Last month's US Social Forum brought 15,000 people here and a lot of bikes (see the video below). The city, before it was known for cars, it was known for bicycles. The Detroit streets are flat and wide, and with two bike shops in the Hub and the Wheelhouse, this bicycle culture is starting to come back -- and in a big way.
Excerpt from
SF.StreetsBlog:
In Detroit for the US Social Forum (I'll have a report posted shortly
at my blog) we
spent some happy hours bicycling around the wide open city. An early
stop was The Hub,
Detroit's most vibrant community bike shop, where one of the guys got
excited by our questions and immediately pulled out their only copy of
an old 1896 bicycling map of Detroit.
After three days at the Social Forum, more and more bicycles piled
up on every lockable fence and pole in front of the big downtown
convention center Cobo Hall (I'm sure it had never experienced so many
convention goers arriving by bike), we helped our hosts promote Critical
Mass on Friday night.
Detroit has had a small-ish Critical Mass going back some
years, but this was its biggest ever, about 375 riders. A great route
was planned and most followed, which took us downtown, along the
riverfront, out into eastern Detroit, through the remarkable
Heidelberg Project,
and finally back into the center of the City. Here's a gallery of
shots.
Read the entire post
here.
And more on that
Detroit
Critical Mass ride, in which a bunch of bicyclers get together and ride the streets each month. We posted a video last month that did a fine job of giving you an idea of what the event is all about. But, thanks to the social forum, nearly 400 people showed up to June's event and it's worth seeing that many bikers riding through the city.
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