Farmers's Market Ride

Two weeks ago I was doing our weekly shopping at our neighborhood farmers' market when I overheard someone say "Oh, have you signed up for the ride we're organizing?" This over course really piqued my curiousity and it turned out that someone was organizing a ride a few weeks later. Well, that ride was early this morning. At 7am, we met where the farmers' market would be a few hours later. Only 5 of us showed up, including my friend Tyler. Joe, Megan and Bill (another Bill, not me) rounded out our numbers. Joe and Bill led us on a route out to the beach where we stopped for coffee and food and then down to the southern border of the city, past the cow palace and then back up the bay side, through downtown. The planned route included continuing on through the Presidio but Tyler and I were feeling ready to head back home so we split off. Today was the SF Marathon so lots of streets were closed down for that and we enjoyed riding on several stretches of the Embarcadero that would normally be clogged with cars. Tyler and I ended our ride with a great breakfast at the Green Chili Cafe, near the end of the Panhandle before parting ways. All told, Tyler and I clocked a solid 25 mile ride and it was a blast. I hope that there are some subsequent rides organized, it was great to meet some other cyclists from our neighborhood and to see many other parts of the city I'd never seen. After the ride I made it back to our neighborhood just in time to meet up with Nicole and the kids and pack all of the vegetables they'd bought at the farmers' market into the xtracycle and walk home with them. A great ride and a great morning, hooray!

Outdoor Living Room

Tonight Jula and I rode the Xtracycle about 6 blocks away (2 over and 4 up) to meet with other members of the Inner Sunset Neighborhood Group to hang out at an ad-hoc outdoor living room space! A few people brought chairs and a table and just hung out on the corner of 9th ave and Lawton to meet some new folks and mostly talk about our neighborhood. It's exciting that people are actually interested in coming together to participate in our local community. It was great to see Ellen there too, I'm excited about the Inner Sunset Clean-up day that she's organizing on August 8th. Not only is it functionally a great idea but I think it will be a great community-building event too. She said she signed up more than 60 people at the farmers market last weekend! Many conversations were had in the living room pertaining to community, livable neighborhoods and general discussions about what we like about our neighborhood and what can be improved. Particularly I'm interested in the idea of creating a civic gathering space, most likely out of space reclaimed from cars. It's a tough sell for such a busy neighborhood but I think it's essential. Perhaps a block of street that's not all that useful for cars that can be turned into chairs/tables space with plants and a fountain or something. The new civic space at Castro and 17th St is a great example of what can be done with reclaimed street space.

My personal highlight of the outdoor living room was watching Jula ride her little Skuut bike around on the sidewalk with glee while all the adults hung out. Nice!