"a tiny, but vocal segment' and LA Bike Lanes

A July 17, 2014 (yes, I'm trying to catch up on a backload of unfinished posts)  Los Angeles Times article, chronicled the problems of carrying out the LA bicycle plan. 

Last week, City Councilman Gil Cedillo announced he is halting work indefinitely on northbound and southbound bike lanes planned for a three-mile stretch of North Figueroa Street, despite an aggressive two-year campaign by cycling advocates.
Cedillo said he feared the loss of a single southbound car lane would slow emergency response times of police officers and firefighters on Figueroa, which runs roughly parallel to the 110 Freeway. He dismissed cyclists as a tiny but vocal segment of the population.  [emphasis added]

It's always a 'tiny but vocal segment' that gets things done.  These are the folks who care enough to work hard and get things done through the political process.  It's often these 'tiny, but vocal segment' folks versus the tiny, but rich segment who have the money to influence politicians.  And it's only a "tiny but vocal segment' when they oppose you.  When they are on your side it's "democracy in action.' 







Here's the 'bike lane' I ride on part of my route to Venice Beach when I'm at my mom's.  It doesn't even have a line to separate the bikes from the cars.   If it did, there wouldn't be enough room for the cars.  It's a dance between drivers and riders.  It's only about 3/4 of a mile stretch like this with lots of stop signs so the cars are going slowly. It's the most direct route.  But I have to be constantly watching for car doors that could open in front of me and I pray that the drivers aren't going to clip me.


Here's what it looks like from the bike. 

The article sums up the opposing sides:  

Bicycle advocates have long argued that the addition of dedicated lanes can achieve multiple goals: spurring more people to take up cycling — and reducing the number of cars on the road — while calming traffic in a way that cuts down on accidents and keeps drivers within the speed limit.
Opponents argue that too few bicyclists are on the road to justify the loss of so many car lanes and the suffering that comes with lengthier commutes.

I'd say this was a pretty narrow view of things.  The real problem is that transportation infrastructure in LA (and elsewhere) was created for the automobile.  Trolly tracks in LA were pulled out in the 50's to make more room for cars.

Bikes need to have their own, car-free, paths.  Not simply for recreation, but for transportation.  They do in the Netherlands, and to some extent in Anchorage and Portland and other places.  And along the beach at Venice and Santa Monica.

Below is the dedicated bike lane along Santa Monica beach.  No motorized vehicles.  (Well, that's not completely accurate - people ride rented Segways there too.)  There's a separate path for pedestrians, though there are parts of the path where there are both pedestrians and bikes.  This path is full of bikers of all ages, ethnicities, and economic backgrounds.  People like to bike.  And they will when it's safe.

If there were lanes like this that all over LA (or fill in whatever city) that riders could use to commute, there'd eventually be a lot fewer cars on the road, a lot less space used up for parking, a lot less carbon fuel used, and a lot of people who'd get good exercise on a daily basis.  

Making bike lanes on streets built for and still dominated by cars will always be a poor way to go.  It's a makeshift adjustment that leaves cyclists in mortal danger and pisses off drivers.  In already existing cities, my guess is that eventually some streets will become bike only routes, with a lane restricted to cars that live or deliver on that block.

Without exclusive bike routes, cycling can only grow so much.  Biking in traffic is for those who still believe in their own immortality or are knowingly risking their lives to be pioneers for future generations of non-motorized transportation options.

Not everyone can ride a bike to work.  Not everyone can ride a work every day.  But a lot more people can than do.  Some of the barriers are mental - it's not part of their mental habits to think about biking to work.  But most barriers are bad infrastructure - like sketchy bike lines that suddenly disappear and don't deal with the need for cars to make right turns and don't really separate cars from bikes.  

Why I Live Here - Giving Guests A Great Meal And A Near Moose

We had some out of town guests - up on a cruise - to entertain for the evening.  We decided on Kincaid Grill because it's near Kincaid Park, and maybe we could find them a moose.  They seemed very pleased with the meal and I was too. 

This was my salmon - one of the evening's specials.






But we couldn't find them a moose at Kincaid.  But Glen Alps was the next destination.  We walked to Powerline trail and I did find them a couple of moose grazing way, way out in the distance that you could see in the binoculars.  Not great, but the view was spectacular along Powerline Pass and there were two moose.




And then on our way back to drop them off at their hotel, we passed a moose on the side of the road and they got as close to a moose as they could reasonably want to be.

Generally, I try to confirm people's beliefs that Anchorage is the frozen wasteland year round.  But a great dinner followed by a walk in the mountains and a near moose is one of the reasons I still live here.

I don't usually have two "Why I Live Here" posts in a row, but sometimes I just can't help myself.  

Why I Live Here - Salmon, Politics, and Food

It's another beautiful sunny Anchorage day.  Mid 70s, blue skies, like yesterday when I went for a bike ride to stretch my muscles a bit.  There were salmon coming up Campbell Creek. I didn't get a good picture with fish, but here's the creek, looking toward Lake Otis Blvd from one of the bridges. People are in the water in the background.

Then, not too far away, a group of folks were holding signs for Russ Millette who's running for governor as a Tea Party Republican.  I'd talked to Russ on the phone when I posted about his signs being defaced and this was the first time I got to meet him.  It was very cordial.  I'm convinced that if you meet the right way - and that includes being respectful - you can have decent relationships with people even if you disagree with them politically.  A lot of the acrimony today, I'm sure, is from people feeling unrespected as a human being.  And that leads to returning disrepect.  Until things are much harder to repair. 

I even suggested to Russ that his name was too small on those signs for drivers to catch as they go by.  He agreed and said Governor needed to be bigger too.  Russ in in the red and white plaid shirt.

And then, just a minute or two down the block, I stopped at Namaste, which has changed hands, to get some take out 'Himalyan' food.  

The prices might look a bit steep, but the food was delicious and the portions enough for another meal - for us anyway. 

If it looks like I'm giving Millette a lot of attention here, it's not intentional.  A lot of times I simply post what I happen to see along my path. 

The Alaska (in name only) Film Awards Shrinking List Of Winners

The 2014 'winners' are now listed for this 'Awards' scheme.  I've written about this ripoff of the name Alaska film event at length and been threatened by their attorney.

Their only link to Alaska was a "suite" at a commercial mail forwarding company in Anchorage, some of the photos on their website (and I'm not sure of their Alaska authenticity), and the names of some of their awards.

There is no festival (they did change their name to 'awards') and no showing of films.  They do tell film makers there is no festival, but the Alaska name is highly misleading and confuses people who think they are sending films to the legitimate Anchorage International Film Festival.  (To be completely transparent, I'll mention that I cover the AIFF on the blog here, the festival links to my blog, and they give me a pass to the festival.)

Below is a list of the Film Awards winners.  Note:  there is a total of eleven winners in the film competition and four in the screenplay competition.  This is a sharp decline from their 47 film awards and 15 screenplay awards in 2010.

I'd like to think this reflects more awareness among filmmakers that this is really a vanity film festival where people can pay for awards.  But it's hard to tell, since there is no list of films that were submitted.  We don't know if every film submitted got an award or not.

 

Film Competition

Grand Jury Award: A Frenchman in Barrow directed by Paul Peterson
Special Jury Award: Parallel Maze directed by Ya Hua
Kodiak Award: Slushamed directed by Marisa McInnes-Taylor and Mara De La Rosa
Denali Award: Reestablishment directed by Shi Qin
Best Narrative Feature: Let's Play Ghost directed by Damien Dematra
Best Documentary Feature: God Has Arrived directed by John Urich-Sass
Best Director: Deep Water directed by Daniel Zagaevsky
Best Narrative Short: Roulette directed by Christine Kelly
Best Student Film: Shtax'heen Kwaan: A Rededication directed by Kristin Galla
Best Music Video: Fade Away directed by Jethro Rothe-Kushel
Best of Alaska Award: The Meaning of Wild directed by Ben Hamilton

Screenplay Competition

1st Place Screenplay - "Grace" written by Lynda Lemberg and Jeffrey Allen Russel
2nd Place Screenplay - "Taco Day in Heaven" written by Paul Peterson
3rd Place Screenplay - "Polar Bear" written by Alexander Norton
4th Place Screenplay - "Zoo" written by Annemarie Lawless

I've contacted some of the winners listed here and they've confirmed that, again, this year, in order to get their prizes they have to pay for them - not a practice of legitimate film festivals.  One of the directors listed said he didn't even know his film had been submitted, let alone that it won, though he allowed that someone else involved may have submitted it.

My hope is, as I mentioned above, that the declining number of winners means film makers are more aware of scam film events and aren't submitting to them.  If you look at the film that won the Grand Jury prize, you'll see that the quality of films isn't great.  (It's apparently a student film from Barrow and as such is fine, but it's hardly a Grand Jury prize winner.  And one might ask the Alaska International Film Awards folks who exactly makes us their Grand Jury?  And even if there is a Grand Jury?  Or is that just some fancy name with no actual Grand Jury?

Some of the other winners do seem to be serious films that have won prizes at legitimate festivals and would have been accepted in the serious Anchorage International Film Festival.  A number of these films have Alaskan themes and were purposely submitted to what they thought was an Alaska based film festival.  Deep Water was filmed in Alaska as were a couple of others.    These are films that would have been submitted to the Anchorage International Film Festival where people in Anchorage would actually have been able to see them.

I should note that there are also some other, smaller, legitimate Alaska film festivals such as the Indigenous World Film Festival.

Back Into Anchorage

We flew in a little after midnight.  It's nearly the end of July, over a month past the solstice,  but it was still early twilight.  The bump on the horizon in the middle is Denali.  Anchorage is the foreground - most of Anchorage is actually to the right of the actual picture.  The 'lights' in the Matanuska Valley across the inlet from Anchorage, in the background,  are small bodies of water reflecting the sky.

A little earlier, we were over Prince William Sound and Denali and Foraker (to the left) were more visible. 

My better camera was in the overhead, so I had to make do with my Canon Powershot. It's a little grainy, but you get a sense of the magical view I had.

I'm starting to feel like my life is one continuous departure, but it was good to see my mom and, on the way home, my daughter and granddaughter and the rest of their family.

Blogging Payoffs - Getting Help On Details Of Anchorage Ice Sculpture For French Book On Carl Nesjar

I've learned that blogs can get bits of information out into the world where others can find them.  I don't have to write a book, I can just post tidbits that others sometimes find useful.

Yesterday I got an email from Dr. Thierry Kozak in Paris.  He said he is writing a catalog of Carl Nesjar - who is now 94 - ice fountains and he found my pictures and brief description of the Anchorage ice sculpture and asked for help getting more documentation.

Nesjar Fountain Anchorage - Winter

So, I'm posting this in hopes that others who know about the sculpture and its origins and history might email me to make contact with Dr. Kozak.

The book will have two parts:

Part 1:  An overview of all of the 20 Nesjar fountains in the world.  (Four are in the United States.)

Part 2:  A history of each individual fountain.  (This will be the bulk of the book.)

For Anchorage, he only has, so far, my 2009 blog post.  Below I've paraphrased some of the things he'd like to know from us about the Anchorage sculpture:

If there are:

• drawings
• preparatory studies
• maquettes (Carl often made little models of his fountains)

Also: 

• the name of the owner of the fountain [I think the Municipality owns it]
• the name of the agency who commissioned the work
• the sizes of the fountain
• the dates (commission, completion, inauguration, restoration of the monument...)
• official letters between Nesjar and the organization
• list of the authors who have written about the work

In my original post, artist Catherine Senungetuk mentioned in a comment that she met Carl Nesjar when he was in Anchorage working on the sculpture because her friend Robert Pfitzenmeier helped Nesjar build the fountain.  Unfortunately, Catherine is no longer with us, but I'm trying to contact Pfitzenmeier.

Nesjar Fountain Anchorage - Summer

I'm sure there are people in Anchorage - at Loussac Library, the Municipality, the 1% for the Arts program, the museum, other artists, the group that raised funds to restore the fountain - who can offer bits and pieces of information that would be helpful to Kozak.








Here's a bit of video with Carl Nesjar, some of his fountains, and there's even a bit with Dr. Kozak. Don't worry about it being in French. They don't say much. It's got lots of
pictures. 

 


I'm hoping people reading this will alert them about this so they can respond.  This is good for Nesjar, for awareness of northern art, and for Anchorage too.  People travel for many different reasons - to see famous sights, to see birds, to climb mountains, etc.  I imagine that there will be people who come to Anchorage to see the Nesjar sculpture when the read about it in Kozak's book.  At least it will be one of the reasons they come here instead of somewhere else.



It's always rewarding to learn that someone, somewhere finds the scraps I'm posting to be useful. 

Blogging Payoffs - Getting Help On Details Of Anchorage Ice Sculpture For French Book On Carl Nesjar

I've learned that blogs can get bits of information out into the world where others can find them.  I don't have to write a book, I can just post tidbits that others sometimes find useful.

Yesterday I got an email from Dr. Thierry Kozak in Paris.  He said he is writing a catalog of Carl Nesjar - who is now 94 - ice fountains and he found my pictures and brief description of the Anchorage ice sculpture and asked for help getting more documentation.

Nesjar Fountain Anchorage - Winter

So, I'm posting this in hopes that others who know about the sculpture and its origins and history might email me to make contact with Dr. Kozak.

The book will have two parts:

Part 1:  An overview of all of the 20 Nesjar fountains in the world.  (Four are in the United States.)

Part 2:  A history of each individual fountain.  (This will be the bulk of the book.)

For Anchorage, he only has, so far, my 2009 blog post.  Below I've paraphrased some of the things he'd like to know from us about the Anchorage sculpture:

If there are:

• drawings
• preparatory studies
• maquettes (Carl often made little models of his fountains)

Also: 

• the name of the owner of the fountain [I think the Municipality owns it]
• the name of the agency who commissioned the work
• the sizes of the fountain
• the dates (commission, completion, inauguration, restoration of the monument...)
• official letters between Nesjar and the organization
• list of the authors who have written about the work

In my original post, artist Catherine Senungetuk mentioned in a comment that she met Carl Nesjar when he was in Anchorage working on the sculpture because her friend Robert Pfitzenmeier helped Nesjar build the fountain.  Unfortunately, Catherine is no longer with us, but I'm trying to contact Pfitzenmeier.

Nesjar Fountain Anchorage - Summer

I'm sure there are people in Anchorage - at Loussac Library, the Municipality, the 1% for the Arts program, the museum, other artists, the group that raised funds to restore the fountain - who can offer bits and pieces of information that would be helpful to Kozak.

I'm hoping people reading this will alert them about this so they can respond.  This is good for Nesjar, for awareness of northern art, and for Anchorage too.  People travel for many different reasons - to see famous sights, to see birds, to climb mountains, etc.  I imagine that there will be people who come to Anchorage to see the Nesjar sculpture when the read about it in Kozak's book.  At least it will be one of the reasons they come here instead of somewhere else. 

It's always rewarding to learn that someone, somewhere finds the scraps I'm posting to be useful. 

Happy Birthday To Ropi, And Alex

And everyone else who shares a July 24 birthday.

This image comes originally from a wonderful painting by Andrew Glass.

Insect Art

About the artists:

Adult leaf miners can be moths, beetles, or flies, and the tunnelling patterns of their larvae vary depending on the nature of the insect. For example, an aspen serpentine leaf miner creates winding or meandering tunnels whereas a birch leaf miner creates large blotches. Serpentine miners are also known to attack herbaceous perennials such as columbine. For most deciduous ornamentals, leaf mining has a negative effect on appearance rather than on plant health. However, leaf miners also attack an array of vegetable crops and can have a detrimental effect on yield due to defoliation. They are particularly damaging to vegetable crops in which the leaves are consumed such as beet, spinach and Swiss chard.

A little more about the artists - they work in British Columbia.  These pieces are from summer 2014.   (There's some photoshopping of the background, but not the miner's mazes.)

Untangling The Oil Tax Wars - Wednesday July 23, 2013 7:30pm Loussac

One side would have you believe that the oil companies are great corporate citizens who love Alaska, generously provide lots of jobs and funding to local organizations and would reluctantly have to leave the state if the old tax regime were to continue.

The other side would have it that the oil companies are just to profit, could care less if it comes from Alaska or Nigeria, will grab the oil at the least possible cost, protect the environment only to the extent they're forced to,  and will do whatever it takes to buy politicians to pass legislation that helps their bottom line.

As I see it, the pro-oil company faction does its best to hide that discussion by focusing the debate on whether ACES or SB 21 will more likely produce oil and revenue for Alaska.

You can hear some of the most knowledgeable speakers from each side in a debate next Wednesday, July 21 at Loussac Libray.  It's an ISER (Institute for Social and Economic Research) event.  Here's from an email I got the other day.

Invite someone who disagree with you on Prop 1 for dinner first, then the debate.

Forum On the Oil-Tax Referendum: Hear Both Sides

Sponsored by Alaska Common Ground

Co-Sponsors: Institute of Social and Economic Research, UAA 

League of Women Voters of Anchorage • League of Women Voters of Alaska

Anchorage Public Library • Alaska Integrated Media

Last year the Alaska Legislature made a controversial change in the oil production tax, which is the >state’s largest source of revenue. In the primary election scheduled for August 19, Alaskans will vote  on whether to keep or repeal the new tax system—commonly known as Senate Bill (SB) 21. Alaska Common Ground and several co-sponsors (including ISER) are holding a forum on the oil-tax referendum on Wednesday, July 23, in the Wilda Marston Theatre of Anchorage’s Loussac Library, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The forum is free and open to the public. Speaking in favor of repealing the new tax—a “yes” vote to repeal—will be Bill Wielechowski, a state senator from Anchorage, and Gregg Erickson, a long-time Alaska economist. On the opposing side, supporting the new system—a “no” vote to keep the new tax—will be Brad Keithley, an oil and gas policy consultant, and Roger Marks, a veteran petroleum economist. Gunnar Knapp, the director of ISER, will moderate the forum.

This event will differ from a number of others that have been held on this issue, because it will focus on getting each side to answer the other side's questions. Please join us to hear what both sides have to say.

When: Wednesday, July 23, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Where: Wilda Marston Theatre, Loussac Library

3600 Denali Street, Anchorage

Alaska Common Ground is a non-profit organization that works to engage Alaskans in conversations about major public policy issues facing the state.

For more information, go to www.akcommonground.org or call (907) 952-3353.