Wheels To Reels, Indoor Bike Racing

From the email.

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Wednesday February 1, 2012 from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM EST

Where

Giant Cycling World
11 Kilmarnock St
Boston, MA 02215

Boston Cyclists Union and Smuttynose Brewery present: Wheels to Reels

Wheels: 6pm-7pm

Race head to head in a stationary sprint! Bikes are wired to Open Sprints racing software so you can see real time data as you power against friend (or foe) next to you. This is the ultimate in stationary bike racing! You must RSVP to race. Races are scheduled in advance so please email us with special requests.

Reels: 7:15pm – 9:30pm

Catch your breath, sit back with a brew and popcorn, and enjoy classic bike and kung-fu film Pedicab Driver!

This month’s Wheels to Reels is presented by the Boston Cyclists Union.

The Boston Cyclists Union is a membership organization that grows in influence with each new member it gains. Help improve your own bike commute and get more riders to join you on the road by joining here:
http://bostoncyclistsunion.org/memberjoin.php

RSVP here:
http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=lkyvqkiab&oeidk=a07e5hx3su1c0b4be50

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The Social Life Of Small Urban Spaces

From JP Bikes, looks like a good time.

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Come to the Connolly Library in JP on Monday Jan. 9th at 5:30 for this excellent documentary and forum on how people use public spaces. It’s especially relevant given all of the local efforts to rework local street networks into more pedestrian and bike friendly environments.

more info

Description

The Boston Cyclists Union, JP Bikes and LivableStreets Alliance invite you to watch and discuss with an expert forum the classic 1980 one-hour documentary “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” by the witty journalist William H. Whyte. This documentary surprised everyone with its revelations on how people actually use public spaces, and what makes them use some more and some less, and it’s super fun to watch. If you’ve ever enjoyed people-watching on a sunny day—this is the ultimate version, early 80s style.

Afterward, discuss the movie and the future of place-making in Boston with three renowned experts in different aspects of the built environment, Dr. Walter Willett, Aaron Naparstek, and Peter Furth. These three speakers come at the built environment from the fields of public health, medicine, transportation engineering, community organizing and journalism. It should be a very interesting evening!

Dr. Walter Willett MD DrPH is the Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, and Chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and also a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is considered one of the world’s experts on nutrition. Willett is the principal investigator of the second Nurse’s Health Study, a compilation of studies regarding older women’s health and risk factors for major chronic diseases. He has published over 1,000 scientific articles regarding various aspects of diet and disease and is the second most cited author in clinical medicine. In the public eye, Willett is perhaps best known for his 2001 book Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, which presents nutritional information and recommendations based on the currently available body of nutrition science.

Aaron Naparstek is the founder of Streetsblog (an online publication providing daily coverage of transportation with blogs in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Washington DC. Launched in 2006, Streetsblog has played a significant role in transforming New York City transportation policy as well as cities all over the world. Based in Brooklyn, Naparstek’s advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bike network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Peter G. Furth is a professor of engineering at Northeastern University and the author of “A Greenway Network for the Boston Area,” a study of the possibilities for an interconnected system of off-street paths in Boston, as well as several other studies regarding improving transit, bicycling, and walking conditions. His work led to the experimental sharrow (bicycle shared lane marking) with guidelines on Longwood Avenue in Brookline, and several other improvements for biking and walking in Boston and neighboring towns.

More on the movie: In the late 1970s, William H. Whyte, author of “The Organization Man” and the first to publish Jane Jacobs in Fortune Magazine, took a leave of absence from his job there to study one of the issues he’d always cared most passionately about: cities. He started with a simple topic: public plazas. His hometown of New York City had recently begun giving developers incentives to build public plazas to give people some breathing room in the crowded city and he decided to investigate which plazas worked. He took to the task like a scientist, setting up time-lapse cameras with digital clocks and making charts and graphs and notes. And the conclusions he came to surprised everyone. The result was this movie “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” and a book of the same title.

Visit JP Bikes

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Winterize Your Bicycle (Snacks And Free Beer!)

From the email.

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Free and open to all cyclists – Winterize with the Boston Cyclists Union and Giant Cycling World at 11 Kilmarnock Street across from the Landmark Center in Boston. Sunday Dec. 4th from 5-7pm. Learn how to extend your riding season with a collection of great tips for year-round cyclists. We’ll teach you the basics of: how to maintain your bicycle through the sleet and snow, how to ride safely on icy & slush-filled roads, how to stay visible in the dark, and how to stay warm and toasty. Hosted by Giant Cycling World with free snacks and beer for those of age.

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Public Meeting On Morton Street TONIGHT!

Got this in the email from dotbike, via the BCU

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Public meeting on Morton Street’s Future

Would a raised cycletrack like this one make it safe for you use Morton Street to bike to work? This meeting may be an ideal place to ask for one.

This meeting held by MassDOT is set to discuss several aspects of Morton Street on the border of Mattapan and Dorchester. This street has been identified by the city as wide enough to have a cycletrack (otherwise known as a physically separated bike lane) from Harvard Street to Shea Circle in Jamaica Plain (which would connect you to the bike path slated to be installed there along with the Casey Overpass, which would connect to the SW Corridor and all the way to Back Bay Station), but the state would need to hear from the community in order to install one.

We’ll leave it up to you, the residents of Dorchester and Mattapan, to decide if you’d like to step up to the microphone and suggest they do just that!

Here is what’s on the agenda (you can see why this might be an opportune moment, lots of related stuff!):

• Morton Street Bridge Replacement Project,
• Morton St. Roadway Safety Audit,
• Casey Overpass Planning Study
• MassDOT Job Training Opportunities

Here are the details:
Public Information Meeting
November 22, 2011
Mildred Ave. School Auditorium
3 Mildred Ave.
Mattapan MA.

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Bike N Bowl Ride

From the Boston Cyclists Union:

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Bike n Bowl Ride
Saturday, February 26 · 12:00pm – 5:00pm

Starting Location: Copley Square, intersection of Dartmouth & Boylston, across the street from Boston Public Library. 2nd Pick-Up Location: Riverway T Stop, Inbound at 12:45pm—

All this snow have you in the gutter? Its time to get out and go bowling with the Boston Cyclist Union.

Saturday Feb 26th, meet at Copley Sq at 12:00pm for a ride down to Ron’s Bowling/Ice Cream in Hyde Park. $10 gets you shoes and 2 games of candle pin, they even made us a special ice cream cake! Please bring cash since we had to pay in advance to reserve our spot. Bring lights for the ride home ITS THE LAW! Helmets encouraged, and a bicycle lock for when we are bowling. Bring extra money if you wish to buy pizza/snacks/drinks.

More info: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=188768411156838

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