Streetfilms | Tykes Take the Streets: Kids Art Bike Parade

Tykes Take the Streets: Kids Art Bike Parade

by on October 18, 2007 | 3,543 Plays

This past Saturday, over 100 children, along with parents & advocates rode their beautifully adorned bike machines in the first annual Kids Art Bike Ride For the Lower East Side.

The event was hosted by The East Village Community Coalition in cooperation with Transportation Alternatives, Recycle-A-Bicycle, Bike New York, The Lower East Side Girls Club and a slew of other amazing groups too numerous to name. Many public and elected officials turned out to join the festivities.

Following a bike decorating workshop and a bike helmet give away by the NYC DOT, the event took participants on a 30 minute ride through the streets of the East Village, including a trip down the 2nd Avenue bike lane! With spirits high and smiles wide, children, some who had never had the chance to ride NYC's streets using pedal power before, got a glimpse of what a more equitable use of city streets could be like.

Show Transcript

[intro music] Susan: [00:15] Oh I think it’s fantastic, I mean look at all the bikes. They look great, and everyone’s having a great time. But if it’s not bikes we’re getting, kids helmets, we’re decorating bikes. Yeah, so we have some t-shirts for sale. Children’s Art Museum is over here helping them decorate bikes and we’re going to do a triangle as I’ve heard around the area, come back here and raffle off some prizes. Laida: [00:42] We’re with Recycle-A-Bicycle. We came along today to help some of the kids with their artsy bikes, that they might have trouble with some mechanical aspects of the bike. So we brought some wrenches and a pump to help them out so they don’t have problems along the ride. And also to check out what cool rides they’ve made. Ilona Lubman: [01:02] We’re very excited to be here today and everybody’s very enthusiastic about getting a helmet properly fitted. We encourage everybody to wear a helmet because we want everybody to be protected in the event that the unexpected should happen. Scott Stringer: [01:20] We have to create a level playing field and the way to do that is to keep cars out of Manhattan, create parks, great [unintelligible 01:26] centres, get people on bikes and let’s create an environment where our children will live longer, be healthy, do better in school, because they will conquer the environment. Nydia Velazquez: [01:38] We could provide safe streets for our children. They deserve to go and bike and this morning that is what we are going to prove. [music] Margarita Lopez: [02:20] If we engage the children of our community, maybe that’s the future. Maybe they get the agenda that they have to save this planet because [unintelligible 02:31] those had not done so good. [music] http://transcriptdivas.ca/transcription-canada/