Pecha Kucha Cleveland Vol. 13 tonight!

September 16, 2011 7:00 pm – 10:30 pmCleveland #13at Subway/Streetcar Level of the Detroit Superior Bridge (Veteran's Memorial Bridge)

FREE

Entrance Marked on Map Below (Enter from the parking lot of County Engineer's Offices)

Volume 13 will make for September to remember (yes, we're poets too) as we take over the subway lower level of the Detroit Superior Bridge once again for celebration of PKN Volume 13 presenters!

Join us for our most unlucky volume yet (is 13 still an unlucky number?) as we take over the Subway/Streetcar Level of the Detroit Superior Bridge. On Friday, September 16th, 2011, at 8:20pm, PechaKucha Night Cleveland - Volume 13 helps kick off the weekend long Ingenuity Fest (http://ingenuitycleveland.com/) Just wait until you see the presenter list for this one!

One of the main entrances, and location of PechaKucha Night, is located in the Northeastern parking lot at the Cuyahoga County Engineers Office (on the Superior Viaduct "across" from SPACES Gallery). We are increasing seating and audio capacity to make up for the 100 more than expected crowd last year when we crammed over 350 people in the bridge to watch some pretty amazing presentations!

While presentations do not start until 8:20pm, we encourage you to show up at least an hour early to experience all that the 3112 foot long bridge , built in 1918, has to offer. 12-14 local creatives will present their work, ideas, and obsessions in a series of short presentations on art, fashion, food, architecture, film, furniture, music, and photography. SPACE WILL BE TIGHT so be sure to come early and enjoy a few beverages prior to being inspired, influenced, confused, provoked, and probably slightly intoxicated by the wonderfully variegated topic mix. Keep an eye on the list of presenters - we will be updating it over the next few weeks.

DONT FORGET TO INVITE FRIENDS!:)

If you are interested in presenting at a future PechaKucha Night, have a venue idea, or just questions in general, please contact us at pkncleveland@gmail.com.

See ya on the 16th of Sept!

Cheers,
Mike Christoff & Raseem Parker pkncleveland@gmail.com

Presenters

• Williard "Woody" Melton - From Museums to Homes and Everything In Between: The Journey to Art Handler
• Garrett Weider - Graffiti Mixed Media
• Michelle Ginther - Print Maker
• Kevin Cronin - Cleveland Bikes
• Christopher Lynn - SPACES: Bring us home to meet your parents
• Chris Auberach-Brown - Smart Audience
• Alex Matsov - Heritage Documentation Programs
• Brien Strancar
• Oliver Barrett
• Dixon's Violin
• IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
• Sharie Renee
• Martin Voorbij - Show Your Hope
• Anthony Buehrer

Mose` Ricci Lecture - Kent CAED - 09.12

Another lecture at Kent State University:

Mose` Ricci of Riccispaini Architetti Associati
Monday, September 12, 2011
Cartwright Hall Auditorium
Kent State University
6.30pm

Ricci is a professor of architecture and urban design at the University of Genoa and a visiting critic to the Florence International Program of Kent State's College of Architecture and Environmental Design.

Bike Cleveland Summit Weekend

The first Bike Cleveland Summit hosted by the newly minted BikeCleveland organization (a cornucopia of new and established local cycling advocates) is being hosted this weekend in (surprise!) Cleveland. The summit is positioned as a "regional strategic planning event" or in regular terms, an intro to BikeCleveland and the creation of the framework for bicycle advocacy. As Cleveland administration is showing support for the Complete Streets initiative it is imperative that local advocates are involved, to support ideas and programs that are cost effective and beneficial to non-automotive transportation so that our new systems not only work, but can be held up as a model of great design, planning and implementation.

Registration is closed for the summit (sorry I didn't get this up earlier, had way too much going on and was freaking out a bit) however it shouldn't be hard to find people involved to get your voice heard. At the very least you should be aware that this movement is underway and going forward.

Roadtrip (9!) - Bowling Green State University 2011-2012 AIAS Lecture Series

Bowling Green State University, which is around 1.5 hours from Cleveland (I'm thinking) has posted their Department of Architecture's 2011-2012 AIAS Lecture Series which I am posting below for your viewing and visiting pleasure. I always liked visiting BGSU for the variety of events and they boasted one of my all time favorite college bands that could consistently bring, what we liked to call in our younger days, the rawk. Alas the band, Stylex, is no more, however BGSU is still there and always worth a quick visit, especially as the architecture program looks to be maturing.

Fall 2011
9/19 - Brian Kennedy - 7:30pm BTSU Theater
9/21 - Christian Unverzagt - 6:30pm BTSU Theater
10/24 - Graham Owen - 6:30pm BTSU Multi-Purpose room
11/02 - Michael Speaks - 6:30pm BTSU Theater
12/09 - Craig Dykers - t.b.d. Donnell Theater - Wolfe Center for the Arts

Spring 2012
03/12 - Jill Downen - 6:30pm BTSU Theater
03/26 - Thomas Christoffersen - 6:30pm BTSU Theater with the AIA Toledo

TBD - Farshid Moussavi

-again with the lack of a flyer, waddup?! Also, I would suggest links to the speaker's firms or web pages or some sort of extended info to entice those of us who are looking for reasons to explore.

Roadtrip (8)! Univ. of Buffalo Arch/Planning Lecture Series - 2011

I really enjoyed visiting Univ. of Buffalo for lectures. The students were really pleasant and obviously excited about their curriculum, which was really refreshing. They are gonna be my first lecture series posting (lets say because I am starting alphabetically.

Lectures

All Lectures begin at 5:30 pm in Crosby 301 unless otherwise noted in the credits at the bottom of the page.

• 09.14.11 Philip Beesley

  09.21.11 Michael Conrad

  10.05.11 John Peterson

10.12.11 Philippe Rahm, Martell/McHale Lecture

11.02.11 Annie Han

11.16.11 Mabel Wilson

View selected lectures



Lectures @ 5.30 pm, 301 Crosby Hall, UB South Campus, 3435 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14214, at 5 p.m.

Peter Q. Bohlin Lecture - KSU CAED Toguchi Lecture Series

Peter Q. Bohlin [FAIA, Bohlin Cywinski, Jackson Architects]
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
Cartwright Hall Auditorium - Kent State University, Kent, Ohio
7.15pm

Kent State University is launching their fall lecture series (list and poster coming soon, I swear it) but I wanted to get the first one online so everyone knows. Knowledge is power and all that.

2011 Cleveland Design Competition Awards Reception and Exhibition

2011 Cleveland Design Competition Awards Reception & Exhibition
	On Friday August 19th, 2011, you are invited to attend the 2011 Cleveland Design Competition Awards Reception and Exhibition to view all of the submissions from the 2011 Cleveland Design Competition: A NEW School Vision and celebrate this years' winning proposals! The evening will include light Hors d'oeuvres, beverages, conversation, and the announcement of the winners of the 2011 Cleveland Design Competition by Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Chairwoman of the Board, Kathryn Lincoln. The program for the evening (which may be slightly altered over the course of the next couple weeks) is as follows:
	What: 2011 Cleveland Design Competition Awards Reception & Exhibition Where: Cleveland State University Student Center, 2121 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115 When: Friday, August 19th, 2011 6:00pm-7:00pm - Hors d'oeuvres and Open Exhibit 7:00pm - Welcome & Announcement of Competition Winners Announcement of the Awards by Kathryn Lincoln, Chair of the Board of Directors, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 7:30pm-8:30pm - Open Exhibition 9:00pm - Awards Reception & Exhibition Conclusion When: Free and Open to the Public

Re-Imagining Cleveland's Transportation Future - Film Fest you probably missed

Last week the 2019 Sustainable Transportation and Action Team [STAT2019] held a small film fest at the Capitol Theater in Detroit Shoreway to bring together a plethora of professionals involved with transit with a couple of goals in mind. Firstly, to expose the various professional groups to each other and give them a forum to get acquainted, secondly, to offer a way to see what other communities are successfully achieving in order to understand how similar techniques could work locally.

I wanted to offer the list of films here for those that would be interested, you can watch them, and others, online for free.

• Journey to Pittsburgh to Walk and Bike
• Gary Toth: Reinventing Transportation Planning as Community Development
• Indianapolis Cultural Trail
• Chicago's Bus Tracker - Taking the Guesswork Out of Waiting for the Bus
• Major Bike Mojo in Minneapolis
• The Case for Open Data in Transit
• Making Streets Safer for Seniors
• Portland Bicycle Boulevards
• NACTO's Cities for Cycling
• Portland (Green) Bike Box!
• Snowy Neckdowns - Winter Traffic Calming
• MBA Traffic Calming

The event was sponsored by SC2019, NOACA, Access for All and the Cleveland Earthday Coalition. Flyer by TOIstudio.

The complications with walking: Part One - Standing Up

By now anyone with access to a television, internet or newspaper has heard the story of Raquel Nelson, an Atlanta mother recently convicted of vehicular manslaughter owed to the death of her son at the hands of an "imparied" driver while the Nelson family was crossing the street. You see, in Georgia, crossing a street not at a marked pedestrian way places the fault upon the pedestrian, even though the driver was currently under the influence of "drugs and alcohol" (according to early releases) and had been previously convicted of hit and run, once on the exact same stretch of road, that had little import on allocation of charges.

The conviction resulted in 12 months probation, community service and court costs. The possible maximum conviction was 36 months in jail. There has been little word on sentence of the driver as he had pleaded guilty.

The event occurred as Raquel was crossing the street from a bus stop to her apartment. A full recount of the story can be found here (thanks to the AP). The question isn't whether the action of crossing the street violated the law but whether the law itself and the planning that resulted in this occurrence should itself be held up to question. From my point of view there are many additional guilty parties; the traffic engineers who allowed for such a high speed thoroughfare in such close proximity to residences, the public transit organization that located the bus stop away from legal crossings, the legislative body that makes pedestrians second class citizens to automobiles, the law enforcement agencies that allowed someone twice convicted of hit and run to stay behind the wheel and the urban planners, that allowed this sort of development (hub and highway spoke) to itself occur.

Ms. Raquel Nelson has the option of a retrial, however nothing can be done now for her son. The legacy of his death should require us all to rethink our actions, as drivers, planners, voters and pedestrians and vehemently demand that our communities be safer for ourselves and our children.

An online petition can be found on the Transportation for America website demanding a full pardon for Raquel Nelson. The next question is how to halt the potentially fatal pattern of poor planning and rectify our already dangerous systems and neighborhoods.

PBS has also posted a very interesting video on pedestrian v. vehicular transit in Georgia.

The trouble with "alternative transportation"

The trouble with "alternative transportation" is that the nom de plume indicates that any transportation mode, alternative to automotive, is secondary and not considered mainstream, or is less important. I have been hearing this term used to describe cycling, taking public transit and even walking as public dollars are being allocated to infrastructure projects. It never sounded right to me, and I had quite a hard time discerning just why that was until I had proper time to ponder (and a few beers).

Let's jump in the way back machine. The year was 1977. A younger George Lucas was about to legitimize cheesy poofs as a diet for basement dwellers, Elvis was faking his death and a bouncing baby boy had just emerged into this cruel dark world. He was limited in his mobility. Eventually he was able to roll over, crawl and dance. Years later his father built him his first bicycle, a very heavy cumbersome device that resulted in various bruises and skinned limbs but no major damage. At the tender age of 9 the young boy was moved to the suburbs and enrolled at a public school that had large yellow lumbering noisy buses, filled with larger, lumberinger and meaner kids, and so the young man got his first taste of regular public transit (to be fair, he grew up taking the bus, but these timelines are important!). At 13 he learned how to drive a car but couldn't do so legally until he turned 16 years of age, 15 years after becoming mobile on his own two feet. Let me create a list for you.

Birth

Age 0 - not mobile, mostly cold, doesn't really do much

Age 1 - walking (sans skipping or hopping but mobile)

Age 5ish - riding a bike, probably in the street

Age 9 - regular bus rider (10 times a week, 45 weeks a year)

Age 16 - auto operator

Age ? - Cruise Ship Captain

Age ? - Spaceship Pilot

Age ? - Jet Pack owner

Age ? - FTL?

As the above list illustrates, I, and most likely the vast majority of people, begin our evolution of transportation via being a pedestrian, evolving into cyclists, maybe dabbling (those primary educator years are our dabbling years) in public transit and then eventually, possibly, becoming auto drivers. So why is walking, cycling and taking the bus considered "alternative"? Alternative to what? Driving from my bedroom to the kitchen for a snack? Driving from my desk at work to the restroom to tweet? How did our infatuation with the auto come at the expense of logic and our love for freedom? On foot I can walk just about anywhere, when I am in a car I am limited to following expensive vast roads at certain speeds and I have to follow the logic of seemingly random traffic signals (same as on a bike mind you), however I have to pay for all that GAS, those poor dead dinosaurs and ferns that have undergone so many centuries of crushing and pressure and decomp just to be converted into heat and mechanical energy. Pumped from their slumber in the ground and transported across the globe (some hyperbole, I think we get most of our gas from Canada) just for little ol' me? How am I that important?

I'll stick with walking and riding for now, the most that I can. I won't give up my car or motorcycle, but I won't refer to them as my primary mode of transportation and I will continue to fight against neighborhoods and communities designed solely around the auto in lieu of the actual people that live there. It's crazy, I know, but I like myself mostly, and I want to keep it that way.

Veteran's Memorial Bridge & Subway Tour July 2nd, 2011

Veteran's Memorial Bridge & Subway Tour

When: Saturday, July 2, 2011

Times: Open from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.Location: Northeast Corner of W. 25th Street & Detroit Avenue, at the west end of the bridge. Free parking is available at the Department of Public Works Bridge Garage, which is located at the tour’s entrance.Cost: FREE

The Cuyahoga County Engineers will be re-opening the Subway Level of the Veteran's Memorial Bridge [Detroit/Superior Avenue Bridge] this Saturday to pedestrians.

The tour is self guided and offers some fantastic views of the city of Cleveland. It also exposes a rather interesting view into the evolution of how the city was stitched together in an age before the auto was king. Currently the CUDC (and other fine folks) have spearheaded a campaign to turn the subway level into a public pedestrian and cycling access path across the Cuyahoga River. The ability to help them receive funding via the National Historic Trust has recently closed, however there are other ways to offer support, such as telling your friends and visiting the bridge when it is open.

So come down, bring a camera and plan on grabbing a quick lunch as some local bistro. You can park on the West Side and walk over to have lunch on the East, or vice versa. Whatever. I'm not going to tell you how to live your life.

Cleveland's big Saturday, 2011.06.25: CMA Solstice Party, GardenWalk Cleveland, Waterloo Arts Fest

There is almost too much happening this Saturday, I am already feeling flustered as Lakewood is also have having their giant Yard Sale week end then. So instead of 3 posts and all that, I am combining information into one super post.

Gardenwalk Cleveland 2011

11am - 7pm

A self guided (you get a map) tour of urban farms and gardens in the following selected neighborhoods of Cleveland, Ohio.

-Detroit Shoreway

-Harvard/Lee/Miles

-Hough

-Tremont

Waterloo Arts Fest 2011

12-7pm

9th annual art centric street fair on Waterloo Ave in North Collinwood, host to storytelling, performances, arts and arts-stuffs for sale.

Cleveland Museum of Art Solstice Party

6pm-2am

Massive party at the Cleveland Museum of Art with music and whatnot and of course art. There is a pretty varied venue of music and it is THE party of the year in Cleveland. For sure.

Cleveland Bridge Project - Vote to open up the lower level of the Detroit Superior Bridge for year round use

Cleveland, a city of rich history based upon an old river, suffers an identity based upon the conflict of the two banks which were at first inflamed by and pacified by the construction of bridges spanning the mighty river.

Currently there is a community driven effort to develop the currently shuttered lower level of the Veteran's Memorial Bridge (which once allowed rail service along Detroit Avenue to reach Public Square) and turn it into a public thorough way, allowing a cycling and pedestrian connection while granting a year-round use for public performances.

You can show your support by casting an online vote for the Detroit Superior Bridge in the This Place Matters Community Challenge hosted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation which may help secure the funds necessary for this endeavor.

Go to bridgevote.com right now to cast your vote. Just follow these steps:

1. In the blue box, click "register"

2. Enter your email address and zip code (your information will not be shared and you can opt out of receiving any future email messages)

3. On the list of sites, scroll down to "Cleveland Bridge Project" and click on it.

4. In the blue box, click "Vote Now!"

Blue Pike Farm 2011 Season begins this week

Blue Pike Farm

Thursday, June 16, 2011

4-7pm

900 East 72nd St. (1/2 mi. South of I-90 @ the E. 72nd exit) Cleveland, Ohio

via the email (which I will copy and paste so as not to lose anything in the translation).

It's the opening of the Blue Pike Farm Market this week. The market opens from 4 - 7 P.M. every Thursday until the end of October.

Joining us again this summer is Kevin Kelly of Kevin's Creative Cuisine with his selection of specialty baked goods and weekly cooking demonstrations (5-6 P.M). He'll be cooking up samples of the week's freshest seasonal veggies and offering his culinary tips and insights into cooking seasonally. This week he'll be cooking with garlic scapes. Haven't used scapes before in your kitchen? It's a 2 week season for these hard to find specialty items. We'll have them for you this week.

Judi Strauss, who writes a food blog at www.TheCharmedKitchen.com will be offering great information and specialty items each week. She teaches cooking classes and works as a teacher/caterer. She offers a series of workshops teaching about edible wild plants.

Veronica Walton and her husband Michael from NEO Restoration Alliance's League Park Market Garden will be offering their take on urban farm vegetables this summer. Look for greatselections each week from their market gardens.

And every week look for Seasonal fruit from Woolf Family Farms, honey and honey comb from e.pluribus Apiary here at Blue Pike Farm and more.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention our newest producers, the flock of hens that have taken up residence here at BPF and gift us with fresh, NO GMO feed, free range eggs.