Después del patrocinio de dos Streetfilms de los dos primeros CicLAvias, la versión del festival al aire libre de los Ángeles, basado en el del Ciclovia de Bogotá, el Streetsblog de los Ángeles se encontró con un dilema. ¿Cómo continuar un evento que conjure a mas de cien mil Angelinos en las calles? La respuesta, crear un Streetfilm que fuese mas accesible a la población del hablante español en el sur de California.

Viva CicLAvia esta partido en dos. Primero, la narradora Mara Corina Arellano Colin explica la historia e el concepto de la gran fiesta al aire libre de los Ángeles incluyendo secuencias y fotos de festivales parecidos en Bogotá, Guadalajara, la ciudad de México, Brussels y Miami. Mientras la narración es una gran explicación de los beneficios y la cultura de CicLAvia, la alma de los esfuerzos en “Social Impact Consulting” cuentan con las entrevistas de los participantes.

Los próximo cinco minutos son un desfile de hablantes españoles profesando su amor hacia CicLAvia. Sea el equipo del Méndez Bike Shop de South Central, el oficial de transito que extiende sus brazos mientras explica lo de Viva CicLAvia o el concilio de la Hollywood, Eric Garcetti; las amplias sonrisas en el sur de California mandan el mensaje en cualquier idioma. Dándole a la gente mas oportunidades de salir a jugar en el sol es bueno para los Ángeles.

El Streetfilm marco otra primera para el equipo Streetfilms, un video directamente apoyado por parte de los lectores. L.A. Streetsblog les pregunto a sus lectores se quisieran un film en español acerca de CicLAvia y cuando respondieron que sí, los lectores fueron lanzados con una campaña por parte de Kick Starters para financiar el film. Huelga decir que los lectores triunfaron.

Ttranlastion:Vanessa Villalobos

After sponsoring two Streetfilms of the first two CicLAvias, Los Angeles’ version of the open streets festival based on Bogota’s Ciclovia, Los Angeles Streetsblog faced a dilemma: How can we continue to cover the event that draws over a hundred thousand Angelenos to the streets?  The Answer: Make a Streetfilm that was accessible to Southern California’s large Spanish-speaking population.

¡Viva CicLAvia! consists of two parts.  First, narrator Mara Corina Arellano Colin explains the history and concept of Los Angeles’ amazing open streets party, including footage and photos from similar festivals in Bogota, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Brussels and Miami.  While the narration is a great explanation of the benefits and culture of CicLAvia, the soul of Social Impact Consulting’s efforts are the interviews with participants.

The next five minutes is a parade of Spanish speakers professing their love of CicLAvia.  Whether it’s the team from South Central’s Mendez Bike Shop, the traffic officer spreading his arms while explaining Viva CicLAvia, or Hollywood’s City Councilman Eric Garcetti; the broad smiles in the Southern California sun give a message in any language.  Giving people more chances to play in the sun is good for Los Angeles.

This Streetfilm marked another first for Streetfilms, a directly reader supported video.  L.A. Streetsblog asked its readers if they wanted a Spanish language film on CicLAvia, and when they said yes, the readers were challenged through a Kick Starter campaign to fund the film.  Needless to say, the readers came through.

Streetfilms worked with ITDP to document these two cities and we'll be releasing videos on each this spring. But since I just returned from Medellín, I can't help but share a few highlights.

I met Carlos Moreno from despacio.org at the airport. Carlos translated and helped coordinate the logistics of this video shoot. We started with a 45-minute cab ride down the mountain to the valley where Medellín is situated. The view as we descended was absolutely spectacular and set the tone for our week's work.

Once in Medellín, we met Jorge Iván Ballesteros and Jesús Acero. These two gentlemen were going to show us why their city was nominated for ITDP's prestigious award. And we were to dedicate each day to a different theme, starting with "public space" on the first day.

Throughout the day we must have visited half a dozen public spaces where young people were playing in fountains and giant sand boxes while their folks relaxed in the nearby shade. In Medellín there are permanent public space projects popping up seemingly everywhere. Then there are the temporary public space projects like the annual festival of lights, better known as Los Alumbrados.

Here is Carlos Moreno talking about Los Alumbrados:

We set aside time to ride the new bus rapid transit lines called MetroPlús, which are integrated with Metro (subway) and MetroCable (cable tram) lines.

There are multiple lines in the MetroCable system, including one that is now accessible for those living in the steep mountainside neighborhood called Comuna 13.  For the residents of this community it used to take 45 minutes to climb the mountain by foot to get to the MetroCable line. With newly installed public escalators, it will take under 10 minutes.

Here's a very brief look at children learning to use this newly installed escalator system:

And of course we rode bikes. We biked in Ciclovia:

Jesús Acero, Mauricio Moore, Carlos Moreno & Jorge Iván Ballesteros after interviewing ciclovia coordinator Mauricio Moore.

We rode in the Wednesday night community-building ride. Here's some footage from this Critical Mass-style ride:

And we rode EnCicla, the new bike-share program. This bike-share system is small, with 145 bikes, but the model is rather unique with public bikes used mainly in the university part of the city but also up in the rural area in Park Arvi. Here we are riding EnCicla on a bikeway to our next interview:

From what I saw and heard, Medellín is serious about becoming a leader in developing an integrated transportation system to facilitate better health and education for all residents of the city.

"The NACTO Guide is a really important step for cities to say it is okay to be different then a rural area. We are not better…we are just different and we would like to apply these different principles," says Chicago Commissioner of Transportation Gabe Klein.

Streetfilms brings you these highlights of the Chicago stop on the tour, where representatives from the transportation departments of NYC, Portland and San Francisco shared lessons from developing bike infrastructure in their hometowns.

Danielle Baskin from Belle Helmets painted these beautiful and whimsical custom helmets for the Streetfilms crew!

Watch this film in Spanish Guadalajara, Mexico is showing how amazingly transformative a ciclovia-style road closure can be for its citizens. In 7 years, their inaugural Sunday event Via RecreActiva has grown from just 7 miles with 35,000 participants to 41 miles with 400,000 users every Sunday. It goes from 8 am to 2 pm. It covers 6 municipalities. The diversity of activities features traditional ciclovia staples like aerobic classes and music, but also some new wrinkles including free haircuts for children and a city that clearly knows how to hula hoop!

Another unique aspect of this story is that one of the forces behind the success of the Via RecreActiva is a civil association called Guadalajara 2020, a group of primarily made of  business owners, real estate people and entrepreneurs who envision Guadalajara to be a healthier, greener and more humane city.

That mission includes bringing better transit to the city, making it safer to walk & bike and create equality and empowerment among its people. Perhaps it is best put by Guadalajara 2020's President, José Palacios Jiménez, who told us:

"...we would like to be able to remove the cars from the entire city. Because with all the information we manage to get, we are able to understand that the biggest problem of humanity are the cars."

Guadalajara does feature  public spaces on par with the greatest in the world, but also faces many extraordinary challenges with horrible traffic and unsafe pedestrian environments on nearly every street.  It's refreshing to see business folks not only speaking out and understanding the real solutions, but investing their funds to create an organization like Guadalajara 2020.

By installing eight bike racks, DOT created a "daylighting" effect, improving visibility at the intersection. The bike parking is much less intrusive than parked cars and helps everyone at the intersection see everyone else. Oh yeah, and now there are a dozen new places to park bikes without taking away any space from Smith Street's busy sidewalks.

For another look at on-street bike parking, check out Streetfilms' 2008 tour of Portland, Oregon's bike corrals.

SF:  Tell us about your Bus Chick column.

CS: I’ve been writing about what I call “transit culture” for almost six years. There are lots of people writing—probably a lot better than I could—about transit policy and urban planning. I sometimes touch on those subjects, but I’m much more interested in what’s happening on the ground: who's riding, why, and how. My blog is more about the “public” than it is about transportation.

SF: We profiled your family in a 2009 Streetfilm and every time we've screened it, it really reverberated with folks. Have you gotten the same feedback?

CS: I've received a fair amount of attention from the film, not so much because my blog or what I said on camera, but because of my daughter - believe it or not, for reasons other than her extreme cuteness. A lot of people are truly shocked by the fact that I'm raising a child (these days, two) without a car. In some ways, this is understandabale, since most Americans believe that cars are essential for good, middle-class parenting. On the other hand, I ride the bus with parents and children every day. Among my fellow passengers, "busing with babies" is decidedly unremarkable.

SF: If you could make everyone in Seattle watch one Streetfilm, what would you choose?

CS: I think the entire Moving Beyond the Autombobile series should be required viewing for everyone on Earth. There are many more entertaining and inspirational Streetfilms, but the MBA series is a clear, comprehensive introduction to a lot of the concepts that the livable streets movement is based on.

If I had to pick one film for Seattlelites, it would be the one about Bogota's BRT system. In the first place, it shows that a city without huge capital resources can build a usable, accessible and efficient transit system. It also shows that it doesn't take decades of debate to get stuff done. (Seattle types, you feel me?) Plus, the bus command center is cool."

Wanting to go, I also decided to experiment with my new iPad2 as a recording device to see how it would handle indoors in a noisy, busy environment. But it was also a challenge as the event lasted only one hour.  In the end, I got to visit 8 stations and used almost half of everything I shot. There wasn't much time to think about anything, just get off the train, shoot for about 2 or 3 minutes and then jump on the next train. (Oh and to try to get the best sound quality with no trains coming in and out of the station.)

I also edited it in just about 90 minutes. Of course with such beautiful music and the awesome structure of our subway system, these kinds of montages are not very hard to make look wonderful. Next up:  I'll try the iPad outdoors on a sunny day.

Oh and just in case you haven't seen it, we did another one-day turnaround video on Make Music NY's first event back in 2007.

Let's start off with a TMZ-style moment.  We often come across actors/famous folk while out shooting. Here's actor/Broadway star Alan Cumming, who frequently is out on his bike.  Check out the reaction of  his fellow commuter who seems to know she was already  riding with him, she takes a sneak peak to confirm his ID while stopped at the light.

Of course there are hundreds of oddball moments that seem to happen while out shooting. Here's one with Open Plans Executive Director Mark Gorton and Project for Public Space's Gary Toth that has not only an "outtake" of a loud, obnoxious hotrodder but a poignant lesson tacked on by Mark.

Here's a fun item.  While shooting in the Netherlands, Elizabeth came across these very helpful firemen who were helping a young woman with her bike. Lots of them. Count them.

How about we change it up for a moment?  Here's a short timelapse of the Seattle skyline that we think is kind of purdy.

While we were in Chicago shooting our Kinzie Street Protected Bike Lane video, Elizabeth had this really funny interview with one Lorena Cupcake. Seriously. She stopped. Put on a mike and this is all that she said and she was on her way!

Of course one great thing we always pride ourselves on at Streetfilms is the amount of really good b-roll we shoot. I was out shooting on a summer day in Brooklyn on Vanderbilt Avenue when I saw a line of about 15 different cyclists approaching. "Excellent" I thought as I jumped off my bike and started shooting, but of course one cyclist had to ruin it by doing, well by doing this:

In case you missed this, here is a very short montage of some excellent hula-hooping that went down at the RecreActiva in Guadalajara, Mexico (their version of Ciclovia). It seems like everywhere you went, people knew how to hula!

Sometimes while you are out on the streets, you'll see some situations that are equally remarkable and sad. Here on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, I found something that probably qualifies. This area suffers from such little public space/seating, so you'll find a dad and son made do with that they had.

The Salvation Army apparently had lots of singing ring-a-dingers out asking for donations. Here's one outside Rockerfeller Plaza wishing a "Feliz Navidad" to all!

And finally, here's a spirited montage celebrating the year that was bicycling in 2011 which I strung together with lots of great biking b-roll of average, everyday New Yorkers enjoying the streets! Here's to 2012!

So we figured let's celebrate the end of 2011 showing some of people out on their bikes Streetfilms style. (And we threw in a bunch of real FACTS in case CBS2 news decides to take a gander.)

Thanks to the over 100 of you who turned out for our annual fundraiser "Streets of the Future" at Bicycle Habitat in Brooklyn back in November. We were able to raise thousands of dollars to help fund our continued work.  We especially want to thank our sponsors: Velojoy.com, Cycles Gladiator, Brooklyn Brewery, Adam White and a super thank you to Charlie McCorkell at Bicycle Habitat who closed the store all day to let us set up.  And to everyone who donated items to the auction, all of our wonderful volunteers and those of you spoke about our work in such delightful words.

There are hundreds of other photos to check out as well at our Flickr link here.  Thanks to our volunteer photographer H. Zeke Mermell who did a smashingly spectactular job.

Streetsblog's Ben Fried presents the Streetsie award to our featured speaker Councilmember Brad Lander of Brooklyn. He has truly been a defender of safe streets for cyclists and pedestrians.

Susi Wunich (right) poses with her velojoy.com team Kim Burgas (left) and Genevieve Walker (center) - one of our wonderful sponsors for the night.

Councilmember Brad Lander poses with NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

Enjoying the Flux Capacitor prop are Clarence Eckerson Jr (Streetfilms), Doug Gordon (BrooklynSpoke.com), Mark Gorton (founder Open Plans) and Noah Budnick (Transportation Alternatives)

Streetfilms' Elizabeth Press poses with My NYC Bike Story subject Lucette Gilbert (left).

Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson Jr. gives praise to Charlie McCorkell from Bicycle Habitat. MUCH, MUCH praise!

Thanks to your help, Streetfilms is helping affect dramatic change in cities.

Whether you live in Chicago or Tokyo, Streetfilms’ mission is to bring the livable streets movement to you by making films that show the best in bicycling, transit, pedestrian infrastructure, and public spaces. And with your donation today, we can continue to help people make the change they want to see in their cities.

Help us raise $25,000 before December 31st by making a $50, $100, or even $250 donation today. We hear all the time from people that Streetfilms have transformed their lives and their cities. Streetfilms has helped make change in an awful lot of places this year:

- Our groundbreaking ten-part series "Moving Beyond the Automobile" explored solutions to the problems of automobile dependency. This popular series already reached 125,000 people through our free, online network and community screenings across the country.

- Our fun "My NYC Biking Stories" debuted at a time when cycling in New York City was under attack by the mainstream media. Streetfilms countered that by featuring diverse New Yorkers from every borough who love to bike.

- We traveled all over the U.S. and the world to bring livable streets best practices to our viewers from cities including Minneapolis, Guadalajara, Utrecht, Guangzhou, Seattle, Bogota and Chicago.- We debuted our "Streetfilms University" seminar as a way to educate and energize advocates to produce their own successful short films in their communities.

Your donation today will help us reach our ambitious goals for 2012:

- Produce four more episodes of our "Fixing the Great Mistake" series to show you how the automobile has caused great destruction to our planet, and the positive effects of sustainable and smart growth development. - Create a cutting edge series of films focusing exclusively on pedestrian issues in cities across the country.
- Bring 21s century livable streets issues to our viewers from  cities such as Chicago, Vancouver, Gronigen, Los Angeles, Toronto and Mumbai.
- Be there to fully document the largest bike share program ever as it launches in NYC in mid-2012.

Streetfilms will keep rolling forward in 2012, and we hope you’ll do your part to support our work. Please make your donation today, and help us raise $25,000 by December 31^st!

Thank you!

Clarence Eckerson Jr.

Director, Streetfilms

Make a secure online donation today, or mail a check made to OpenPlans (with Streetfilms in the memo line) 148 Lafayette St., PH, New York, NY 10013. Streetfilms is produced by OpenPlans, a 501c3 organization, and all donations are tax deductible. If you have questions about donations, please contact our Development Manager, Christa Orth at corth@openplans.org or 917-388-9066.

His team wasted no time. Chicago DOT installed the city's first protected bike lane on Kinzie Street before Emanuel's first 30 days in office were over. Leading Emanuel's DOT is former Washington, DC DOT Commissioner Gabe Klein, who clearly understands the connection between safe streets and the health of a city.

Last month Streetfilms traveled to Chicago to speak with the commissioner, ride on Kinzie Street, and bask in the city's cycling excitement.

And one piece of local trivia. The Blommer Chocolate Store is right on the Kinzie Street protected bike lane and boy does it smell good. It figured prominently in my all-time favorite response to an interview question about biking.

For years we've been pretty annoyed at the standard portable billboards and flashing signs distributed on streets to warn "(insert day) is a Gridlock Alert day, please use mass transit",  Well, we thought we'd spend 10 minutes editing this and maybe capture people's attention and change their habits.  Maybe.

There's an alternate version available that is a little more harsh on drivers.  CLICK HERE TO WATCH

Streetfilms:  As you have traveled the country for Alta and been a part of so much positive change for bicycling, have you seen Streetfilms' influence?

Mia Birk:  In the past year, I've visited more than 60 cities in 15 states and 3 Canadian Provinces, giving speeches and conducting trainings. At practically every one of my presentations I show a Streetfilm video. My favorite is Portland's Bike Boulevards Become Neighborhood Greenways. This is because I've learned that it's really hard for folks to understand what a bike boulevard/neighborhood greenway is. It's not a bike lane or a trail, so folks simply cannot envision what the heck I'm talking about. I show slides and explain, but they still don't really get it. Best, of course, is getting people out on bike on an actual bike boulevard, but 2nd best is that video. It's brilliant.

The video is so much more than just an explanation of a type of facility. It shows how far we’ve come. Back in the 1990s, the [Portland] school district fought so hard against bike parking and promoting. Now, they’re on our side, recognizing that healthy kids learn better. The Bureau of Environmental Services was at odds with transportation for decades; now they are working in partnership to use street right-of-way for higher purposes than just moving and storing private motor vehicles. The Parks Bureau didn’t see their mission as having anything to do with transportation; now they too are in collaboration with the active transportation movement. This makes me so happy.

I always tell folks, "Sit back for the best 7 minutes of your day,” and then hit play. I look around… everyone is smiling and relaxed, just as we are when we ride on our neighborhood greenways. And then, they are sold! It’s gets them over the hump and they are so excited and ready to rock and roll.

SF:   What films in particular have you enjoyed or used?

Mia Birk's "Joyride" has just published a 2nd Edition!

MB: Portland’s Sunday Parkways and NYC’s Summer Streets. Again, they open people’s eyes, help them understand how different these car-free events are from the typical charity bike ride frequented by the lycra crowd. People see not “cyclists”, they see 10 or 20,000 people moving, smiling, engaging, laughing, and connecting to their public right-of-way, their community, their humanity. It’s beautiful.

SF:  What do you see as the next big issue in cycling and where Streetfilms might make a difference?

MB: I’m quite partial to the Minneapolis Bike Share video, but I think that bike share is definitely ripe for more video documentation. We need more on the health benefits – before and after footage of folks getting healthier and fitter, particularly children. Also more on the economic benefits: jobs, jobs, jobs.

People just have a lot of fun. You'll see families, students, and older citizens heavily sprinkled throughout the critical mass. Drivers who usually rule the congested roads seem to mostly tolerate the inconvenience. The police largely ignore the whole thing. Helping matters is that each of the rides is theme-oreinted: one month it might be to celebrate Mexico's Independence.  Another week it could be comic books. This month was particularly fun since it was all about celebrating the Day of the Dead!

Streetfilms would like to thank Guadalajara 2020 for making it possible to make the journey to document this wonderful event & sponsoring the film.  And to Gil Penalosa, Executive Director of 8-80 Cites, for organizing the details.

Clarence Eckerson Jr. with Gil Penalosa, Executive Director of 8-80 Cities at Guadalajara's RecreActiva. (Photo Gil Penalosa)

Despite being saddled with a bad back & hip issues, I was thrilled to be able to visit Guadalajara, Mexico last week. Thanks to the kindness of my hosts, Guadalajara 2020, I was able to see much of the city and meet many advocates, students and business people who are all interested in seeing a city much more friendly to alternative transportation.

I wanted to share some of my observations, video and photos of my trip.

Upon landing I was picked up and driven 30 minutes to my hotel. Along the way, it was easy to see that Guadalajara is indeed facing a sustainability crisis like many cities and communities in the U.S., but you can multiply that three or fourfold.  Traffic is a nightmare at all times. Most streets are extremely unfriendly to pedestrians. There already is a crisis of epic proportions.

As usual, the first thing I did after checking in was to walk a half dozen blocks in a few directions to see what is around.  I brought my camera and in just a few minutes I taped this:

Streetfilms Shortie - Guadalajara Dangerous Ped Crossings from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

This scene is typical.  The absence of crosswalks and lack of sidewalks (or insufficient ones) is common. Drivers go wherever they want. Park wherever they want. Make dangerous decisions to bicyclists, pedestrians and other drivers. It's as if planning was an afterthought for anything but the automobile.  As Gil Penalosa advised me at the hotel, "When walking, even when you have the right-of-way, assume you do not."  That advice may have saved my life at least twice.

And yet the energy of the city is amazing, as are the people. The first night we were driven to the monthly, first-Thursday-night bike ride the Paseo de Todos which the organization GDL en Bici hosts. (Due to my body limitations and hotel location I was in a car far more than I am used to.)  The ride is essentially a critical mass featuring thousands of bike riders. Here's a small tease of footage from a future Streetfilm:

Teaser - Guadalajara "Paseo de Tod@s" 11/3/11 from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

The next day I spent a great deal of time experiencing the wonderful Centro Guadalajara, a huge network of car-free streets downtown that were as welcoming as the other streets are unfriendly. It surprised me. I got to see a few other car-free districts as well, during the day and night. Always busy, lots of commerce going on, restaurants filled, and no vacancies to be seen anywhere. These were among the most beautiful pedestrian-only streets I have seen in all my travels. Right up there with Copenhagen.

Here is a montage of footage you will certainly salivate over:

Streetfilms Shortie - Guadalajara Pedestrian, Car-free Zones from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

On Saturday the surprises just continued. After eating desayuno I grabbed a paper on the way back to my room and there I was on the front page! You see, the day before I was interviewed by Guadalajara's largest newspaper, El Informador, about my professional work and how I had come to the city to document their Sunday RecreActiva and to speak to students at Tec de Monterrey.  I guess it really is true - the further you go away from home, the more famous you become! Here's my mug below, the full article is available here, if si hablas español.

Soon it was Sunday morning and our main event: Guadalajara's RecreActiva.  As with many ciclovia-style events throughout the world, every Sunday the city opens 64 kms of streets to exclusive use of pedestrians, bicycles, rollerskaters and walkers.  I'll be honest, I have participated in many events throughout the world and Guadalajara's just might be the best! We didn't even ride very many miles and the numbers of people I saw in wheelchairs recreating just floored me. Dog walking was very popular.  The newest wrinkle?  An entire tent set up for children to get free haircuts! Estupdeno! as I am now fond of saying.

Of course there is a Streetfilm coming in a few weeks, but to tide you over here is just a small tease of the amazing hula-hooping we saw at one activity stop:

Streetfilms Shorties - Hula hooping at RecreActiva (Guadalajara) from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

I was also incredibly lucky that Gil took some photos of me in action. We have so few of us actually doing our job. I happily share a few here and end my write up.  But there's so much more to talk about.  Stay tuned and check back for the Streetfilms that will debut over the next few weeks. Can't miss 'em!