It’s dead August. Congress is not in session, schools are empty, and your shrink is still on vacation. Without the Olympics, the newspaper would be six pages long, and four of those pages would be filled with wire stories about dead gorilla babies.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel, the Wall Street Journal fills its Page One easy-reading column — a slot where whimsical news offers the ruling class a daily relief from the seemingly endless financial doom-and-gloom — today with a typically silly idea from San Francisco nutball Rob Anderson: Encouraging bicycle commuting leads to more pollution because “Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution.”

I guess by that logic, by driving less I’m actually encouraging drilling in ANWAR because my saving gas is hurting oil comapnies financially, thus making them more desperate for oil profits. Or how about this one: By giving the Olympics to China, the rest of the world is actually encouraging progress in human rights there, because the media attention will make them less likely to oppress people openly. D’oh!

Anderson mentioned previously on sf.metblogs here, here, here, usw.

High up on the list of things I can’t enough of locally are the Panhandle, bikes, and bartering. Enter the Panhandle Bike Swap and Summer Party on the afternoon of August 17, a date at which it may just be starting to feel like summer in other parts of the state.

According to a local fixed gear aficionado/friend, “There’s talk of a ‘bike Olympics’ competition that would potentially include bike polo, Goldsprints (racing on rollers) and a bike toss (as in, how far you can throw an already wrecked frame). No confirmation on this yet.”

Participants are encouraged to bring bike parts for Cycles of Change, an East Bay program that provides cycling and nutrition education to urban youth. The organization offers a summer touring program that takes young students on bike trips around California after teaching them about safe urban riding. Sounds like something we could all use.

Being one of those crazy bike riders (of the fixed gear variety) I was pretty damn psyched to hear about the new Chrome store in SoMa. (yes I know you If you used to be able to swing by their warehouse and buy stuff before but this is like a store store for real and shit) If haven’t heard about it yet that’s because when I say new, I mean BRAND NEW - as in the grand opening is next week! We stopped by yesterday but unfortunately too late and they were already closed, hopefully today we’ll be more lucky. I’m only in town for a few days so I’m going to miss it, but for people who live here and ride bikes, or who live here and enjoy awesomely designed bags I highly recommend blocking off some time next Thursday (July 31) and swinging by the new store at 4th and Brannan and partaking in the festivities.

In 1994, the Army turned the Presidio over to the national park system. And in doing so created one of the finest public spaces in SF and California. Originally founded approximately 1776, there are now plans to renovate some key sections of the Presidio, including the greening of what is now a parking lot, but what used to be called the Parade Ground. Along with building a tunnel for the Doyle drive approach to the Golden Gate bridge. The Parade grounds are lined by Barracks, which are mostly offices and at the southern edge where Donald Fisher wants to build a museum.

The tunnel plan is really interesting as it will connect the western edge of the Parade Grounds with the beachfront at the west end of Chrissy Field, whereas today if you were to walk from the parade grounds to the beach you would walk under the Doyle drive approach (it’s elevated freeway). This would also create some nice beach views from the newly recreated Parade grounds.

Funding? From what I’ve read it’s not fully evident where the money comes from. The current docs state:

To achieve its mission, the Trust generates revenues by leasing the park’s buildings. Federal appropriations diminish each year and will cease at the end of fiscal year 2012. The Trust uses these sources of funding to operate the park and undertake necessary capital improvements.

Overview of new area, parking and poll

Two of my favorite things are set to convene this Wednesday: Ritual Roasters and Bikes to Rwanda, a non-profit that unites American roasters to improve the quality of life for Rwandan coffee farmers. A ping-pong tournament is set for July 9th at 5 PM at 1026 Valencia to help build five bike shops. Read: the $25 you could spend this week on big brand coffee could provide a co-op farmer with a bike toolset, including tire lever, frame pump, and wrench.

I’m a big fan of Clara Seasholtz, the founder of the organization that raises money for a low-cost bicycles that farmers use to transport supplies and 130-pound bags of beans. Seasholtz helped the group provide more than 250 bikes to farmers last year and is currently focusing on opening bike shops in Rwanda to teach communities how to care for and build bikes. She’s on a Northern California trip this week, and I admire her unique approach to using what she knows (the American coffee industry) to impact what she saw as problematic (Rwandan farmers lacking transportation to increase their marketability). Now that deserves some table tennis.

I’m betting anything that this is already underway, but if you are interested, may as well let your voice be heard on the matter.

Sign the petition!

To: Google, and the Google Maps team
We would like a ‘Bike There’ feature added to Google Maps - to go with the current ‘Drive There’ and ‘Take Public Transit’ options. The feature would take into account actual bicycle lanes from the locality being mapped, and it would automatically plan a route for a bicyclist, possibly even providing the cyclist options for either the most direct route, or the most bicycle-friendly (safest) route. The Google Maps-based third party site, byCycle.org (http://byCycle.org/), provides these features for two metro areas - Portland, Oregon and Madison, Wisconsin, and there are countless other mapping initiatives around the world aimed at accomplishing the same goal. We hope that Google will consider building this feature into the core Google Maps service.

There are many reasons why this feature would be a wonderful edition to Google Maps. Among them, some of the most influential would be to:
* Make bicycling safer for millions of bicyclists around the world.
* Empower world citizens to better adapt their lifestyles to face the challenges of global climate change.
* Help Google realize its core mission of ‘organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.’

By implementing the ‘Take Public Transit’ option, Google and the Google Maps team have shown themselves to be concerned and capable world citizens; a ‘Bike There’ feature addition to Google Maps would be the ultimate statement in support of sustainable development.

For more information on this feature request please visit the Google Maps ‘Bike There’ website (http://GoogleMapsBikeThere.org/).

Thank you, Google and the Google Maps team! And thank you, petitioners, for joining us in attempting to realize this very important goal!
Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Went to dinner at (the new, remodeled) Magnolia at 7:30PM and narrowly missed the traffic jam following Critical Mass- this is the corner of Masonic & Haight. Personal vow here to bike in the Mass next month!