North American Cycle Courier Championships

by John Greenfield

[This piece also runs in this week's New City magazine, www.newcitychicago.com.]

Sweaty and breathless, the bike messenger strides up to the desk to deliver a package and politely asks for his manifest to be marked. “Drop your bag, drop your bag,” yell the staffers. “Sign the log. Where’s your ID? Security!”

It’s not an uptight mailroom in a Loop office building. It’s a checkpoint on the racecourse for the NACCC, the 11th Annual North American Cycle Courier Championships held in Garfield Park last weekend. Over 200 messengers from as far away as San Francisco, Montreal and Copenhagen have converged on the Windy City for a weekend of competition, camaraderie and tomfoolery.

“It’s great that we could finally bring this to the Midwest,” says co-organizer Augie Montes of the Chicago Couriers Union. At the end of the weekend New York’s Kimberly Perfetto and Austin Horse will earn bragging rights as the fastest couriers on the continent. At 5th place Andrew Nordyke is the top Chicagoan.

In addition to the checkpoint race, the champs include a bike polo tournament, trick riding contests, a labor forum and the Messenger Prom, which packs the Bottom Lounge with partiers wearing everything from cocktail dresses and leisure suits to giant banana and Mr. Peanut costumes. A prom king and queen are crowned with headgear fashioned from bike chains and cogs.

The race, simulating a typical day of two-wheeled delivery work, has participants picking up and dropping parcels at nine stations on a City-sanctioned, car-free course throughout the lush West Side park. To keep things realistic this checkpoint, sponsored by Chicago’s 4 Star Courier Collective and NYC’s Breakaway Courier, incorporates many of the headaches and hassles messengers face on a daily basis. There’s even a dude in a rooster suit “stealing” unlocked rides.


“It’s almost like a real mailroom because there’s so much confusion and animosity,” says veteran local courier Brent Olds, sipping a PBR as Public Enemy blares from the sound system of the Chicago Cuttin’ Crew racing team’s school bus. Sunshine glares off the gold dome of the park’s fieldhouse on this hot, gorgeous day.

Nicole Brewer, an ex-messenger who’s working the checkpoint, says Chi-Town couriers have more security hoops to jump through than anywhere else in the country: using alley entrances to buildings instead of the front door; signing building logs and leaving ID; and leaving their bags with building guards to prevent them from stealing fax machines. “Chicago’s all freaked out ‘cause they think a terrorist is gonna fly a plane into the Sears Tower,” she says.

Couriers zoom around the park’s curved roadways on single-speed, fixed-gear bicycles with three-foot-long mailing tubes in their bags, their bodies and bikes banked at steep angles for speed. Locals are barbecuing near the racecourse to sounds of Z. Z. Hill’s “Down Home Blues” and teenage girls saunter obliviously across the cyclists’ paths.

“I like having all the racers out here,” says Garfield Park resident Joe Davis, 68, straddling a Trek. “It’s good for people to see this is a beautiful park and they don’t have to be afraid to come out to the West Side.”

A mellow, multi-modal Michigan meander

By John Greenfield

One reason I’m glad I cycled 5,000 miles coast-to-coast last year is now I feel like I’ve got nothing to prove when it comes to bike touring. As long as I’ve got my bicycle with me and get a few miles of pedaling in it doesn’t matter what other non-car transportation modes I use – it’s a bike trip. Or at least a trip worth taking.

Case in point is a circuit of lower Lake Michigan I took last month. Although I covered a lot of ground with my bicycle in tow I didn’t actually ride much more than a hundred miles, but this actually enhanced the experience.

Instead of my usual death-march mileage, the relaxed pace left me time to take walks in the woods and hang out on the beach before hitting the road to the next destination. Of course, a truly pro cycle tourist would leave early and get the day’s pedaling done before sightseeing. Maybe next time I'll do it this way.

This excursion was inspired by a Time Out Chicago issue about Lake Michigan getaways and a yen to escape the big city and catch some sunsets over water. I was also curious to try the high-speed ferry from Milwaukee to Muskegon, MI. I’d already ridden the entire perimeter of the lake in stages before so this jaunt was about R & R rather than breaking new ground.

I loaded my bike with full camping gear and caught Metra commuter rail up to Kenosha, WI, early Monday morning. As usual I’d stayed up late packing and hadn’t slept much so I snoozed during most of the hour-and-a-half train ride.

Taking a combo of Rte. 32 and off-street trails I covered the 35 miles to the ferry dock on the south side of Milwaukee with just enough time left to catch the boat without panicking. Next time I’d book in advance, though, since tickets were almost sold out. The slower Manitowac, WI, – Luddington, MI, ferry further north was cancelled due to mechanical problems so the high-speed ferry was picking up the slack.

One of the main functions of the ferries are to serve as a shortcut for drivers who want to avoid Chicagoland congestion, and the lower deck of the boat was packed with cars, RVs and motorcycles – mine was the only bicycle.

If you take the ferry, take Dramamine if you’re prone to seasickness, since it’s a surprisingly rocky ride, and bring a jacket it you want to hang out on deck. The ship moves so fast, what seems like 80 mph, that it kicks up a powerful, chilly breeze and it’s hard to stay outdoors to enjoy the beautiful views. However, the large cabin was full of miserable-looking people with their heads in their hands since stuffy air exacerbates seasickness.


I spent a lot of the ride lying on the deck behind a low front wall near the axis of the ship to minimize the wave motion. But I had fun anyway, chatting with a middle-aged waitress from Ann Arbor and a grizzled Harley rider from Muskegon who was drinking High Life out of a plastic bottle, both of them on their backs as well.

Muskegon’s the largest city on the east coast of Lake Michigan, a down-on-it’s-luck paper mill town of about 40,000. The under-populated downtown is a little depressing but there’s a great bike path that rings much of five-mile-long Lake Muskegon, populated by a colony of swans.


On my way to a state park north of the city I stopped for a pint at the Bear Lake Tavern, recommended by the motorcyclist. Striking up a conversation about the Chinese Olympics with an old-timer at the bar who turned out be a Korean War vet, I received a fascinating lecture on the different styles of communism practiced in these countries, Vietnam and Cuba. He also told me about his experiences in the army during the early days of racial integration. This card-carrying NRA member had a pretty different worldview than me but I could have sat there and listened to his stories for hours.

The state park was full and the ranger was unaware of the rule in Michigan that touring cyclists can not be refused a patch of ground to pitch a tent, which has served me well on other occasions. But she sent me up the road to Pioneer County Park, which was just fine.

The place was swarming with kids and adults cruising around on bikes, the most I’d ever seen at a campground, including an older couple on a homemade, side-by-side recumbent tandem that seemed to be fashioned out of La-Z-Boy recliners. I made a b-line to the Lake Michigan beach just in time to have a pleasantly existential moment while watching the sundown and sipping Captain Morgan’s.


I spent the next day strolling on the sparsely populated shoreline and reading on the sand, although water temperature in the fifties made it pretty impossible to swim. That evening I headed back into the city to meet up with my coworker Doug and his girlfriend Jenny who were, coincidentally, doing a more ambitious two-week trip, pedaling north from Muskegon to the Upper Peninsula then south to Green Bay, WI.

Doug and I stocked up on bread, dry sausage and Tasmanian smoked cheddar at The Cheese Lady at 808 Terrace St., one of a handful of interesting new independent businesses that are helping to spark a downtown revival. Jenny met us at the Tipsy Toad Tavern, 609 W. Western Ave., where we watched another fine sunset from the excellent rooftop and sampled “jumpers” – chewy French-fried frogs’ legs.

Doug offers sausage to a two-dimensional Muskegonite

After a stroll through the town’s gorgeous little garden, which was supposedly inspired by the colors of a Monet painting, they retired to their B & B. I headed a few miles south in the dark towards P. J. Hoffmaster State Park through a surprisingly long stretch of auto-centric development which abruptly turned into silent countryside.

In the morning I checked out the park’s large interpretive center detailing the history of the Michigan Dunes, then climbed said dunes and took another long hike along the shore. Then I got back in the saddle and rode a few miles to Grand Haven, a tourist town of about 11,000.

At the local history museum there was a great little exhibit called “Circles in Motion: the American Bicycle 1860 – 2008.” The models on display included wooden “boneshakers,” high-wheelers, classic ‘50s cruisers and beefy WWI-era military cycles. Just the displays of cycling medals and head-plates were amazing. My favorite was for the “Lincoln” made by the Chicago Cycle Supply Company, featuring the image of Honest Abe standing solemnly in front of his chair.


I pedaled another 30 miles to Holland State Park, just west of the city of Holland, Michigan’s tulip growing capital, of course. Heading to the beach I had another Zen moment watching the sun sink over the water as a young park employee swept sand off a long walkway like a Buddhist monk cleaning the temple. A tourist came up and told her that it would be a lot faster to use an electric blower on the sand. “That would be too noisy,” she replied. “It would spoil the sunset,” I said.

As I was pitching my tent in the dark (yes, even the low mileage didn’t keep me from setting up camp late most nights), two parents from the Kalamazoo area came up and asked me to give some tips to their daughter. She was about to start community college and was interested in biking to school and doing some overnight trips.

I happily went into bike salesman mode explaining the features of my touring bike. I tried to be polite when the girl showed me her department store road bike which sadly looked unfit for any kind of utilitarian use – it’d be hard even to install a rack on it. Afterwards I made myself a delicious makeshift fondue, cooking the Tasmanian cheddar with white wine and sausage grease over my camp stove and dipping bread and veggies in it.


The next day while picnicking by the water in the small town of Saugatuck, I watched the Saugatuck Chain Ferry, an old-fashioned hand-cranked craft, carry passengers across the Kalamazoo River. I continued down the coast to South Haven, probably the most touristy town I passed through but fun nonetheless. The large beach near downtown was packed with skimpily-clad teens and college students. I strolled down the pier and took a dip in the water which, oddly, was comfortably in the 70s even though it had been freezing a couple dozen miles up the coast.


As Time Out suggested, I sampled the blueberry-flavored coffee at the Blueberry Store, 535 Phoenix St. and then hit the Thirsty Perch Grille, 272 Broadway St. As at the Tipsy Toad, I felt compelled to eat the eponymous animal (OK, they were frog, not toad legs) and ordered the perch tacos with portobello fries.

It was time to head over to the Indian Trail Bus Line station in a strip mall a mile west of downtown. Last summer when my girlfriend rode from Chicago to Michigan with me during my cross-country trip, she had no problem putting her unboxed bike on the Indian Trails bus home from Benton Harbor, just down the road from South Haven. I’d assumed I’d be able to do the same this time.

But the elderly, wise-cracking ticket agent, a former Chicago cop whose silver Rolls Royce was parked next to the station, insisted that I box my bike. Fortunately there was a small bike box in the office, left by another cyclist. I had to break down my bike pretty well to make it fit and since I didn’t have suitable tools with me for removing the pedals I had to cram it in there with the pedals on. It wasn’t pretty.

The bus ride itself was a trip. As the agent had warned me, the bus was overbooked and several of us had to sit or stand in the aisle. This had to be completely illegal and it made me feel like I was in Central America, minus the live chickens and goats on board. Fortunately, my iPod kept me entertained and I didn’t mind standing, so long as we didn’t crash.

After I assembled my bike at the Chicago bus terminal, found that even the fenders were miraculously intact after the rough treatment and pedaled a few miles back to my house, I deemed this multi-modal mission a smashing success. I wasn’t going to win any randonneuring prizes for it, but combining bicycling with train, boat and bus allowed me to cover a lot of ground in a few days with plenty of time leftover for some creative loafing.

NW Indiana Bike Map / Riding to the Dunes

By John Greenfield

Northwest Indiana is terra incognita to most Chicagoans, but the new Northwest Indiana Bike Map is going to help change that. The map was produced this year by the Northwest Indiana Regional Planning Commission and the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation and is now available for free in many Chicago bike shops. You can request a copy by calling the planning commission at 219-763-6060 or visiting www.nirpc.org.

The new map picks up where the federation’s Chicagoland Bicycle Map leaves off, covering the entire Indiana lakefront region and beyond, using the exact same format as its Illinois counterpart. “NIRPC contracted us to help out with this so if it looks very similar to our map that’s no surprise,” says Keith Holt, South Side Community Liaison for the federation.

He says it makes sense that the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation helped create the map. “Northwest Indiana is basically part of the Chicago metropolitan area, and keeping it isolated by the state border doesn’t help cycling in the region. While other Chicago organizations have to stop at the border, we don’t.”

“The map was sorely needed,” says Holt. “I’ve always heard from people who were looking for good routes into Northwest Indiana. They’d say, ‘I wanna do it but I want to be safe and I don’t want to get lost.'”

Since he grew up in the South Shore neighborhood on Chicago’s Southeast Side, Holt says he already was familiar with some of the routes locals would take to the border for cheap beer and cigarettes. In the past he has referred cyclists to informal routes posted on the Internet by groups like the transportation advocacy organization Calumet Citizens for Connecting Communities, which also helped identify recommended routes for the bike map.

Now that there's a detailed map, Holt says more Chicagoans, such as members of the South Side’s Major Taylor Cycling Club, will consider the Hoosier Riviera when they’re looking for places to ride. He notes that since the map is a first-timer a few bugs may surface as cyclists give the routes a spin. “Some of these may not be the absolutely best routes yet,” he says. But the map will be edited and updated regularly as trails that are now under development are completed, such as the Pennsy Greenway which will connect Lansing, IL, with Crown Point, IN.

When you first look at the map, you may be surprised by how many inches of solid purple and blue lines there are, symbolizing existing paved and crushed limestone bike paths. In fact, you can already pedal from the Loop to the east end of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, about 70 miles, almost entirely on trails. Years ago I had done this trip on Route 12, a more direct route that stays closer to the coast but includes some truly nasty industrial stretches and several miles of riding on harrowing, high-speed highways.

Of course, you can get to the Dunes without a car very conveniently by catching the South Shore Line interurban train from the Loop’s Millennium Station – it has stops near both of the park’s campgrounds. But if you’re not in a hurry, bicycling the green, serene, off-street route is well worth the extra time and effort. It used to be a little tricky to navigate between the four trail segments that make up the route in Indiana, but with the new map it’s mostly a no-brainer.

From downtown Chicago, take the Lakefront Trail to the end of the line at the South Shore Cultural Center at 71st St. Follow the signed, on-street route, basically following Route 41, to the Burnham Greenway, which ends at Wolf Lake State Park. From there you can take Avenue O / Burnham Avenue /State st. / Sibley St. to the start of the largely urban Erie Lackawana Trail which heads southeast through Hammond, IN. Due to construction you’ll have to detour on Northcote / Hawthorne / Ridge to pick up the south half of the trail.

(Mural near Dan Rabin Transit Plaza, Hammond)

In the town of Griffith you meander a bit through the Oak Ridge Prairie County Park to get to the Oakland Savanna Trail. You’ll head east on this for a few miles through cool, wooded areas carpeted with ferns, then wiggle northeast a bit on streets through Hobart to pick up the Prairie Duneland Trail which heads northeast to Chesterton. From there you can pick up Waverly Rd. and head north to the crushed limestone Calumet Trail.


At that point you’ll be at the entrance to the shoreline’s most popular beach which also has an RV-style campground. But if you’re spending the night you should head a couple more miles east from there along the trail, or take Highway 12 if you’re in a hurry, to the Dunewood Campground near the Beverly Shores train stop. The wooded, car-free, walk-in sites at this location provide a much more tranquil camping experience.

You can get groceries and firewood at a convenience store near the train stop; unfortunately the nearby liquor store recently closed so if you care to imbibe, pick up supplies at Pat’s Liquors in Chesterton, which has a good selection of local beers and plays hippie music on the sound system.


Spend a day or two at the Dunes if you can – there are many hiking trails and deserted beaches to explore in the area and the waves are often big enough for body surfing. The view of the Three Mile Island-style cooling tower for the power plant in Michigan City, IN, to the east just makes the experience more surreal. Next door to the plant, the Shoreline Brewery & Restaurant, 208 Wabash, makes a worthwhile side trip. Their t-shirt shows the cooling tower next to a mutant fish with the legend: “Don’t drink the water – drink the beer.”

When it’s time to ride home you’ll want to return on the Prairie Duneland Trail, but for a change of pace you might consider using the map to choose a grittier, though still very bike-able, on-street route from Hobart to Hammond, where you can make your way back to Chicago’s Burnham Greenway and Lakefront Path.

To fight beach withdrawal symptoms, you might want to make one last stop at the Marina Grill, 6400 S. on the Lakefront Path. Located in a former Coast Guard building, this Carribean / New Orleans-style restaurant features seating on a porch overlooking a harbor in Jackson Park. Mellow “yacht funk” like Al Jarreau and Earth, Wind and Fire plays on the speakers. It’s a great place to chill with a drink (although its currently BYOB due to new management) before finally heading back into the hustle-bustle of the big city.

New York's Summer Streets: lessons for Chicago

by John Greenfield

For years now New York City has looked to Chicago as the model for big-city bicycling improvements. For example, New York, with almost three times the population, has installed only a fraction of the number of bike parking racks our city has, and when NYC adopted our theft-resistant, square-tube racks they called them “Chicago Racks.” We’ve also had them beat in terms of miles of bike lanes proportionate to city size, education and outreach programs, and other metrics.

So it’s ironic that New York beat us to the punch this month by staging three ambitious, highly successful ciclovia events, called “Summer Streets,” with only a few months of planning. Meanwhile, after years of fundraising and negotiations between the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, the City and community members, Chicago is finally getting around to staging Sunday Parkways on only two days in mid-fall, October 5th and 26th, on compromised routes.


As VWYF readers know, the ciclovia movement began in Bogota, Columbia, where for decades residents have been biking, walking, skating and hanging out on a network of largely car-free streets on Sundays. Nowadays the events regularly draw over 1.5 million people to recreate on a 70-mile route each weekend. This year ciclovias have begun to take off in the U.S. In addition to Chicago and New York, Portland, OR, staged a wildly popular event, also called Sunday Parkways, on June 22 and San Francisco will be holding “Sunday Streets” on August 31st and September 14.

Despite the efforts of the hard-working staff of the bike federation and other boosters since 2003, Chicago’s Sunday Parkways promises to be the least inspiring of the bunch. Our two ciclovias, bankrolled by the CBF via grants, will be taking place after peak bicycling season, on two separate 3.5-mile routes through neigborhoods a few miles away from the city center. The South Side route includes many blocks of gritty, treeless terrain and a half-mile that hugs the Eisenhower Expressway. The events will be far from car-free: autos will be driving on service roads parallel to most of route and in some cases four out of six travel lanes on the boulevards will have cars on them.


Contrast this with the three Summer Streets events that took place during prime cycling season on a 6.9-mile route through the heart of Manhattan. The route went from Central Park to the Brooklyn Bridge, along Park Ave. and Lexington Ave., through some of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the country. As in other cities with successful ciclovias, expenses were largely covered by the city government, in this case the NYC Department of Transportation. Best of all, motor vehicles were almost completely banned from the route.

I traveled to New York last weekend to check out the third and final run of Summer Streets firsthand on Saturday, August 23. When I joined the route on foot at 14th St. at 10 am the weather was lovely and the streets were packed with smiling people, mostly cyclists with a few walkers, joggers and skaters.


Police officers and traffic aides were directing motorized traffic on the cross streets while yellow-shirted volunteers held up signs reminding non-motorized traffic to be prepared to stop at the intersections. The volunteers I spoke with said they’d had no problems with participants disobeying traffic signals.

Heading south on Lexington, I soon met up with my friends Michael and Shenglan and their two-year-old daughter Altai, who was pushing a toy stroller. “We’re walking in the middle of the street,” cried Michael. “There’s throngs here, Altai, throngs!”


As we continued down Lexington we encountered an aerobics demo in front of a gym, a kids area with games and chalk drawing, and a live music stage featuring an opera singer, then a funky cello player. Other scheduled events along the route included African and salsa dancing, double-dutch jump-roping, yoga, bike handling classes, break-dancing, akido and a “hackey sack zone.” It was a vibrant scene.

At an info tent for Transportation Alternatives, NYC’s advocates for biking, walking and transit, who spearheaded the event, I asked deputy director Noah Budnick to explain the New York / Chicago role reversal. How was his city able to pull off such a daring, successful event in a few months while the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation labored for so long and faced so many roadblocks?

TA's Noah Budnick

New York’s achievement is particularly striking since bike planning was fairly dysfunctional there only a few years ago. When NYC DOT’s bike director Andrew Vesselinovitch resigned in 2006 he sent a letter to colleagues, reprinted in
the New York Times, savaging then-commissioner Iris Weinshall for shooting down half of his proposals for new bike lanes. Budnick gives a lot of credit for Summer Streets to the DOT’s progressive new commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan who took over in 2007. “This absolutely wouldn’t have happened without her,” he said.

Budnick called New York’s political situation last year a “perfect storm” – ideal conditions for proposing an ambitious green transportation initiative. Along with the arrival of the new commissioner, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced PlaNYC, his environmental sustainability plan which included targets for bicycling improvements and a proposal for congestion pricing. So when Transportation Alternatives brought up the idea of Summer Streets last winter, the City was all ears.

“The commissioner was completely committed to Summer Streets and Mayor Bloomberg said ‘Alright, let’s give this a try,’” Budnick reported. “I’ve heard the CBF has had a lot of resistance from the police but we had a police commissioner who wanted to proactively make this happen.”



Asked if he had any advice for Chicago and other cities planning ciclovias, Budnick said, “Whenever you try to do anything new in a city there are going to be people who will complain and give reasons not to do things, which is why it takes political leadership to make things happen.” Staging the events on Saturdays rather than Sundays in NYC avoided the resistance from churches which has led to delays and compromises in planning Chicago’s Sunday Parkways. The early hours for Summer Streets, 7 am to 1 pm, also minimized conflicts, said Budnick. “New York City’s not up before noon on Saturday,” he said.

As we spoke, a fire truck left a station along the route with its siren blaring but had no problem making its way to the cross street. “They could have said, ‘You can’t do this here because there’s a firehouse on this street,’” said Budnick. “But as you can see it’s actually easier for the truck to get through traffic when there are no cars.”

He urges cities like Chicago to make no small plans when staging ciclovias - “You can’t do this by half measures.” He added that the events should cover significant mileage, be completely car-free, and take place on consecutive weekends so that the attendance and community support can build. “Anything that waters it down sucks the energy out of it.”

Good news and bad news about Sunday Parkways

Central Park Ave., along the Oct. 26th Sunday Parkways route

By John Greenfield

I’m pleased to announce that Sunday Parkways, the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s proposal to create temporary space for non-motorized recreation along Chicago’s boulevard system, will become a reality this October 5th and 26th from 9 am to 1 pm. I’m less happy to break the news that the event will take place on fewer days, for less miles, with more car traffic and worse scenery, than originally hoped for.

Don’t get me wrong. Sunday Parkways is a terrific idea and I applaud the years of hard work by bike federation staff and others who did the planning, organizing and fundraising that has made this dream come true. I’ve written several articles over the years cheerleading the concept. I realize that compromises had to be made in order get approval for the event. But it’s a bummer that, due to factors beyond the CBF’s control, the original vision for the event has been watered down so much.

The CBF began plotting Sunday Parkways in 2003 after Chief Strategy Officer Randy Neufeld rode in Bogota, Columbia’s, Sunday Ciclovia. Since the 1980s, residents of that city have been coming out to play on a network of pedestrianized streets. Participants enjoy biking, jogging, pushing strollers, skating, doing aerobics and yoga, dancing to live music, or just hanging out with their neighbors in the car-free space. Nowadays the event takes place every Sunday on a 70-mile route, regularly drawing over 1.5 million participants.

Bogota's Sunday Ciclovia

The ciclovia movement has spread to other Latin American, European and Australian cities. Guadalajara, Mexico, in particular has been a model for the CBF, which invited Chicago clergy and community leaders on a fact-finding trip in spring 2007 to experience the city’s Via Recreativa firsthand.

That year El Paso, TX, pioneered the first ciclovia in the U.S., albeit with a total turnout of only 5,000 over four Sundays in May. On June 22 of this year, Portland, OR, debuted a much better attended event, beating out Chicago to be the first to use the “Sunday Parkways” moniker. New York City is also planning a ciclovia, called Summer Streets, on three Saturdays this month, liberating almost seven miles of Park Ave. from car traffic.

Portland's Sunday Parkways

Chicago’s initial proposal was to create a 7.5-mile route along the boulevards connecting three large green spaces on the city’s west side: Douglas, Garfield and Humboldt parks. The route would pass through the neighborhoods of Little Village, North Lawndale, Garfield Park, Humboldt Park and Logan Square. While cars were to be virtually banned from the boulevards, cross streets would still be open to motorized vehicles. Cyclists, walkers and skaters on the Sunday Parkways route would obey traffic signals to allow cross traffic to flow smoothly.

The plan was to run pilots on three summer Sundays. One Sunday the event would take place on the northern half of the boulevard route; on the second Sunday it would take place on the South Side; on the third Sunday the entire route would be used.

There were a few of years of near misses due to funding shortfalls and opposition from residents who felt alienated from the planning process and worried that church attendance would be hurt. But this year the federation managed to got a critical mass of community support behind the proposal, raised the $400,000 needed to stage the trial runs, and got final approval from the Mayor’s Office.

Unfortunately, the latest version of Chicago’s ciclovia is very different than the original vision. After I bicycled the final route, published on the federation’s website, I discussed Sunday Parkways with CBF Board Member Lucy Gomez, a Logan Square Neighborhood Assocation employee who is also co-chairing the Sunday Parkways community stakeholders committee.

Gomez says there had been some confusion among cyclists about the dates for Sunday Parkways. The bike federation had originally applied for permits to hold the event this August. Chicago Department of Transportation staff saw these dates on the permit application and posted them prematurely on CDOT’s bike webpage, she says. However, due to conflicts with other summer events, Sunday Parkways was pushed back to the middle of the fall.

Volunteer traffic aides at Bogota's Sunday Ciclovia

In Bogota and other ciclovia cities, traffic control is handled by volunteers, keeping costs low. But in Chicago, union requirements dictate that only paid police officers and Traffic Management Authority aides may be used to regulate motorized traffic. These City staffers will be bankrolled by the federation, rather than by public money, as was done in Portland. So, due to CBF budget constraints, this year’s pilot had to be reduced from three to only two Sundays. “In the ideal world we would have loved to have three dates,” Gomez says.

The October 5th event will take place north of the Garfield Park Conservatory; October 26th will take place south of the conservatory. Due to competing special events like Bears games this fall, there will be no date that unites the two halves of the Sunday Parkways route. “There wasn’t enough traffic management staff available for the whole 7.5 miles,” says Gomez.

The reduction from three to two dates could hurt Sunday Parkways chances of coming back in 2009. Earlier this year Gil Penalosa, Bogota’s former parks and recreation director and the international expert on the ciclovia movement, told me he encourages municipalities to try out the event on a few consecutive weekends to allow momentum and support to build. “The first Sunday is when people complain the most,” Penalosa said. “The second goes a lot more smoothly and the third is fantastic.”

Now, in Portland, a liberal West Coast city with more than three times the bicycle mode share of Chicago, it was relatively easy to get support for shutting down streets to create recreation space. It was a case of preaching to the converted. Even though it was held on a gloomy day, their first and only ciclovia was a runaway success.

Portland's Sunday Parkways

While bicycling has made big gains in Chicago in recent years, there’s bound to be a much steeper learning curve here. It’s likely that turnout will be relatively low the first time each of the two separate Chicago routes is piloted, particularly for the October 26th South Side event which includes several less-than-scenic streets.

With no second or third chance for word to spread and popularity to grow on each half of the route, drivers caught unaware by the road closures may grumble to their aldermen that they were inconvenienced for nothing. If there’s enough opposition, the event won’t return next year. This worst-case scenario is unlikely, but entirely possible.


Gomez talked me through the current route plans. Many Chicagoans have been picturing boulevards that are almost completely liberated from motorized traffic, where they and their families can recreate free of the sound, smell and danger of automobiles, but that won’t be the case this year. All the service roads (the smaller streets which parallel the central main drags of the boulevards) along the route will be open to car traffic during the ciclovia.

Service road along Humboldt Blvd.

Heading south from the northern terminus at the Logan Square Monument at Logan (2600 N.) and Kedzie (3200 W.), two of the four central travel lanes will be occupied by autos as well: one lane will be used for parallel parking for churchgoers and another lane will provide access to these parking spots. This is a concession to Logan Square clergy who had opposed Sunday Parkways early in the planning process, stalling it. Therefore, only two of the six total travel lanes (including the service roads) on Kedzie will be reserved for non-motorized uses, separated from auto traffic by barricades.

Logan Square Monument

“I don’t use the term ‘car-free’ to describe Sunday Parkways,” explains Gomez. “We say temporary closures of sections of the boulevards. We’re making some accommodations so people will have access. This is the case in Bogota and Guadalajara. It’s not uncommon that there’s some give and take for different reasons.”

As the route turns east onto Palmer Blvd. (2200 N.), cars will be allowed on the lanes north of Palmer Square Park and banned from the lanes south of the park to allow access to St. Sylvester Church at Palmer and Humboldt Blvd. (3000 W.)


Heading south on Humboldt the configuration will be the same as Kedzie, with only 1/3 of the travel lanes free of cars, until Bloomingdale Ave., (1800 N.) South of Bloomingdale cars will be banned from the central lanes of all the boulevards.

The route enters Humboldt Park at North Ave. (1600 N.) The park’s inner loop drive will remain open to motor vehicles, but cars will not be able to cross Humboldt Blvd. within the park. The course continues south to Franklin Blvd. (500 N.), then west to Central Park Ave. (3600 W.), heading the south through Garfield Park to the conservatory, the southern terminus of the October 5th route.
Humboldt Park

Despite all the car traffic, the scenery on this North Side route will be quite pleasant. But, as usual in Chicago, the South Side gets the short end of the stick. Only about six blocks of the October 26th event, whose northern terminus is the conservatory, takes place on boulevards. About a third of this route is on grittier streets that are not nearly as conducive to relaxed strolling or socializing. A half mile is on Harrison St. (600 S.), which butts up against I-290, the Eisenhower Expressway.


The CBF’s annual Boulevard Lakefront Tour bike ride uses Independence Blvd. (3800 W.) south of Garfield Park. But Gomez says crossing the Ike from Garfield Park at Independence was deemed too dangerous for Sunday Parkways due to the presence of expressway on- and off-ramps. Instead the route continues south from the conservatory on Central Park to cross 290.

From there, instead of taking Independence and Douglas Blvds. to get to Douglas Park, the route heads east along the noisy, smoggy Ike on Harrison (which is normally one-way east-bound but will be made two-way for the event.) It then turns south on Kedzie and east on Roosevelt (1200 S.) These are nearly tree-less, commercial streets that don’t lend themselves to ballgames, BBQ-ing or other positive forms of hanging out which the boulevards encourage.

Shuttered grocery store on Kedzie

From Roosevelt the route continues south down the western side of Douglas Park’s ring road, Sacramento Blvd. – the rest of the park will remain open to cars. The course continues south from the park on Marshall Blvd. (about 3000 W.), then east on 24th St. (also a boulevard) to the route’s southern terminus at 24th and California Ave. (2800 W.) in Little Village.

Douglas Park

Could the City have allowed Sunday Parkways to stay on the boulevard system by closing the Eisenhower Expressway ramps at Independence? Probably not, since the Interstates are under federal jurisdiction. “Getting on-and-off closures for the expressway system is always extremely difficult,” says CDOT spokesman Brian Steele.

Fair enough. But why was the nasty Harrison / Kedzie / Roosevelt detour chosen instead of having the route continue south from the Ike on much pleasanter Central Park, designated as a recommended route on the City’s bike map, then head east along lush Douglas Blvd. (1400 S.) to Douglas Park?

Via e-mail, CBF executive director Rob Sadowsky acknowledges that this is a good question but implies that the final say on the detour was out of the federation’s hands. “We worked with a retired commander of special events police to design the route in consultation with community representatives from each of the five neighborhoods,” he writes. “There were so many considerations taken into account including traffic management, specific sites of high levels of gang activity, access to hospitals and the expressway, and costs.”

“We all have ideas of pure boulevards,” adds Gomez. “But occasionally there’s obstacles we have to negotiate. In Bogota part of the route is along an expressway. It’s not pleasant but it gets you where you’re going.”

Despite the setbacks of fewer dates, less miles per event, more car traffic and a less scenic route than hoped for this year, Gomez says she has great expectations for the future of Sunday Parkways. “We have a vision that this will be successful and will happen more often in the future,” she says. “We don’t want this to be a one-time event, we want this to be a regular event.”

“This is going to be a great thing for Chicago,” she adds. “If you look at videos from Bogota and Portland you see people who are smiling and happy. Cars create a certain amount of stress in our lives, whether you’re a driver or a pedestrian. Sunday Parkways is going to make the boulevards feel like a happier place.”

I agree wholeheartedly. And I’ll keep my fingers crossed that Sunday Parkways will be back next year, bigger and better.

Roosters lead rally for pedestrians' rights

by John Greenfield

[This piece also runs in this week's Time Out Chicago, www.timeoutchicago.com.]

Last Wednesday, Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s Randy Neufeld became a walking punch line, donning a chicken suit to help Portage Park residents cross the road.

Partnering with the federation’s Drive With Care campaign, since June police issued 179 warnings to Northwest Side drivers who failed to yield to pedestrians. Next week they’ll write tickets.

But earlier this year residents were outraged after a driver struck a crossing guard at this intersection. Members of community organizations wanted to remind motorists about walkers’ rights, says campaign coordinator Falon Mihalic.

At the demo, a dozen folks aged four to 73, carrying signs reading “Stop For Pedestrians,” flanked the fowl as he marched across the street several times during rush-hour traffic. Drivers braked, then beeped, smiled and waved as the parade passed. “It’s like a pedestrian Critical Mass,” said a spectator.

Afterwards Miriam Correa, with son Steven in his kung fu uniform, said, “We live in the neighborhood. It’s important that we can cross the street safely.” Chester Kiercul, who owns the adjacent Capitol Club agreed. “A couple of my customers have been hit walking to the bar.”

At a similar protest with poultry going on across the neighborhood at Central and Belle Plaine, Jim Boratyn from IDOT, which funds Drive With Care, looked on. Asked why the state is bankrolling dudes in rooster suits, Boratyn said, “If we can save one life it’ll be worth every penny.”

Biking the Bensenville Dead Zone

by John Greenfield

One of the more surreal bicycle rides you can take in Chicagoland is a late-night tour of the “Dead Zone,” a spooky swath of the northwest suburb of Bensenville. But you’d better move fast – all the buildings in the area are likely to be razed soon for the O’Hare airport expansion.

As detailed by Ben Joravsky in the July 3 Chicago Reader, the City of Chicago has already bought up most of houses and businesses in this section, about 15% of the area of the town, located just southwest of the airport. Mayor Daley wants to tear down the buildings to make room for more runways at America’s second-busiest airport.

But about 40 homeowners are refusing to sell and are fighting the land grab in the courts. Last year a DuPage County judge blocked Daley from demolishing any of the buildings until an environmental impact study could be completed.

Now the City of Chicago says it has jumped through this hoop and is asking the judge to lift the injunction, so the bulldozers may be fired up any day now. In the meantime hundreds of abandoned, boarded-up buildings are still standing, a modern-day ghost town.


Last Saturday night I recruited a bunch of guys from a barbecue at West Town Bikes community cycle center to ride out to this city of the damned. After briefly crashing a bachelorette party in Logan Square, the ten of us pedaled west on bike-friendly Addison St. to the city limits then took Irving Park Rd. out to O’Hare. Cycling on sections of this high-speed four-lane as a solo rider might be pretty harrowing but our numbers allowed us to take a lane when necessary.

One of the crew, wearing an ill-gotten City of Chicago safety vest, suggested we detour to Bensenville’s Saint Johannes Cemetery, just across a fence from the airport. Daley will be digging up skeletal remains dating back as far as the 1820s and relocating them elsewhere to make room for the runways.

Turning onto an access road for the offices of freight carriers like Luftansa and Korean Air, we found a rutted dirt road that took us to the boneyard. The old tombstones and obelisk monuments looked eerie in the moonlight, a strange contrast to the FedEx jumbo jets on the other side of the chain link.

photo by Kevin Monahan

Leaving the cemetery we took a wrong turn and wound up slogging through a construction zone that was carpeted with thick, sticky clay. I tried to bushwack my way back to the right road but was blocked by an impassable creek. We finally made it back to the highway with our fenders jammed with mud.

Half a mile later we came upon some of the vacant businesses: an auto repair shop, a dry cleaners and Tasty 2 Gyros, its windows boarded and half of its backlit, plastic sign torn down. As Ben Joravsky recommended, we then cruised around the loop formed north of Irving Park by Orchard, Hillside and Garden, just east of York Rd. The streets were completely silent as we passed house after house with empty driveways and windows covered with plywood. A smashed mailbox suggested that teens had driven by with a baseball bat.


As we stopped to snap a picture in front of one of the homes, security guard John Reeves drove up to give us a friendly warning. We were welcome to view the homes from the street, still owned by Bensenville, but needed to stay off the properties, owned by the City of Chicago.


Reeves reminisced about his youth when he used to commute on a Fuji road bike from 75th Street on Chicago’s South Side to Kedzie and Madison on the West Side. “Once I got that 10-speed I could keep up with the girls,” he said. “You know, fixing flat tires is a better way to meet women than walking around with a puppy.”

We went to explore the neighborhood on the south side of Irving Park and saw that a few of the houses were still occupied. It must be very strange to live on a block where all the other homes are empty.

Soon a couple of security guards began to follow us around in their Chevys and my companions didn’t like having headlights shined on them. They tried to ditch the cars by detouring across yards and through a townhouse development but one of the guards chased us back onto the highway, briefly driving into oncoming traffic before telling us he’d called the Bensenville cops.

We decided to return to the big city, taking Green St. and Franklin Ave. as recommended by the Chicagoland Bike Map. These potholed streets headed southeast for a few miles through silent industrial areas. Riding after 2 am we encountered zero cars until we reached downtown Franklin Park, its business district filled with taverns and taquerias.

At 2:30 am the boys and I stopped at the Paradise Club, 7068 W. Belmont in Chicago’s Schorsch Village neighborhood, for a nightcap. I’d read about the place in James Teitelbaum’s excellent guide Tiki Road Trip. The joint used to be purely a tiki bar but in recent years Eastern European immigrants took it over so now the vibe is a delightful mix of Polynesian and Polish.


There was a bit of confusion as our gang of sweaty cyclists entered the bar full of Slavic regulars. After some concerned discussion in Polish between the attractive young barmaids and the owner, a lady with a spiky, blond hairdo and a shiny, green jacket, they studied our IDs carefully and ushered us away from the bar to a table.


Deciding that we weren’t with the Liquor Control Board, they warmed up to us and brought rounds of Okocim beer and a couple of tasty tiki drinks: a Mai Tai and a Banana Spider made with fresh fruit. As Eurodisco played on the sound system I surveyed the décor: bamboo walls, tanks of tropical fish, Tahitian carvings, and a flamingo-filled fountain and a large Buddha sculpture behind the bar. This festive setting was a pleasing antidote to the desolation of the Dead Zone.