside the southend, but Fred is a retired Beacon Hill dentist who has placed his wife in charge of the South Seattle Crime Prevention Council.

I attended their last meeting, in June. There they said no meetings will take place in July and August, because this is when they go on their fake National Geographic trips to the Galapagus or Tuscany.

Well, they’re back.
And they are already starting to get on this mayor’s back (as they did the last one) about why, oh, why, aren’t we as good as Wallingford?

Can’t be our fault. Must be McSchwinn’s.

Rediculous.
Welcome back.

Really, best you got? How about a photo showing all the homeys down da Valley and in da CD on their Schwinns to prove me wrong.

How about you tuck your white ass back in bed, homey.

I don’t speak jive, and neither do you.
There’s a meeting going on soon, with your boy Jim Diers.

I thought I was a basket case, but you give me hope.

BTW, I think folks in the south end are not concerned with CO2 emissions as much as Pb emissions from 10 year olds.

But keep up the 2-wheeled gentrification. Urbanism has been the best tool to date for clearing out the scum…sure, you throw a few ‘affordable housing units’ out there for some hard working Somalis and their cute kids, you know, to relieve the guilt, but otherwise, it’s onward and whiteward!

Come on Barley, I support what you guys want. Urbanism is the best scum clearing, gentrification program!

Google Fred Quarnstrom.

He is the king of Hg emissions.
Before his weak Seattle political career he was pushing for looser restrictions on mercury, both in the mouth and in the sound.
And his biggest opponent was none other than Greg Nickels.

He’s the guy that got the Washington Dental people to refuse to pay for the rear-teeth composite fillings. And he loves poor people, because they choose mercury.

Thanks, dickhead!

The story is great; neighborhoods taking on their transportation planning is a good thing. We need bike routes both within and connecting neighborhoods. Safe for 5 year olds is exactly the right criteria. Such routes are few around here, that’s for sure.

Fred and Barleywine’s sniping exchange is rather irrelevant to the story. They should take it somewhere else if they can’t stay on topic.

Are u kidding? Bike programs, urbanism blah, blah, blah are great ways to gentrify neighborhoods and drive up our property values. This is stuff white, college educated folks dig and swarm too!

Keep it up!

That’s just what Ivan, Mr. Baker, Joe S. and Michael M. said.

You may be on to something.

Just to clarify, are you suggesting that the city should specifically refrain from neighborhood improvements and amenities in the South End neighborhoods in an effort to maintain low(er) property values there?

I’ve been riding downhill to work on Fridays (riding the bus home uphill), it’s only about two miles and pretty light traffic on mainly roads that don’t have bike lanes, but will probably stop it once it’s not light in the morning and gets rainier.

Please expand on that Jakers. What exactly about this group’s goals makes it better than cycling advocacy in other parts of the city? Is it because they focus on the needs of children? Is it because it is a bottom-up effort rather than top-down? Is it because they haven’t (yet) specifically recommended any vehicle lane conversions?

Alt headline: city shells out $15k to a few bicyclists to hire a consultant.

I can think of so many better uses of $15k of taxpayer money than paying a bunch of people who would have submitted their comments to the city anyway to dress up their ideas with a greater veneer of professionalism.

That’s close, but it’s really to keep him and his in power.

If things were cleaned up, he’d be a nothing.
As it is, any shooting keeps things humming along nicely.

All I wanna do is POW, POW, POW, POW; click/ching, & take your money…

You must not have a very good understanding of how the Neighborhood Matching Fund works. If you live in the city, you’ve no doubt benefited from a park, a program, an amenity, a piece of public art, or something else that was dreamed up by neighbors who knew their neighborhood and who cared.

After almost 20 years, it was sponsored dozens of projects, involving thousands and thousands of volunteers throughout the city, all for a total budget of probably less than $10 million.

I think we’re lucky that we have people who want to do so much more than “submit comments,” but who want to actively engage in making their neighborhood a better place. And I think we’re lucky we have a Department of Neighborhoods that responds.

Go to the DON website, and make sure you refrain from enjoying any park those tiny seed grants improved.

“refrain from neighborhood improvements and amenities in the South End neighborhoods ”

Nooooo! Bike lanes, farmer’s markets with $5 tomatoes, walkability, density….all this stuff is http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com so helps drive out the poor….So keep it up.

It’s a neighborhood group deciding what to do with its neighborhood, not some outside activist group that only wants to commute through the neighborhood telling the neighborhood what to do. If the group recommends lane reductions in its own neighborhood, I’d most likely not get upset about that, but they would need to involve all the neighbors, just not the cyclists.

Watch for more of these groups to start-up, but surely some of them will have out-of-the-neighborhood activists behind them.

Funny though that they are considering svr design cause I know a real prick of a cyclist that’s a director of strategy there.

So let’s say I live in Beacon Hill (I do) and was interested in getting involved with this neighborhood group “Beacon BIKES!”…but I didn’t read hipster political blogs? How would I know they were organizing in my neighborhood? I’m the white yuppie who moved to the neighborhood five years ago and this is the first time I’ve heard of these folks organizing. How about a sign at the library, or at Red Apple?…But then some folks that don’t wear hipster cloths and ride steel framed bikes might show up…and then the “organizers” would have to listen to alternative perspectives…uh oh!

I’m white, college educated, and I contribute lots of my time (which means money) to conserve and construct low income/affordable housing. Do you?

You’re a bitter assh-le, and I hope you relish stewing in your juices.

“conserve and construct low income/affordable housing.”

Of course you do, it helps alleviate the guilt of urbanism, bikism, and gentrification and provide homes for what, 1% of the people who need them? Usually those hard working Somalis and Vietnamese with those cute kids! The rest of the po’ just **** off to Renton, Skyway and Kent where they can afford to live…just follow the sound of gunfire in Federal Way if you don’t believe me.

Me? I just watch my neighborhood and Seattle get gentrified, driving out more ghetto poor, making my neighborhood cleaner, safer, more ‘environmentally-friendly’ and a better place for me and my white, college educated friends to live.

So again, keep up your hard work. I appreciate it.

Beacon BIKES! has been aound for less than a year. We have been at every major neighborhood event and have members at every community council meeting. We have translated our fliers that we hand out at these events into 4 different languages. If you live in Beacon Hill and want to get involved please email Dylan at dsahearn@gmail.com. In general, if you want to get involved with any community effort on Beacon Hill go to the library and visit Steve Louie (DON).

From the tone of your comment, I’m impressed that the group responded.

How about a straightforward “How do I get involved?”

Heck, I live in Portland, and know about Beacon Bikes. there are always people who say they didn’t know X was going in their n’hood. The beacon hill crowd does a better job of including folks than any n’hood I’ve ever seen. good for you Beacon Bikes, sounds like you’re doing great work. btw, the Chinese have always been pretty pro-bike…

“Safe for 5 year olds is exactly the right criteria.”

Again, I’m generally anti-cyclist, but I agree with you wholeheartedly. If the goal is to get more people biking, then safe local routes should be the first priority. People will start to use them as an introduction to biking, kids will grow-up with them and then everyone will start to desire more infrastructure (and will be more willing to pay for it).

What I dislike is when hard-core-cyclists want a city to fund infrastructure that will serve a very small portion of the population and casual bikers will be intimidated to use or have negative effects on other modes of transportation (yes, I understand that road diets possibly are beneficial in some cases).

Are you an avid cyclist? Cause if you are, I think that your point actually hurts Beacon Bikes cred as a neighborhood group.

Road diets are beneficial in most cases. They are for overall safety, not for bicycle commuters.

Re: “hard-core-cyclists want a city to fund infrastructure that will serve a very small portion of the population”: If we don’t spend the resources asap to construct an infrastructure that makes it easy for people to get out of their cars for ALL types of trips (bikes, BRT, rail; neighborhood, shopping, commuting), we will not stop burning carbon in our stupid SOVs until we’ve toasted the entire planet. We can’t wait until current five years olds “grow up with” that infrastructure.

Guilt? And what motivates you? Bile? Go away.

I can’t actually remember seeing Albert K on a bike.

Didier, you lost, now go crawl back under your rock.

Why do these comments get so personal? I know Dylan Ahearn, from the photo above. He works with a friend of mine. I can vouch for the fact that he’s not an inapproachable, elitist hipster. He’s actually very friendly and approachable.

Your comment asking for more outreach is valid. The personal attack is not. There’s no reason for the chip on your shoulder, other than the nasty tone set by the other jackasses in the comment stream.

Didier? Are u kidding? The right wing will only build strip malls and roads….why do you think a 1600 sq ft home in Ballard costs $500k but the same size home in Lynnwood costs $250K?

Nope, give me liberals and urbanists, much better for property values, much better at keeping the lower classes and immigrants out.

See, the article had me going and then you had to cycle-thump me about how horrible of a person I am and you lost me. When extremists expect everyone to be extreme as they are, people in the middle and those agnostic about the whole thing tend to move the opposite direction.

Well I guess put me down as one of those white supremacists that wants to run all the darkies out of Beacon Hill by moving there.

Came back for a much needed 10 day vacation last week and dragged my wife to come check out the area around the Beacon Hill LR Station. I have to say I was pretty impressed. During the two years I lived in the area I never went down to the Ranier Valley and had only heard horror stories, but that area at least was very nice. Checked out the Red Apple, walked the blocks around the station, grabbed some flyers for a couple townhomes, then took our first Link ride to DT. That area is now top of our list for when we move back.

I don’t understand the mentality of people that believe a neighborhood needs to remain poor and underserviced for the native residences to stay there. What ever happened to a rising tide raising all ships? Doesn’t increasing the mobility of the poor allow them to access more services, get to jobs and education facilities easier and generally improve their quality of life?

Who are you to tell residents (which the group that started this discussion is if you have forgotten) that they can’t improve their neighborhoods b/c it would open the door for the middle class to move in??!?!?

Huh? I didn’t say or mean to imply you are a horrible person. I happen to disagree with some of your opinions, but you’re polite and thoughtful, so I engaged. I believe we (humans) are entering a period of tremendous changes and possibly (probably) catastrophic ones. If you think my pointing out the reality that burning carbon in cars (and trucks and planes and boilers) is a major part of the problem is a personal attack, you are too sensitive. Or I’m too “extreme” in how I state my opinion. Or some of both. I think things are going to get lots nastier than arguing over what infrastructure to invest in before this century is out, and we’d better start figuring things out… (And a sense of humor and a thick skin wouldn’t hurt.)

There’s a neighborhood blog (http://beaconhill.seattle.wa.us/), several web sites (http://www.cityofseattle.net/ban/, http://north-beacon-hill.blogspot.com/, http://blog.seattlepi.com/beaconlights/) and a variety of mailing lists that you can get on from those pages. Beacon BIKES! also has a Facebook page if you are on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Beacon-BIKES/123320897689573). Lot’s of info on what the group is doing there.

Most of the people in the group are not avid cyclists. Mostly parents who want their kids to have some safer streets to ride and people who just want to use bicycles to get around on Beacon Hill rather than driving short distances. A few are more avid in that they cycle to commute or get around town. The one thing that is common is a willingness to listen to alternative perspectives and drink a few beers at the pub.

“That area is now top of our list for when we move back.”

Yeah gentrification!

“What ever happened to a rising tide raising all ships?”

I’m pretty sure rising rents sinks a few po’ ships.

Soggey, I can testify to seeing AlbertKaufman on a bike. Boy, this is a great way to catch up with pals. I do wish the idiots would land in the ditch with a bent tire however.

Soggey, I can testify to seeing AlbertKaufman on a bike. Boy, this is a great way to catch up with pals. I do wish the idiots would land in the ditch with a bent tire however.

Right ON! I’d like to see the same approach in Ballard, which is Portland-esque enough to be crying out for an intra-neighborhood network of bike boulevards. Currently there’s only one on the BMP (17th), but so many other excellent candidates.

The Missing Link slow-motion brawl has eclipsed the need for other less divisive bike planning in my neighborhood.

You probably won’t like me. While I am white, I hail from S. Alabama via way of Ft. Lewis. Not exactly Gentry.

So b/c making the area more desirable could possibly raise some people’s rents the neighborhood should just stagnate. And rising property taxes also translates into better schools, so while your rent might go up, your children will be attending better schools. Isn’t that what social mobility is based on?

Ordinarily I’d agree where the comments-sniping is concerned but it’s via Barleywine’s “outing” here that I now know that a local professional who is politically and civically involved — someone whose motives I’d have no reason to question if I saw his name in the paper — is a nasty racist and a menace both to public health and the English language. Knowledge is power. Thanks, B.

Ordinarily I’d agree where the comments-sniping is concerned but it’s via Barleywine’s “outing” here that I now know that a local professional who is politically and civically involved — someone whose motives I’d have no reason to question if I saw his name in the paper — is a nasty racist and a menace both to public health and the English language. Knowledge is power. Thanks, B.