It's been eight months since this part of Broadway went car-free, and maybe it's hard to recall just how bad Times Square used to be for everyone walking around. To really appreciate what we have today, you've got to take a trip back in time to see the crowded, dangerous mess that used to fester at the crossroads of the world. Naturally, the moment calls for a Streetfilms retrospective.

Special thanks to Jonathan Weiner, without whom this past year would have been impossible. Thanks also to Katie Brodie and Nico Martin Presents for the great crew of smiling servers, impressive spread and delicious mash potatoes bar (which was quite the hit), B-Haul for the (Tasty) tunes, super volunteer Denyse Trepanier, the LGBT Center, Swirl Wine Bar, SFBC and its volunteers for weathering the rain to provide valet bike parking, Supervisor David Chiu, Supervisor Eric Mar, Judson True, Leah Shahum, Andy Thornley, Gabriel Metcalf, Chris Carlsson, Dave Snyder, John Hamilton (for the great Streetfilm you see above), Mike and Sarah Sonn, Brooke Dubose, Greg Riessen, Gary Fisher, and many, many more...

Here's to a wonderful 2010 and many more reasons to celebrate the San Francisco Bay Area and its improving public realm.

As you may have heard by now, we were graced by the presence of Veronica Moss, who barged in to interrupt our sales pitch to the attendees and express her own views about traffic and transportation.  Thankfully, Ben Fried and Sarah Goodyear of Streetsblog were there to ask her a few pointed questions, even though it probably didn't do much good.  So for those that couldn't make it, enjoy the always enteraining Veronica as she spouts her fountain of misinformation.

On Tuesday, January 19th we'll be hosting: “Streetfilms Spectacular 2010: A Celebration and Opportunity to Help Support the Future of Streetfilms” in the Penthouse at the Open Planning Project.

Come by and meet the team.  See what Streetfilms is working on. Give us feedback on what you’ve liked in the past and what you’d like to see us tackle in the future. And most importantly, learn about exciting new opportunities to fund part of our work!

And, as an extra once-in-a-lifetime treat, our very special guest will be A.U.T.O. lobbyist Veronica Moss (seen so scoundreliciously here driving her SUV and here bemoaning the new Times Square.)  When she got wind we were throwing a party, Ms. Moss told us “someone needs to be there to counter that propaganda stuff you guys produce."

So she’ll be holding a press conference.  We have no idea what to expect, but bring your questions.  And she promised if you are nice to her, she’s going to pose for photos afterwards.

Doors open at 6 pm and and the official program begins around 630 pm which will consist of speeches, films, and surprises.  We’ll have a bounty of snacks and drinks.  Buy a t-shirt.  We hope to see you there.  Click here to RSVP

Tuesday, January 19, 6-9pm
148 Lafayette Street
Take the L N, Q, R, W, 6, J or M trains to Canal Street.
M6 stops nearby at Broadway and Howard.

Bike Valet Parking provided by Transportation Alternatives.

On one of them, Streetfilms and Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton went for a whirl around lower Manhattan to see how the alert kept traffic flowing. In this light-hearted video, he shares his top ten things to be thankful for on gridlock alert days.

Beware: The next gridlock alert is Wednesday, December 23.

The choices were extremely diverse (only a few films got multiple mentions) which frankly surprised us. It would seem the popularity of some films, didn't necessarily make them the most popular in the minds of our voters.  Thanks to all the picks.  Hopefully we can make lots more in 2010, have a Happy New Year!

Janette Sadik-Khan (NYC DOT Commissioner): "It’s so hard, like choosing what to pick at my favorite chocolate store!  I'd select: The Search for the Zozo, Walk21, and Sands Street."

Brian Lehrer & Derek Tutschulte (The Brian Lehrer Show):  "The High Bridge gave us all a unique behind the scenes view of a New York treasure that few people ever get to see."

Jeff Mapes (author, Pedaling Revolution): "I like Rush Hour on the Hawthorne Bridge the best.  You so nicely captured the feel of something I know a lot about, having biked over that bridge in rush hour literally hundreds of times."

Laura Flanders (GRITtv): "For best series, the Brazil trilogy (ASCOBIKE, Curitiba's BRT, Jaime Lerner) was wonderful, [but] best one off: Scraper Bikes: Bike 4 Life Ride. Kids creating positive subculture, biking, and hip hop?  This was just great."

Mikael Colville-Andersen (Copenhagen Cycle Chic):  Carmageddon Averted in Herald Square.  "This film is great because of the enormity of the transformation and the visionary thoughts behind doing it."

Donald Shoup (professor, author "The High Cost of Free Parking"): "I vote for Bicycle Boulevards for NYC.  They seem like the most cost effective way for cities to make cycling easier, safer, and more enjoyable."

Diana Lind (Editor-in-chief, Next American City): "The video of a snowy Highline...it is real reminder of the New York that once was - and potential for any urban space to be reimaganied."

Gil Peñalosa (Executive Director, Walk & Bike for Life): "If an image is worth a thousand words, the Streetfilms site is worth billions. NYC DOT Explains Bike Lanes in the Big Apple shows that one size does not fit all [when it comes to bike facilities]."

Christine Berthet (über activist, Hell's Kitchen): "Veronica Moss in Times Square. She's just too much!"

Michael Graham Richard (editor Cars & Transportation, Treeghugger): "Copenhagen's Climate-Friendly, Bike-Friendly Streets.  The bike capital of the world can teach us a lot about how we can make our cities much better for people and the environment. Let's pay attention."

Kerri Martin (founder, Second Life Bikes): "I love that Streetfilms takes us to places like  The High Bridge: a gem of a walkway in our corner of the world that most of us have never been on but can dream for its opening and help work towards that possibility."

Elly Blue (Managing Editor, BikePortland): "My favorite shows Mark Gorton wading out into embattled crosswalks yelling 'How rude! Can you believe these people?' Way to point out that the 300lb moonwalking bear in the room has no clothes."

Eric Britton (and the World Streets team): "Ahem. Let me open the envelope here....the Gold goes to: Meet Veronica Moss, A.U.T.O. Lobbyist.  For sheer thoughtfulness and political daring, the Silver goes to: Jaime Lerner on Making Curitiba's First Pedestrian Street.  And on the grounds that no one but no one can resist him: Enrique Peñalosa Brings Inspiration to Boston gets the Bronze.

Carla Saulter (columnist, Bus Chick, Transit Authority): "Scraper Bikes. I have a secret weakness for macked out cars--candy paint, big wheels, hydraulics, the whole nine - and I love seeing this same energy directed at a form of travel I can actually respect.

Ben Fried (Editor, NYC Streetsblog): "Hudson River Crossings: Improving Bus Capacity. Captivating animation and stellar narration bring an under-appreciated congestion busting solution to life."

Jackie Douglas (Director, Livable Streets Alliance (Boston): "The Search for the Zozo. Creative, funny, and an exceptional cast of people working to create more livable streets around the world."

Shin-pei Tsay (Deputy Director, Transportation Alternatives) "There's no better way to see how far we've come in such a short time than to witness people, let alone the founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus, Earl Blumenauer, happily and safely bike around NYC."

Clarence Eckerson Jr. (Director, Streetfilms): "The Transformation of Madison Square.  I really didn't want to pick one of my own, but I so loved being there on a balmy February. I tried hard to translate that energy."

Robin Urban Smith (Associate, Streetfilms): "Seattle's Bus Chick. I love the personal and charming story of this bus enthusiast. I'm also a sucker for the bus graphics!

If you want to leave your own personal pick for favorite Streetfilm of 2009 please do so in the comments field.  And if you have suggestions for places we should visit or subjects to tackle next year, feel free to start a list.

Clarence Eckerson Jr, Director of Streetfilms and star of Clarence the Traffic Calming Sasquatch, and Lily Bernheimer, Livable Streets Community Producer, and star of How to Get Your NYC Bike Racks, are on a panel of judges that will help decide the grand-prize winner of a 10 day all expense paid bike tour of Tuscany.  So help Clarence and Lily decide by voting for your favorite photos here!

We'll also be offering up some opportunities to help sponsor some of Streetfilms work in 2010.  We want to be very ambitious, and so if you want to see our influence continue please consider helping us reach potential funders.

An invite will be posted here within a few weeks.  We will likely reach capacity early so you'll want to RSVP early!

Other upcoming events: Streetfilms will be at Metro Gallery in Baltimore on January 5th for an event c0-hosted by Envision Baltimore and Friends of the Charles St. Trolley.  If you are anywhere in the region we encourage you to come by.  In addition, we are trying to set up another event in central New Jersey the next night on January 6th.  So stay tuned!

We’ve seen lots of new, innovative bikeway designs appear on New York City streets over the past few years. But, there’s one very promising concept we haven’t seen – bicycle boulevards. Bicycle boulevard design uses a variety of techniques to create low-traffic, low-speed streets where cyclists mix comfortably with cars. They’re very popular in Portland and Berkeley, two cities with high bicycle mode-share. Here in New York, though, they don’t seem to be part of the playbook yet. In this Streetfilm we ask: Why not?

We spoke to Mia Birk, who helped introduce bicycle boulevards to Portland. She’s also the co-author of a new guidebook to bike boulevard design. Here we explore some of the concepts in the guidebook and show how they might be applied to New York. Outside Manhattan, especially, important cycling routes could benefit from the bicycle boulevard treatment. ]]> http://www.streetfilms.org/bicycle-boulevards4nyc/feed/ 17 http://www.streetfilms.org/the-view-from-atop-the-high-bridge/ http://www.streetfilms.org/the-view-from-atop-the-high-bridge/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:28:13 +0000 Clarence Eckerson, Jr. http://www.streetfilms.org/?p=21901 Back in October as part of the Walk21 conference, I was very lucky to be able to accompany a small group of international pedestrian experts on an exclusive walking tour of the High Bridge, which has been closed to the public for nearly 40 years. Since Streetfilms is all about sharing, we interviewed a few folks-in-the-know and have posted the breathtaking experience of what it was like being up there.

Not soon after starting as a volunteer for Transportation Alternatives back in the 1990s I can recall reading of a push to open the High Bridge during a postcard campaign directed at then Parks Commissioner Henry Stern in 1998. In the years since, there have been many community groups, non-profits, and public agencies which have gotten involved in raising public awareness and advocating for its re-opening. City Parks Foundation, The High Bridge Coalition, and C.L.I.M.B. just to name a few.

Although over the years there have been many announced target opening dates and talk of getting the capital funds needed, of recent there is much momentum. Very early in 2010, community input and design will finally begin. Then we can hope it will not be long until we can all walk and bike across this magnificent structure.

There is so much bike love out there and it is awesome to see it expressed in funny and beautifully produced biking shorts.

Since many more people wanted to attend than could cram into the theater, Streetfilms decided to put our new community video section to good use. You'll find the five PSA video winners along with a few other Biking Rules PSAs we found on YouTube. "A Love Mucycle," is bit long compared to the others but, definitely worth a watch.

And now, the winners:

In the HD/HDV Biking Rules "Street Code" category, the grand prize was divided between two films:
*"Wrong Way" Directed by Sean Donnelly & Abbey Luck
*"Lights Turn Heads" Directed by Aldo Arias & Pam Tietze

"Gear Up: Safety 'n' You," directed by Philip Chernyak & Nora Wolf, took the prize for best"Why Biking Rules" video in HD/HDV

Best DIY "Why Biking Rules" PSA went to Paco Abraham & Daniel Latorre for "Revolution."

Best DIY "Street Code" PSA was snagged by Yoni Brook for "Eyes."

Naturally since she advocates for cars for a living with her every breath, her viewpoints are bound to rankle some of those in the livable streets camp.  Here are a few splendiforous musings as she reminisced about the "old" Times Square - where visitors "had to fight" for every last inch of space:

• "Pedestrians are cystic acne on the teenage forehead of this city."
• "I used to feel this wonderful sense of being totally overwhelmed and being displaced when I walked through Times Square.  And that's how it should feel."

Of course, that's nothing new for Ms. Moss, who first appeared on Streetfillms a few months ago in an "exclusive" interview to let us know how she feels about cyclists and pedestrians.

Lind argues that transit enhances national security, promotes economic development, helps maintain conservatives values, builds community, and gets people to jobs. Streetsblog readers won't want to miss his critique of highway spending as a massive government intervention.

First in Seattle, bike-riding campaigner Mike McGinn has pulled off a big upset to become the new Mayor-elect.  Though he brings a pro-transit, more livable city message into office, we are particularly proud that on the front page of his campaign website he featured our Streetfilm  "San Francisco: The Removal of the Embarcadero Freeway" which last time we checked a few months ago only had about half the views of the over 10K it has now.  Way to go Mayor-elect Mike!

Today also brought a great note from the Active Transportation Alliance (formerly Chicagoland) telling us they recently got to screen lots of Streetfilms video in front of Mayor Daley who loved it.  They said the footage had a tremendous impact on their meeting and helped visualize their agenda.

Relatedly, who can forget last year we also had this great comment from Leah Shahum, Executive Director of SF Bike Coalition:

• "Streetfilms' Ciclovia video was critical in our efforts to engage city leaders to start our own Sunday Streets program. Showing the video to our Mayor [Gavin Newsom] was the next best thing to flying him to Bogota to witness the joys of Ciclovia firsthand. The success of San Francisco's Sunday Streets owes a great debt to Streetfilms' pioneering work.

To read other Streetfilms praise, we suggest you go here. We just love that page.

Of course much of that can be attributed to NYC installing 200 miles of bike routes in the past three years, including innovative amenities such as the 8th and 9th Avenue cycletracks that separate car traffic from bikers. Safer streets encourage more people to ride, more riders encourage more people to ride, more riders on the road means cyclists are more visible. It's a cycling mathematical equation that I'm sure "Cycling Al" Einstein would have approved of.

In fact, the numbers of cyclists on the roads have tripled since the year 2000. So we thought it would be good to get a reality check from riders as to how it is going out there.  Overwhelmingly, folks we interviewed said it is getting quite crowded out there on our streets and bridges and in most ways that's a good thing!

Rep. Earl Blumenauer dropped by Transportation Alternatives' offices to take a quick excursion around mid-town with Executive Director, Paul Steely White, and Senior Policy Director, Noah Budnick. They checked out a few standard (painted) bike lanes and some of the newer (physically separated) facilities, of which the latter Mr. Blumenauer thought were superior. Along the way he offered much commentary about the state of biking and livable streets in the nation.

With a new, Congressional transportation bill due to percolate to the surface sometime in the near future, Mr. Blumenauer believes the next decade will be the one when we can finally achieve some balance for pedestrians, bikes, and livable streets.  For the sake of our planet, our health, and the green growth of our cities - cheers to that.

For a young international movement, 350 is a rallying cry, an organizing principle. On October 24^th, climate activists in over 180 countries with the group 350.org staged more than 5,200 demonstrations, pressuring world leaders to take meaningful action on global warming at upcoming United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen. In San Francisco, a ride of 350 cyclists in snorkels and flippers gathered at a downtown rally and traced a route through Bay-side neighborhoods threatened by rising sea levels.

Critics of the movement say the goal of stabilizing the atmosphere is too ambitious, and that even a cap of 450 parts per million would be difficult to achieve with curbs on carbon emissions. But the heated debate on the political possibilities of climate action is up against cold, hard, science.

The head of UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, recently endorsed the goal of cutting emissions to 350 parts per million or less. Pachauri, who in 2007 split the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore, was not able to advocate for any specific goals as chair of the IPCC, “but as  a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target."

The first change you'll probably notice: our home page now features a plethora of category buttons to allow you to see a slate of 15 videos per page.  Our "player window" swaps out with each click, so you never have to leave this page (to still see a film's full deets and viewer comments you can click on the video's title or "READ THE FULL POST".)

One new exciting wrinkle is that we will be able to feature more of other people's great work that you have been sending us. We will curate these videos as often as possible, so if you have done a video you want us to consider or have a YouTube fav,  please by all means send us a link.

Oh, and another thing, this is just our first wave of changes, we'll be following up with another wave in a few weeks with more features and tweaks and we need your feedback before then.  So just comment on this article or e-mail us directly.  All accolades and criticism will be plenty appreciated.

Finally, there are plenty of sharing options: don't forget we are now posting most of our films on our StreetfilmsVlog Youtube account and also podcasting on Apple iTunes.  And for you social media addicts, join our Twitter and Facebook pages, where we will let you know first about new films the moment they post.