Pittsburgh's New Angle on Christmas Homeless Giving

Wed 12.09.2015 5m
Thurs 12.10.2015 28m
Fri 12.11.2015 26m

Wed was a short ride, just around Squirrel Hill but it prompted a concept by YaleC about localized sharrows markings for Squill:

The Roberto Clemente Bridge and Millvale have already implemented customized sharrows and bike lane markers. I think Yale's idea would be a great contribution to the Squirrel Hill bike-ped plan.

Friday I started riding with RC. We rode around SouthSide, the Bluff, Duquesne Univ. As we rode out along the north bank of the Allegheny River I was startled to see an implementaion of back-in angle parking which is a fairly new concept and bleeding-edge by Pittsburgh standards.


Under the 31st Street bridge, on the North Shore Trail side, there's a Christmas Tree for gifts for the homeless. Along the top of the photo you'll see some cases of PopTarts, granola bars, trail mix, a bag of apples, bottled water, and other gifts.



There's another one on the SouthSide Trail, under the 10th Street bridge. The initiative for the project comes from a small business called The County Line. I think it's an excellent concept.



"new angle" for "Christmas giving", I see what I did there.

Homeless Colorforms and an Errant Autopod: What Belongs, What Doesn't; Who Decides

9.25.2015 44m

Started off in Pgh, met R. under the Birmingham Bridge. Although the mission was to ride out on the GAP and intercept MA, we had time for coffee and stopped at Big Dog. Wonderful / excellent as always.

Rode out through SouthSide and the Waterfront when R's phone rang and he needed to get home. Continued solo.

Reached Boston PA by the green boxcar, our designated muster point. Got to chill for a bit while MA rode inbound. I've been having a creaking noise in the general vicinity of my bottom bracket, so to eliminate some causes I lubed the chain and then the pedals, but the creaking persisted.

MA arrived and we stopped for more coffee at the Boston Shoppes Tea Room.

Rode into Pittsburgh. Had an essential Pittsburgh experience: my friend Bryan saw/heard me coming by and caught up to say, wow what's your bottom bracket doing? I love that.

Rode to the Point. Saw two young, apparently middle-class white folks, maybe college students or Uber drivers, taking a nap in the park. It was a beautiful afternoon. A lovely scene.



This is (sorry) my recurring mind-irritant: how much would you have to change to make them objectionable homeless people, whom the authorities would tell to move along? Imagine if we had Public Space Colorforms™ we could use to modify the situation and then be able to calculate the exact tipping point between "acceptable Privilege taking a nap" and "unacceptable HomelessPerson who needs to be sent away"?



I'm afraid the easiest marginal change for the tipping point would be to make their skin a bit darker, make their clothing a bit frayed, and remove the trappings of class and economic status. Arghhh.

Out along the south bank of the Allegheny to the Convention Center (where the waterfalls and rainbow were working!) Inbound along the Penn Ave bike lane, where we encountered this:



These Autopods aren't supposed to be in the bike lanes. This one had a mechanical failure and was sitting in the bike lanes. Argghhhhh. They're not bikes. They don't meet the PA definition of an ebike. They don't meet the definition of a pedicab. Somehow, the local company that makes and sells them tells people they're street legal and I think that's completely false. (They probably do meet the Fed standard for ebikes, but they weigh too much for the PA ebike definition).

I don't care about one Autopod. But I don't want gas-powered Vespas, or very light motorcycles, or golfcarts in the bike trails. Don't want a bike-framed hot dog stand slowly riding along the bike lane and stopping when somebody wants a Hebrew National (my fave). Don't want the Beer Peddler in the bike lane. If we/they don't enforce standards, it's a slippery slope!

And so here I am, stuck twice on: what belongs and what doesn't? And I have to admit my own preferences are showing.

At the end of the Penn Ave bike lane, we transitioned across Market Square, PPG Place, and the Smithfield Street bridge. Out the Southside trail to the marina, then went over to OTB for lunch. I was amazed that MA hadn't had anything to eat outside of a muffin when he was sixty miles back.

Great ride. It was a treat to get to show off Pgh. And like all cyclists, I was left at the end of the day wondering about the clicking sound in my bottom bracket.

Viewshed Gentrification: Homeless Displacement

Tues 9.08 21m

Yesterday I wrote a post that mentioned my appreciation that Pittsburgh (city, county) doesn't roust homeless people. Today I saw that the Second Ave homeless camp is wiped clean, no trace; it's as if it never existed.

Turns out there is a cycle of complaints and evictions; when the City gets sufficient complaints, the police force the people off the site. That explains the recent appearance of tents under the 31st Street Bridge, and the outside sleeper by the Casino.

I don't know what the answer is to this. I don't like forced displacement and suppression because people don't like to see the homeless, to be reminded of their existence. I think they have a struggle to survive that's driven by a lot of different factors, and I don't know that society should be displacing them because of awkward optics. Call it "viewshed gentrification"; forced displacement with nobody moving in behind them, in an attempt to maintain pleasing visual sightlines.

I don't think there's any easy solution, although Utah has done some interesting stuff. But in the spirit of "first, do no harm" we could certainly not make things harder for these people in the interest of appearances.

Argghhhhh.

Rode from the Northside to Oakland. Crossed the tracks to see the lake in Panther Hollow for the first time. Descended and stopped at REI for socks, which somehow cost $20/pair. Stuffed them in my panniers, still reminding me of the tiny objective differences between myself and the homeless guys.

Rolled over to OTB Southside and met two cyclists pushing off for DC, planning a nine day trip. One was riding a CoMotion step-through I've been seeing at Golden Triangle, a very sweet bike. Back to the Bastille and feeling the heat.