San Francisco Does Sunday Streets
For two glorious Sundays, San Francisco closed streets along a stretch of its waterfront to cars – and opened them to humanity. A second "Sunday Streets San Francisco" event on September 14th reprised an August 31st street party, both of which saw thousands of people come out to run, skate, cycle, dance, or stroll their way through a cityscape transformed. Organizers styled the event of Bogota's
Ciclovia, as San Francisco became the latest U.S. city to participate in a growing movement to liberate urban space from automobiles.
Check out Streetswiki for more.
[intro music]
Wade Crowfoot: [00:12] So we are out here celebrating Sunday Streets, our second Sunday Streets in San Francisco, four and a half miles of fun, connecting two neighbourhoods that have never been connected before, our Bayview District in the southeast part of the city with Chinatown in the northeast part of the city, all along the city’s waterfront. Four and a half miles of free activities for people from very old to very young.
[music]
Cheryl Brinkman: [00:44] When you go out on the route, when there’s no cars and there are just people, people are friendlier, people are less stressed out, you don’t have that sound of a car behind you or car passing you too closely.
Speaker: [00:58] I’m having the most fun as I can. I’m having great fun and when I have fun I’m the happiest boy in the world, yay.
Cheryl Brinkman: [01:10] So it just… it feels different. It uses the streets. It brings people to places where they just don’t go.
Josephine Ma: [01:16] Sunday Street is sponsoring by the Mayor’s Office to promote health and everyone can enjoy dancing and all kinds of gongfu, and biking, walking, singing, everything.
[music]
Andy Thornley: [01:57] This is becoming a big thing in American cities from coast to coast. Of course the real inspiration is Bogota, Columbia, and the Ciclovia that’s been such a huge success there. But we’ve been certainly very much inspired by Portland’s play and New York City and their Summer Streets. A lot of other American cities are starting to do this The giant stadium actually has been opened up to the public, you can go inside and run the bases like you were Barry Bonds.
Speaker: [02:24] And they’re coming down the line, and it’s…
Andy Thornley: [02:30] You can get in and see what the stadium looks like, if it doesn’t have people in it, or except for you. I think that’s a lot of what we’re seeing on Sunday Streets is exposing people to parts of town that they never see.
[music]
David Miles: [02:56] That is the signature move of the godfather skating.
[music]
David Miles: [03:05]
One of the missions of Organisation is to provide recreational asphalt.
That’s what we call asphalt when there’s no cars on it, it becomes
a recreational resource for everybody to use. And so what we’re
trying to do…
