Life in the Trike Lane

A couple weeks ago – on Sunday, March 28th, to be exact – Gregg & I triked over the Manhattan Bridge to Kensington (Brooklyn) to help kick off the Prospect Avenue Farm. The event announcement said to bring rakes and shovels…and it’s pretty hard to balance rakes and shovels while riding a two-wheeler…so we figured we’d travel by trike!

Gregg's so used to trike-versing the Manhattan Bridge, he does it with his eyes closed!

About 100 people showed up to clear brush, prep terraces for planting, and create an area for composting. Tom Angotti – who owns the steeply sloped farm-to-be abutting the Seeley Street Bridge – is currently getting the soil tested, and planning a CSA for next year. Community composting is in the works, as is another work day: Sunday, April 18th, from 9am to 1pm. (Write to tangotti@nyc.rr.com for more info.)

Pick-up trike at Prospect Avenue Farm, with the Seeley Street Bridge in the background

Here’s to community involvement, organic transport, and growing food where you live!

All the bike has to do is sit there & look pretty!

See the yellow oval bikon (new word, freshly coined, short for “bike icon”!) on the motor weapon’s rear panel? It’s a schematic drawing of the Long Haul cargo bike, manufactured by Human Powered Machines in Eugene, Oregon. The company deploying the motor weapon is Checker Courier, based on East 11th Street. From looking at their website, you’d think they ran cargo bikes exclusively. Not! But they sure do play up the valor thereof.

And they’re not alone. Upper Crust Pizzeria, in Boston, sports a tuxedoed pedaler in its bikon – and delivers catering via motor weapon. Butter Lane (for which RR did deliver a number of cupcakes, back in the day) features a Long John cargo bike as its clickable “Delivery” bikon. When’s New Belgium Brewing Company going to get its ranger on a rickshaw van, so he can really be a hero?

Come on, people! You talk the talk – you flaunt the bikon – how about you get in the saddle and pedal the pedal?

Thanks to the gobs of people descending on Manhattan for the parade, St. Patrick’s Day tends to be a bonanza for pedicab drivers. Huge crowds + too few yellow cabs + intensive revelry = lots of rides and, with luck, big tips. Even I – dilettante pedicabbie that I am – plied the streets for a couple hours. A very kind passenger with shamrocks on his tie told me his juant from 46th & 7th to West 4th & 7th wasn’t his first pedicab ride but it was his best (and gave me a big tip too).

Gregg – a professional pedicab driver for six and a half years now – was out raking in the green as well. Here’s a cab-ful of his pleased passengers:

Nothing beats an open-air cruise with your gal pals on St. Paddy's Day!

How’s that going?

RR received (from a fellow NYCPOA member) this photo of a sign posted at a pedicab stand in Central Park. I have a map showing locations of eight pedicab stands scattered throughout the park, from east to west, between 59th and 77th Streets. The top of my map is cut off – perhaps there are a couple more stands on Central Park West?

I’m wondering a few things, in relation to this new program:

Are the stands helping or hindering business for Central Park pedicab drivers? Are pedicab drivers and/or patrons actually using the stands? Are they distributed in a way that’s consonant with the demand for them? How strict is enforcement, i.e., are pedicab drivers getting tickets for soliciting at other locations?

In general, I think pedicab stands are a great idea. They help legitimize pedicabs as a means of transportation, and they let taxi-hailers know that they have an option other than taking a gas-guzzling motor weapon. I’d love to see pedicab stands at Penn Station, Grand Central, and so on.

If any pedicab drivers – or pedicab passengers – have firsthand experience of how the stands are working, please, by all means, post comments! (I myself, being a crowd-and-tourist-averse native New Yorker, set foot in Central Park maybe five times a year.)

Sign posted at Central Park pedicab stand

RR will celebrate Bike Month (May) with our first ever slide presentation on organic transport for New York. The event will take place on Tuesday, May 11th at The Commons, a newly minted and super cool hive of urban permaculture activity on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. We’re hoping to reach a new crowd of potential pedicab drivers, rickshaw van renters, and pedal power enthusiasts. Which Brooklyn-based business will be first to take the plunge into rickshaw delivery? Who among the hip, young multitudes is ready to ride a giant trike for a living? We can’t wait to find out!

Helen pedals her very sporting sister from the Park Slope Food Coop to the World Trade Center PATH station.

RR just signed up for a table at Just Food’s CSA in NYC Conference, to be held at Teachers College (Columbia University) on Sunday, February 28th. We tabled at the Expo last year (see pictures below), and attended a highly informative workshop on starting/marketing a CSA.

As you can see in the first photo, we were bold/foolish enough to ride a cargo trike way the hell up to 120th Street and then, upon discovering that it wouldn’t fit through the elevator doors, lug it (with help from generous bystanders) up and then back down a couple flights of stairs. This year we will be leaving the trikes at the depot, but we will be bringing along plenty of information about how RR can meet all your Local Organic Logistics needs!

Come on out to the conference and pay us a visit, while participating in a wonderful farm-to-city extravaganza and meeting the fine folks at Just Food. Now that’s what I (in permaculture parlance) call stacking functions!

Gregg with literature & rickshaw van

Delicious organic gingerbread (icing colored by turmeric and chlorophyll) on offer at CSA Conference 2009. Who knows what treats will appear this year....

RR moved to its current location – 432 West 31st Street between 9th & Dyer Avenues – about sixteen months ago. We painted the storefront gold and green, and added an RR crest to the door. However: It was still eminently possible for passersby not to register our presence.

Not anymore!

Now every driver, walker, cyclist and Megabus rider rolling down 31st Street will know the Revolution has arrived! And will not be motorized!

Stop by and visit sometime….

Revolution Rickshaws: Organic Transport & Mobile Branding