AS THE MILLENNIUM TURNS by Evan Ravitz

On May 18, the Boulder City Council holds a hearing on placing the Voting by Phone Initiative, apparently the most popular petition in Boulder history, on the November 2 ballot. We think it’s important for the future of democracy. Here’s why:

Royalty dies hard as the millennium starts to turn. We got off to a good start in 1042- the Dark Ages lightened up a tad when the Magna Carta gave Royalty’s subjects a few civil rights. U.S. history is one of increasing democratization. Until recently- as the millennium turns we seem to be regressing to new forms of aristocracy. Some examples and analysis:

On Good Friday 1993, CU Chancellor James Corbridge didn’t show up as advertised to preside over the World Affairs Conference session “The State of the Crown”. If Corbridge had presided in one of the paper Burger King crowns the speakers wore as they crucified the Royal Family, it would have been true burlesque, like Coach McCartney in drag.

Corbridge at May ’92 graduation spoke of “the need for each one of us to think about respect for our environment”, the same Corbridge who resisted providing seriously needed bike racks 2 years running at CU, saying he didn’t like their looks. CU spent 13 million instead on two new parking garages, promoting the pollution and traffic that are, our Mayor says, the most pressing problems in Boulder. Parking fees don’t even pay for maintenance, so we will be subsidizing the garages till they fall, even those of us who practice what we preach, environmentally speaking. Nothing personal, Jim. Everyone does it, right? Wrong. CSU in Fort Collins is phasing cars off campus.

Also on Good Friday, in the Camera Open Forum, Patricia Nelson Limerick, CU’s noted historian and Official Fool, more kindly and gently nails CU administrators to their cross of folly.

She says most administrators are “..quarantined and insulated from the people who compose the University.” Totally. And not just by their spin doctoring. CU’s lawyers have shown that CU is legally, in the Colorado Constitution– above the law of Colorado- a “Sovereign Entity“! The ruling class can and do have secret meetings, fly their wives to Buff games, pay top administrators secret bonuses, etc., all in violation of Colorado law; all at taxpayer and student expense. If CU wants to join the real world, they will have the integrity to ask the legislature (or the voters) to make them subject to the same laws we citizens are.

Hypocritical CU, what are you teaching by example?

Perhaps Boulder City Manager Tim Honey has the answer. He gave a talk June 24th last year to the Win-Win Business Forum about The Big Problems of Government. He said they were 1. fiscal irresponsibility 2. an ethical crisis and 3. too much PR, covering up the other problems.

When I was a boy, we used to call these, in reverse order, lying, cheating and stealing. I believe these are becoming not so much the problems of governments/CU administrators but Standard Operating Procedure. Here’s why, according to Plato: “The punishment suffered by the wise who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of bad men.” (and women.)

Nowadays the best and brightest usually don’t take part in government: it’s just too vicious. (Let us pray the Clintons are the exception.) Here’s what the 20-something generation says in The Baffler, a literary journal published by graduates of the University of Chicago: “(We are) deaf to your non-politics; hopelessly estranged from your cult of ‘professionalism’… your best and your brightest want nothing to do with you.”

So instead of best and brightest the top dogs are mostly what I’ll call the pathologically clever- and increasingly confused. They just don’t get it. How can we stop them from “trickling down” on us? (Like the U.S. Revolutionary motto: “Don’t Tread on Me.)

Let’s make the political playing field more level- making it easier for citizens to initiate and pass legislation the way representatives do. 23 states already have initiative laws. But it’s mostly special interest groups that pay petitioners to stand in front of supermarkets all summer that can collect enough signatures to get on the ballot. In Colorado last year, 46 groups filed as petitioners with the Secretary of State, 16 submitted petitions and 10 made the ballot of which 8 paid petitioners- the voters rejected 5 of the 8; 4 of the 5 promoted gambling.

Andrew Jackson said: “If there is a problem with democracy the solution is more democracy.” Recently an attempt was made to triple the signatures required for Colorado initiatives. We think the way to streamline the initiative process is to reduce the signatures required. There will be less hassle at the grocery. More petitions will make the ballot. And we will have more choices, an alternative to growing gridlock in government.

What makes this all practical is the economy and availability of telephone voting, first demonstrated 6/20/92 by the Liberal Party of Nova Scotia, as an alternative to driving to their convention to select their party leader. 7000 voted in 4 hours, 4 times as many as had ever come to the convention. In my next column I will show why phone voting is much more economic, ecological, convenient, and especially secure, than our current system.

This is no Elephant and Donkey game, this is about having faith in yourself and your neighbor, democracy and saving the planet. As George Gallup Sr., the world’s leading pollster said, “On most major issues we’ve dealt with in the past 50 years, the public was more likely to be right–based on the judgment of history–than the legislatures or Congress.”

Boulder is fast approaching gridlock, in traffic and politics. It’s like the San Andreas Fault. Something’s got to give, soon. We ask our leaders to learn the very first thing in Robert Fulgum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: “Share Everything.” Share the power and the responsibility. Then you won’t be so “quarantined and insulated” from us. As Bill Clinton said during the campaign: “The American people hate the political process.” Perhaps nowhere more than in Boulder, now.

According to a Daily Camera column The City now has a number of ‘Czars’ in charge, much like the Federal Drug and Energy Czars. Russia gave up on its Czars two revolutions and 76 years ago! The last of this Romanov family died in early April in Toronto.

Where’s this country going? As Patricia Limerick hints, we need a sense of purpose. This life is so out of balance (“Koyaanisqatsi” in Hopi- a fulfillment of their ancient prophesy), that a violent revolution could happen, similar to the armageddon that is foretold in the Bible. It would be a sight- 15,000 nuclear weapons and 200 million handguns in the hands of the most violent and incarcerated society in history. JFK said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make a violent revolution inevitable.”

In Loco Parentis doesn’t work in government/CU administration any more. Let’s not give up on a whole millennium of democratization. It just needs a little resurrection. You can write us, The Voting by Phone Foundation, 1630 30th St. Suite A307, Boulder CO 80301. Call us at 440-6838. Come to the Council meeting May 18!

OPINION by Evan Ravitz
BOULDER SUNDAY CAMERA 5/16/93

On May 18 Boulder City Council holds a public hearing on placing the Voting by Phone Initiative, apparently the most popular petition in Boulder history, on the November 2 ballot.

There are some supporters of Voting by Phone, such as our own lawyer, who feel that using this technology for so-called Direct Democracy or Electronic Town Meetings is not good, that the people need better education before they can be trusted with more democracy.

This is what I learned about education on my winter vacation in Guatemala. My friends were giving a presentation to other parents about Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts. Sudbury has operated since 1968 on two principles- democracy and freedom. Everyone from the Principal to the youngest–the four-year-olds, has one vote in the weekly School Meeting. This meeting decides everything- hiring and firing, budget, everything. There is also a Judicial Council, with representatives of all age groups. They are rarely very busy.

The children are free! They don’t have to go to school, though usually they have to be evicted at 4PM so the staff can go home. They study anything they want, or just listen to music until they get over their problems, or whatever.

Because Sudbury is their school, the children do not vandalize it (or shoot the teachers). They actually help maintain and improve the school, as well as educate themselves and each other. Therefore, the school runs with half the faculty and staff of Massachusetts public schools, and costs half what the public schools do–$3000 per pupil rather than $6000.

So freedom and democracy do work if we’ll only try them. The increased freedom we’ve had on the Mall for a year now is working fine. In 1990 I begged the mayor to permit musicians to sell their own cassettes and permit personal services like massage and tarot. She said she asked the Council and that “nobody was interested”. It took 3 court cases, the ACLU and front-page headlines to finally shame the City into giving us these freedoms in 1992.

Everything in Guatemala seems so life and death serious. And so it is. More of my Indian friends were killed in the four years I’d been away.

Ever wonder why bananas all the way from Guatemala are only $.50 a pound and apples from Colorado cost more? It’s because agricultural workers there earn about $2 per day. Our military aid since 1954 keeps those Indians colonized. It is American M-16s that killed my friends, one of them for organizing a farm co-op to get better pay.

When I last returned from Guatemala 4 years ago, I discovered a nationwide poll that showed 65% of Americans would end U.S. military aid to Central America. That is one of the reasons I got serious about our project. When the American people have a vote on the issue, my Guatemalan friends will no longer live in fear.

There are other reasons. In a poll after the Rio Summit last year, the vast majority of Americans said they were ready to bite the bullet to preserve the environment. But the President wouldn’t sign the accords, and Councilman Spenser Havlick said he felt ashamed to be an American. Perhaps he would have been prouder if his country had the democracy most Voting by Phone supporters seek.

We want governments to practice the very first thing in Robert Fulgum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: “Share Everything.” Share the power and responsibility. The future belongs to the young.

We ask that the City Attorney’s office write a fair evaluation of Voting by Phone, not the March 5 straw-man job, which ignores all the information we’ve given Council, the City Attorney, and the City Manager. This memo actually misrepresents Colorado election law to the City Council! It states: “To cast a vote for someone else requires that the impersonator appear at a polling place, claim to be a person registered to vote, and sign a signature card which is compared with the signature already on file.” Not so- your signature is never compared with the signature on file unless someone challenges you. Nancy Wirl, the longest serving election official in Boulder County, says this has never happened in the 20 years she’s worked there. No longer do the election judges know by sight everyone in their precinct- they are no longer even assigned to their own precincts, in Boulder! Unless a judge happens to personally know the impersonator or the real person, there is no challenge, and no comparison. That is why we say: voting is now on the honor system.

Voting by Phone will be much more economic, ecological, convenient and especially secure, than our current system. Please contact us for free literature. Call 440-6838 or write The Voting by Phone Foundation, 1630 30th St. #A-307, Boulder CO 80301.

Come to the May 18 Council meeting at City Hall, the SW corner of Broadway and Canyon. You can give up to a 3-minute talk. Call us for the approximate (evening) time. You can try our demonstration of phone voting by calling 442-2625.

(Evan Ravitz is director of the Voting by Phone Foundation.)

Published in the Colorado Daily, May 3, 1993

This month, the Tightrope takes a vacation from the politics of bicycling, voting by telephone and freedom on the Mall for the kinder, gentler jungles of the Maya. We built a raft of balsa logs and cord and floated for eight days down three rivers, the Jatate, the Lacuntun, and the Usimacinta, which borders Mexico and Guatemala.

Our trip began in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico where I met Peter Paul Boot, a Dutchman. Peter had volunteered at Na Balom there, and had lived several months with the Lacandon Indians in Naha, one of their three remaining villages. The Lacandon, numbering only about 600, are the last traditional jungle-dwellers in Mexico; they wear unisex long hair and white gowns.

I knew Peter was the guy to try this trip with. I’d heard of it two years before on my last bicycle trip in Mexico. When I was 16, we’d tried building a raft to float New York’s Hudson River, but twisted trees, an ant nest, and the putrid smells and dioxin from paper mills scotched our Huck Finn fantasies.

With Ted and Steve, recent college graduates turned travelers, we bused to a hostel in the Lagunas de Montebello National Park. I explained the journey to Regge and Rune, a German and a Dane, who decided to try it on their own. They made their own raft downstream from us where we ran into them later (fortunately not literally).

We bused to Flor de Café (Coffee Flower), the end of the line, ate, and waited for the sun to ease. Bad mistake. The trail quickly turned to a quagmire churned by animal hooves, up to knee-deep. Three miles and three hours later, it was dark; the rising full moon saved us. We staggered into Pena Blanca (White Rock), population 200, and were given a nice palapa (palm roof) where we waited out the next day, Sunday, whil it rained and the mud deepened. We played songs and cards with the residents, Latinos who had established the town 11 years ago with a government contract to grow coffee. They felt ripped off and were negotiating new contracts directly with European dealers for their organic crop.

Monday, contrary to the estimates of those over-eager to hire out their burros, it was a relatively easy 45 minutes to Tenejapa near the Rio Jatate. Tenejapa was 150 Tzeltal indigenas (Indians) who had left a highland village of the same name with worn-out soil near San Cristobal. We hired Sebastiano, the local Conasupo (government-subsidized store) chief to help us locate balsa trees and build the raft.

Two-and-a-half days later, Fortress Jane was ready. The much-enlarged third version of our original Jane (Tarzan’s mate), Fortie had 21 colcha (balsa) logs, seven meters long. These were green like the logs of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki. With machetes, we made oars of mahogany planks. Sebastian was called to a down-river Conasupo meeting, and left us the key to his house, his kids, and all but his wife, who was visiting back in old Tenejapa.

That evening, we climbed to a cave on the cliff above town the Tenejapans were afraid to enter. We went 100 meters in before the cave bent upwards, and found pottery shards and beautiful calcite formations. We climbed down as the tropical dark fell, fast. WE almost fell.

The next day, we loaded up and drifted down the Jatate. We ate sweet lemons and sour oranges, listening to the monkeys an birds. Howler monkeys are a lot like politicians: small, almost human creatures with loud, intimidating voices; you expect King Kong. They can sound like a lion, dog, or cow.

We camped that first night at the huge floodplain where the Rio Ixcan joined to form the Lacuntun. We stopped at Ranch Perto Rico and Loma Bonito, where the residents refused money for bananas, tomatoes, cacao, sugar cane, limes, tortillas, and beans they gave us. Regge and Rune joined us in the raft they’d just finished there.

Jane was built for speed, easily out-pacing the German-engineered Euraft with its nice, dry bamboo second layer. We figure we clocked 1.5 kilometer per hour on th Jatate, 4 km/hr on the Lacuntun, and 6 to 10 Kilometers km/hr

on the Usimacinta.

But Fortress Jane was too big for our own good; she tended to self-destruct when we hit snags. We abandoned her after four days in Pico de Oro. The Europeans had a plane to catch, and left with my companions on the 4 AM bus. I continued solo on the two-person Euraft.

After two more days of drifting, reading, and listening on the Lacuntun, things got exciting. Two teenaged fishermen guided me to a couple of Mayan figures engraved on El Planchon, a large limestone plate formation on a beach. Then the Lacutun joined the Rio Salinas to become the Usimacinta. Things sped up.

First, I passed a majestic symmetrical island and then came to El Chorro (the faucet), a magnificent set of waterfalls cascading off a limestone bench into the river. Six kilometers on, I stopped and stayed at El Chorrito, a smaller version. I strung my hammock in the trees by the falls and explained to a boy that in spite of my sandals, beard, and long hair, I was not Jesus returning.

Now the finale. On the Usimacinta, I could really only land the 500-pound raft by swimming to shore, and hauling it in with the 50 meters of cheap synthetic line.

Trying to stop at Bethel, Guatemala, to take a side trip to the ruins of Tikal, I put on my running shoes to land on the sharp limestone banks. The line tangled, and was now barely long enough to reach shore. I was being draggd from one landing attempt to another, weighed down by the wet shoes. I barely stopped her on the last rocky outcrop available. Two kids dashed up to help. If I hadn’t made it, I’d have had to bushwhack back from wherever I could land her; I had no machete. If I let go, I’d arrive in Guatemala with two shoe and triathlete shorts. I never got back on that raft.

Tikal was gorgeous, and I saw more monkeys in one day there than in eight on the river. I was low on cash, as we’d expected the round trip to take a week. It took 19 days. So I passed by our original goal, the ruins of Yaxchilan, where the head of the Lacondon gods, Halchik’yum lives. I caught a bus back to Bethel, and a boat down river, entered Mexico, and lucked into a fast van ride down the long dirt road back to Palenque. For some reason, I got right on a bus to San Cristobal, bypassing several of my favorite haunts.

The next day turned out to be the last day of Carnaval and fiesta for 50,000 indigenas and 200 gringos in nearby Chamula, famous for severely disciplining photographers. Two gringos had their glasses thrown under the trampling crowds by costumed “monkeys.” There something about our optics they don’t like. Most of us gringos were caught between the fire the “monkeys” pranced on the toros who charged the crowd in spite of their ropes. We did some firewalking ourselves to escape.

I went in their famous church and stayed a long time, inhaling the vast quantities of copal incense and the fumes of at least 1,000 candles. Many of the female carved santos (saints) had mirrors reflecting their tearful supplicants. These mirrors were said to remind us of the road to heaven: God within us.

THE TIGHTROPE by Evan Ravitz
Published by the Colorado Daily 10/92

Early in ’93 groundbreaking begins for the 13th Street Bicycle Contraflow Lane, a strange hybrid of kept promise, Holy Grail, grand compromise and Nicaraguan mercenaries; all in all the hottest topic of ’92 -it generated the most letters to City Council. (Downtown businessfolk hired a PR mercenary to fight we cyclists- she’s not Nicaraguan, but a well-known politician.)

Longtime locals tell me we won. Cyclists heading South on 13th St. toward campus will no longer have to detour to 14th St. and back, violate the one-way on 13th, or risk Broadway. Cars lose thirty parking spaces on the West side of 13th, where the lane will be. The first parking given back to people since the Mall closed Pearl Street in 1977!

We wanted to close 13th from Walnut to Spruce to make a new section of the Mall, but with a bike path going through. Cyclist, neighborhood and environmental groups were overwhelmingly for this, in spite of disinformation by the City Planning department (see my May 7 column). Council says it will consider this for the future, but it took about 90 of us some 600 hours of work to force the promise of a bike route through downtown to be kept. Don’t read City lips!

Interestingly, at the 13th annual International Pedestrian Conference on October 1, at the Boulderado Hotel on 13th Street, the keynote speaker equated the single-occupant auto to the Berlin Wall of transportation. It must fall or our planet is toast: There are 400 million cars on earth for over five billion people, one for every 13 of us. Here in the U.S., there’s one for every two of us. When everyone has the American Dream machine, it will be the planet’s nightmare- we’ll soon run out of oil and decent air, and the Greenhouse effect will rule.

Keynoter Hiemstra also said politicians are slowing the changes we need, so we need to encourage direct democracy:

* * *

The Voting by Phone Foundation (whose goal is direct democracy) missed getting its initiative making phone voting an option for City elections on November’s ballot. We needed 10% of the voters’ signatures -we got 8%- next year we only need 5% as the law would have it. If City Council likes it can let us on next year with the old petition. Of course it takes just 5 of the 9 Councilors to put our proposal on the ballot themselves, instead of the 5400 signatures we needed this year to force it on. You might say they have more than 1000 times the power we citizens have. Is their judgement 1000 times better?

That’s the kind of tilted playing field in the marketplace of ideas that the Voting by Phone Foundation seeks to rebalance. Once we have a convenient, ecological and economical voting system, we could use it often to vote on the issues ourselves. Phone voting is now about 4 times less expensive than the present archaic system, so lets reduce the signatures necessary to put initiatives on the ballot by 4 times. Then more citizens will be involved in making better laws. You might call it self-determination.

In Nova Scotia on June 20, some 7000 voted by phone in the Liberal Party primary, over 4 times the number that used to come to their convention in person. Each call cost fifty cents, compared to the typical $2 per vote that Boulder elections now cost. Phone voting saves much more in the hidden cost of gasoline and lost time.

Before the June 20 success was the June 6 failure, due to incomplete testing of the system. Unfortunately, both Boulder papers confused the issue (perhaps enough to thwart our petition) when the facts were clear. The Wall Street Journal, CBS and CNN got it right and gave us the coverage this deserves.

Canada is considering a national phone referendum on a new constitution. The Pentagon is considering phone voting for servicepeople. And the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department has been asked to sue for phone voting for the blind, pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I first proposed voting by phone to the City Council over four years ago. If not us, who? If not now, when? Please write the Council (PO Box 791, Boulder CO 80306) asking them to hold hearings and put our initiative on the ballot next year. Send copies to the newspapers. Call us at 444-3596 for our free demonstration and literature.

As Nova Scotia Liberal leader Guy Brown says: “If we believe in democracy, this is the only way we can go.”

* * *

This summer for the first time musicians on the Mall could get permits to sell their own recordings and personal services (like massage and tarot) permits were available. Few have complained of a ‘flea market’ atmosphere as feared. Freedom and diversity are popular with nearly everyone here.

* * *

BIKE MEXICO! (and maybe more). Four or Five of us head South for adventure in early November. First stop, Basaseachic Falls and Copper Canyon for a hot springs backpack trip. Further itinerary left to serendipity.

Two of us speak Spanish competently. One is an expert bike mechanic. I’ve biked most of Mexico before. Two intend to continue to South America. We are three men and one or two women so far. Like to go? Again, 444-3596.

GUEST OPINION by Evan Ravitz
Published by the Boulder Sunday Camera 8/2/92

Why is Voting by Phone so controversial, when Americans have accepted lever-style voting machines, card-punch voting machines, absentee ballots, all-postal elections and computer vote counting almost without notice?

First, a reminder that the Voting by Phone Initiative now seeking signatures proposes phone voting as a choice, like absentee voting. If you want to vote the usual way, fine, but why not let the handicapped, elderly, distant rural residents, busy parents or anyone else have the convenience?

Because voting by phone is the easiest and fastest method, it produces the highest turnout- 94% in the world’s first on June 20, a primary in Nova Scotia. This seems to threaten American politicians who only want their own supporters to vote. More voters make their game less predictable.

Because voting by phone is the most economical since it is the most ecological way -no paper, no driving, no machines besides the existing phone system and a computer- it makes practical a real democracy, where citizens vote regularly on the issues important to them. This is now done in Switzerland and in New England (and Ward, Colorado) town meetings, and was most recently proposed for the nation by Perot.

The Heart of the issue is: “whether or not America believes in democracy and believes it can afford the risks that go with democratic life. All of the objections to it are so many different ways of saying ‘the people are not to be trusted’.”*

Columnist and former City Councilman Paul Danish and others like the NY Times’ William Safire fear the “instant” emotional voting the phone might allow. Yet Congress has had electronic voting for years and nobody has complained that Congress is moving too fast–or blames the technology for their moral turpitude. Voting on issues needs to be properly scheduled, which is taken care of by Boulder’s existing initiative laws.

Danish says that most non-voters are also disinterested and uninformed. Actually, studies show that most participating voters are uninformed about candidates voting records and vote largely by party, name recognition or looks. A Kettering Foundation study showed that a lot of non-voters are not so much disinterested as disgusted. Give them a regular vote on the issues instead of just personalities and watch them take interest!

The founding fathers settled for a representative democracy largely because most Americans were illiterate and had no time to come together to vote. These problems are solved! As Andrew Jackson said: “If there is a problem with democracy, the solution is more democracy.”

Safire and others worry about a “mobocracy” voting to steal our liberty. That’s why we have a Bill of Rights and a judicial system to protect us or the J. Edgar Hoovers and Richard Nixons and George Bushes would have stolen what’s left years ago. I think liberty requires democracy and so did George Bernard Shaw: “Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

If you want teen-agers to grow up, you have to give them responsibility. Same with citizens. America is like an adolescent: high-powered and eating up the planet’s resources. But we can blame the President for not signing the Rio Accords. We can blame Congress for our enormous debt. We must grow up and share the responsibility. As the philosopher Goethe said, “What government is best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.”

America’s whole history is a move to more democracy- giving the vote to blacks, women and 18-year olds, direct election of Senators, and the establishment of voter Initiatives in 20 states. Now that almost all of us can read and can find a phone, it would be a shame to lose our self-confidence when real democracy is within our grasp.

Canada is already considering a national phone referendum on its new Constitution within 6 months as a result of the Nova Scotia success. The Pentagon is now considering phone voting for servicepeople. Why not us? Is Boulder bolder or just a (c)rock? Please help us pass our petition, raise funds, write letters or do data entry- you’ll be making history. But don’t delay- we have until August 16 to collect 4000 more signatures. Call 444-3596.

You can also try our free demonstration of phone voting at 444-3596. If you registered in the City limits by July 8, we can identify you by name and birthdate and keep you to one vote. In our first vote, ending July 15, those registered voted 0% for Bush, 23% for Clinton, 20% for Perot, and 57% for None of the Above; 24% approved of the new Community Hospital parking structure, 29% disapproved and 47% had no opinion. The current vote substitutes a question on Syntex for the parking question.

Watching so much of the intelligencia contort themselves to oppose phone voting and/or true democracy reminds me of writer William James’ statement: “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

Danish is right- Voting by Phone is no panacea. But it will lead to democracy- that’s why politicians have been fighting it since Bucky Fuller first proposed it in 1940. Think what a different country this would be if the voters had been helping run it for 52 years! Isn’t it about time we got started? May the best and brightest ideas win!

*Journalist Benjamin Barber, testimony to Congress on the Voter Initiative Constitutional Amendment, 12/14/77, defeated by your representatives. Power concedes nothing without a struggle.

THE TIGHTROPE by Evan Ravitz
Published in the Colorado Daily 5/92

City Council deserves congratulations for reaching an honorable compromise on the 13th Street issue. The parking on the West side of the street from Spruce to Walnut will be converted to a bike path so Southbound cyclists won’t have to take the 14th Street detour anymore.

And Council promised to consider closing the street to cars entirely (and perhaps “malling” it, as discussed since at least 1975), as part of the ongoing redesign of Downtown. We pedestrians and cyclists need to make sure the City follows through, since the Planning Department ignored and then (unfairly) fought this, originally their own plan, in the last year.

I am not against access for cars, or the tourists they carry. I earn my living as a tightrope walker on the Mall 100 feet from 13th Street and tourists are a big part of our audience. But let’s not forget our bicycle and foot- crazy locals: Daily Camera interviews with tourists all last summer showed that the tourists loved seeing the colorful, even weird, people of Boulder.

There’s a balance downtown needs- between the transportation needs of tourists and locals. Yet here too, the easier alternate transportation is for locals, the more parking left for tourists. Planning Department’s portrayal of a conflict between economic vitality and the needs of cyclists and walkers will prove false. I have been amused to be lectured about balance by so many, not only non-tightrope-walkers, but, apparently at least, non-walkers!

The beautiful environment and fascinating residents of Boulder are the goose that laid the golden egg that the Mall is for the merchants. Tourists can get beer and burgers, pizza and ice cream in every town in America. They can see the Rubber Duckies, Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and other characters that the City supplies in every bathtub and tourist trap.

Up until 2 years ago, the City spent thousands on legal and police action to reduce our homegrown eclectic circus of entertainment to mostly music, magic and juggling. The locals are bored with what’s left, and far fewer come than a decade ago. Many find the traffic and pollution repellent as well, and access is difficult for those on foot, on bicycles, with baby carriages or rollerblades. That’s less local color for the tourists to see.

Partly as a result, business is down, but only in the downtown part of Boulder (according the the Boulder Business Report.) Boulder’s elite needs to remember that the best things in life are free, and these include clean air and outdoor entertainment.

I’d like to quote a petition for closing 13th signed by many of Boulder’s most famous runners and tri-athletes: “Pollution-induced asthma is a very real concern to professional athletes and is epidemic. Boulder is no exception and unless the air quality is improved Boulder will quickly lose its reputation as the country’s most desirable place to train.”

These folks are like canaries in a coal mine- they breathe more than us- and we should heed their warning, as well as Chief Niwot’s, which was not just that the whites would always come back to the beauty of Boulder Valley, but would destroy it.

Let’s not. Please help keep our city focused on a kinder, gentler, more breathable future. A Murdoch University (Australia) study of 32 international cities showed that: “High gasoline use is closely linked to the degree to which the city provides automobile infrastructure in the form of roads and car parking.”

So you may want to come and perhaps speak at a hearing before the Planning Board June 4 at 7:30 at the City Council Chambers (SW corner of Broadway and Canyon.) Another huge parking structure is under consideration for the hospital at the SW corner of Alpine and Broadway.

Bolder Bike Commuters, which spearheaded the 13th Street fight, has its monthly meeting Monday June 1 at 6:30 at Morgul Bismark Bicycles, 1221 Pennsylvania on the Hill.

You can always write the City Council at Box 791, The Daily Camera at Box 591, and the Colorado Daily at Box 1719, all in Boulder CO 80306.

THE TIGHTROPE by Evan Ravitz
Published in the Colorado Daily 5/92

To hear the 13th Street merchants speak at the special Joint Hearing of 3 City boards April 23, you’d think every one of them was a born-again cyclist and pedestrian. NOT! While many cycle recreationally, it was their perceived ‘enemies’, those who want to shut 2 blocks of 13th to cars, who actually rode bikes to City Hall that warm spring eve.

While the merchants were arguing that eliminating cars would put pedestrians at risk from cyclists, an older pedestrian told the truth: cars terrorize pedestrians every day in Boulder. Indeed 2 blocks away right after the meeting a man was struck and put in serious condition with a broken neck and leg. 6 weeks earlier, 3 pedestrians were hit, with 2 broken legs and critical head injuries among them. Blame it on those lycra-clad cyclists, 2 of whom were killed in town in the last 2 years, not by pedestrians, but by cars.

Our friend announced a Senior’s protest at this fall’s 13th Pedestrian Conference, where the City congratulates itself (about $30,000 worth) for its prize from Walking Magazine for being one of the 10 most pedestrian friendly cities in America. NOT! Any 10 small cities in California would be safer, because drivers there stop for pedestrians. Credit the City’s PR machine.

The merchants also argue that closing 13th from Walnut to Spruce would reduce the Mall’s visibility. NOT! If we were closing Broadway, I’d agree- many people discover the Mall passing by on Broadway. But everyone agrees 13th is a linear parking lot, not a through street. Indeed the Mall would become more visible from Spruce and Walnut, which carry more traffic.

Closing 13th would help implement 2 goals of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan- reducing auto traffic and creating a transport system appropriate to a compact community with auto-free zones. There are some 2000 blocks of street in Boulder. 4 are closed to cars- the Pearl Street Mall. We are asking for a modest 2 blocks more- and these blocks are shorter than the Mall’s. Remember, the City spent $9500 on prizes alone for a design competition for 13th in 1985. All entries involved closing 5 blocks of 13th from Arapahoe to Pine. We just want the City to show good faith by starting with the 2 blocks that are already a pedestrian zone.

It is outrageous to see the Planning Department using our taxes to fight the City’s abandoned plan resurrected by citizens who actually practice what they preach. But it’s NOT enough that our employees fight us- they cheat:

In 1990 I asked the Bike Coordinator what happened to the 13th Street plan. She said it was important and would call a meeting. Later that summer I asked what happened. She said the meeting was held while she was on vacation, and the matter dropped. Were she or I or you invited? NOT!

Last summer the City hosted a “Design Charette” at the Boulder Theater for celebrity designers and the public. The Planning Department’s review of 13th Street proposals mentioned several ideas that were NOT discussed at the Charette, but left out one that was- closure.

With persistence, the closure plan was added to the September 16 Open House on bike paths at the Boulderado. Planning’s document for the Joint Hearing mentioned the Open House, but NOT the result of the voting- closure 57%, all other plans 43%!

Planning has been compiling lists of pros and cons of the various plans. After many phone calls and a meeting with Planning’s new director, I finally felt the lists were fair. But Planning’s document and presentation at the Joint hearing were NOT:

One of the old cons was that closing 13th would block off access to the United Bank parking lot. I explained to our professional planners that access could simply be moved around the corner onto Walnut. Oh yes, they said, that would work. Now they’re saying closure would block the County Building exit. Same ‘problem’, same solution: move the exit around the corner to Spruce. Why do I have to explain this to the ‘pros’, twice?!?

Another of Planning’s new cons is that without cars, conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists could arise, like on the Broadway path. For months I’ve been asking the City Bike Program for signs distinguishing the bike and pedestrian lanes on the Broadway path. Why doesn’t Planning ask for signs instead of complaining? Besides, our plan gives pedestrians very wide sidewalks raised above the bike path, unlike the Broadway path.

It’s time Planning stopped prostituting itself for the merchants and started solving problems instead of inventing them. They are biting the hand that funds them! Closure is by far the best way to implement the Downtown Plan Steering Committee’s 9 Strategies to improve downtown, agreed to by the City Council and the 3 Boards.

Closure is also the best way to implement the Boulder Valley Transportation Master Plan goal of a transit system “competitive with the single occupant car in convenience, user friendliness, travel time, image, affordability and accessibility.” The bicycle wins (in town) in all categories except image, which seems to be the only value held by City government anymore.

The facts are in: closing Pearl Street was the best thing that ever happened downtown. When the 2 blocks of 13th are closed for weekend special events every summer, business booms. Let’s try a trial closure and see. The best use of the $1 million of real estate the 56 parking spots in question use is for outside dining, sidewalk sales and street entertainment.

Please show support by writing the City Council, (Box 791, Boulder 80306), the newspapers, or coming to the final public hearing- Tuesday May 19 starting at 7:30 at City Hall, the SW corner of Broadway and Canyon. For more info call me at 444-3596. Ask them to put your money where their mouth is!

THE TIGHTROPE by Evan Ravitz
Published in the Colorado Daily 4/15/92

Our fearless editor Clint Talbott noted Feb 13 that what’s good for the goose (former CU President E. Gordon Gee) isn’t always good for the gander (CU football coach Bill McCartney). And certainly slick salesman Gee got away with using his office for political campaigns in ’88 & ’90 while foot-in-the-mouth fundamentalist McCartney has been (rightly) condemned for the same recently.

What’s good for the Gees, and the elite who run our universities and world from their ivory towers? One didn’t hear much about Elizabeth Gee until she died recently of a long bout with cancer.

Remember Trygve Bauge? He’s the 12-year resident of Boulder from Norway known as the founder of the Boulder Polar Bear Club. He stopped by the Gees’ mansion-on-the-range to suggest a way for Mrs. Gee to beat the Reaper- Gersen detoxification therapy. (Incidentally this therapy is illegal here thanks to the US cancer industry, although, with studies showing much cancer is caused by environmental factors, cleaning up your internal environment sounds like something to try before chemotherapy.)

Finding nobody at the guard house he went to the door and knocked, then the window. She called the police and they hauled the elfin long-haired good samaritan off to jail. His lawsuit is pending. Might Mrs. Gee be alive today if she’d greeted Mr. Bauge in the spirit he approached her? Trygve at least could have cheered her up.

How about E. Gordon? What good could the West do for this bow-tied Eastern dandy who gave secret deferred pay bonuses to an array of VPs and a ‘lifetime’ contract to Big Mac? (A ‘lifetime’ for fundamentalists like Ronald Reagan and Mac means until Armageddon, soon, like the year 2000.) Let’s journey to San Luis, the oldest town in Colorado, sometimes the coldest town in Colorado, The Northernmost outpost of the former empire of New Spain.

Gee and entourage came to San Luis twice to showcase what CU could do for this little ‘third world’ burg- study the local historic and religious vernacular architecture, create a town plan and promote tourism, not to mention public relations for CU.

My old friends Arnie and Maria Valdez discovered that although they were CU Architecture and Planning grad students, bilingual San Luis eighth-generation natives, and had a national reputation for expertise in building and restoring local architecture (and keeping poor people warm), CU was applying to NEA for a grant to study “culture and religious architectural form in the San Luis Valley” without including them and benefitting another student without roots or experience there, or 4 hungry kids to feed.

There were other problems with the application, which promised to “enable local people to understand their culture and take pride in it.” Locals like the Monsignor were not involved, perhaps too stupid to understand their culture without outside assistance. The proposal to print 50,000 brochures to encourage tourism to fragile historic buildings or private ‘Moradas’ (Penitente churches) was not popular either.

They filed a discrimination suit with the Colorado Department of Education, but were convinced by a professor to also apply for a similar grant, which they did without help, but with the endorsement of CU. They won the grant, while CU’s own proposal was turned down. In retaliation, the department refused to give them matching funds they had promised in writing. “No way in hell you’ll ever get those Kellogg funds!” Bob Horn, the department’s service director, told them.

When Gee came on his cheerleading mission, Maria’s dad, Charles Mondragon sat next to one of Gee’s handlers and told her he could embarrass Gee by asking why the University stiffed the natives, but would prefer a private audience at his office. Gee came to the office.

Maria tried to be christian about it and not accuse people of discrimination. At some point San Luis experienced one of their common power brown-outs and the lights dimmed and buzzed. Gee became paranoid exclaiming: “What’s happening here, what’s going on?”, suddenly fearful in this town of brown people.

On another project, Maria did a historical overview for a Town Plan of San Luis and submitted family photos with a hand-written note asking that they not be published. Lo, they were published- Maria’s work with Bob Horn’s name!

Corruption is rampant in the School of Planning and Architecture- see the endless story in Westword 6/7-13/89. Arnie & Maria often saw cases of liquor being sent up to the head honchos.

The upshot is that Arnie & Maria left CU penniless (having counted on CU’s promised matching funds) and are finishing up at UNM, along with many others. Their Valdez Associates recently beat out CU for a Colorado Historical Society grant. Maria, as outspoken as Arnie is quietly competent, says: “CU manipulates public policy under the guise of education, and has divided our community with its money.”

What’s good for the Gees, the Goose and the Gander? A priority on education, not public relations- clearly an expensive failure at CU. Educators listen as well as teach, PR only blusters and marginalizes those who dare to dialogue. Maybe what the Gees needed was Mr. Bauge’s and the Valdez’s feedback to get them back on track. Big Mac’s getting some serious feedback. America’s ruling elites are out of touch. All natural and man-made systems need feedback to be healthy. That’s why we started the Voting by Phone foundation- to make it possible for Americans to have a regular voice in their government.

THE TIGHTROPE by Evan Ravitz
Published by the Colorado Daily 3/5/92

What is the future of Boulder? As the area with the eighth-highest per capital car registration in the nation (American Demographics Magazine, 12/3/84), are we driving our once “laid-back” city into the hole that is suffocating Los Angeles? We who regularly climb the foothills above town know that “Denver’s” famous Brown Cloud actually extends as far as the eye can see- from Golden to Fort Collins- about half the dirty days of winter. Does Boulder deserve its reputation as E-Town, or is it really C-town, Car-town?

Boulder also has a reputation as a bicycling town- more world class cyclists live here than any other city in the world. There are about 100,000 bicycles for 85,000 people, yet only 10% of us use our bikes for transportation.

At the February 4th City Council study session on the proposed Downtown Plan, the stickiest issue was a North-South bike path to link the Broadway and Creek Paths to the Mall and North Boulder. The Indian Peaks Group of the Sierra Club, the CU Environmental Center Board and Bolder Bicycle Commuters’ preferred plan is to close 13th Street from Walnut to Spruce Street to motor vehicles, and build a pedestrian Mall there with a bike path down the center.

These groups consider the ’13th-14th Street couplet’ option favored by downtown businesses unacceptable- this is essentially the status quo, with a few signs and perhaps a reversal of traffic flow. It doesn’t work- about half the cyclists ride the ‘wrong’ way South on 13th or the sidewalk, rather than take the 14th St. Detour. At a City-sponsored Open House in September, more people favored the closure option than all others put together- 57%.

Councilman Greenlee posed the best question of the night: Are we just connecting up the bike path or are we trying to encourage alternate modes of travel? If the latter, he said, let’s see a package of incentives.

Here’s my list:

1. Close 13th St downtown, and create obstructions every several blocks further north to discourage through traffic while encouraging cycling and permitting resident auto access. Neighbors have been complaining of drivers using 13th as an alternate to Broadway and speeding. Eventually this pattern could extend the length of 13th, making a Bike Parkway from Chautauqua Park past Beach Park and connecting via the Broadway Bike Path to Central Park and North Boulder Rec Center.

2. Permit cyclists to treat a red light as a stop sign, and a stop sign as a yield sign. This would legalize the natural behavior of cyclists in avoiding the crush of traffic and pollution at intersections, as well as provide an incentive to cycle. Municipal Court Judge Richard Hanson supports this- he says any law that can’t get 85% voluntary compliance is wrong. It is noteworthy that Mr. Hanson bicycled regularly until the last few years- he says it’s too dangerous for him now.

3. Lower speed limits by 5 mph citywide- a further incentive to not drive. Why race to the next red light anyhow?

4. Change City financial priorities. An example is the Department of Public Works 1992 maintenance budget request for $450,000 for medians versus only $191,000 for bikeways and $142,000 for sidewalks. A median is largely a poor excuse to install an expensive sprinkler system to water Kentucky bluegrass, the pavement and pesky cyclists. $450,000 could free the on-street paths of gravel and ice and encourage winter cycling, as well as provide needed signs and fix dangerous areas.

5. Change City law to limit parking built for new construction instead of forcing builders to pave plenty of the paradise left here for parking lots. San Diego and Portland both set maximum parking versus our minimum requirements.

6. Get the University to discourage new students from bringing cars- CU has just spent 8.4 million dollars on 2 huge garages, while CSU in Fort Collins plans to phase out campus driving altogether.

7. Free the City Bicycle Program to really advocate for cyclists: Why must they remain neutral in the downtown struggle while the Planning Department and Downtown Management Commission advocate the ‘couplet’, even though closure much better implements Planning’s own 9 strategies for improving downtown?

Can Boulder avoid suffocation and gridlock? You bet- in a single year bus ridership went up 42% with the Eco-Pass and Student Pass programs. But this still represents only 3% of all transportation ‘trips’ here, while cyclists already comprise 10%. A Harris poll in 1990 showed 10 times more Americans would cycle if facilities were improved. Seattle, a huge rainy city, is doing it. Compact, dry, young and athletic Boulder should too!

We need to work together- cyclists, pedestrians, roller-bladers, wheel-chair users and skate-boarders must become allies and stop fighting over the crumbs while cars hoard the cake, space-wise.

Now is the time to write letters to newspapers and the City Council, which has a study session on Alternate Modes Feb 25 and one on the 13th St issue March 31. Please also attend upcoming hearings of the Downtown Management Commission, the Downtown Design Advisory Board, the Planning Board, and finally, City Council hearings in April. You can always talk to me at 444-3596.

THE TIGHTWIRE by Evan Ravitz
Published by the Colorado Daily 12/91

“Businesses blast 13th-Street closure”, the November 21st Daily lead article, says a lot about what’s wrong with Boulder. The 50 business representatives grab the headline, while the 150 citizens who voted overwhelmingly for the closure on September 16 at a City Open House get the subhead and no story at all till now. So what else is new: money = news. Of course the Camera’s Business Plus story completely ignored us.

Putting aside for now that bikes = money in Boulder and that bikes = ecology, health and fun, the story background is this:

13th Street was designated years ago in the Transportation Master Plan as the bike route connecting the Broadway bike path to North Boulder and paths that go north and east from 13th behind the North Boulder Rec Center. With the advent of the Creek Path, 13th could be the connector to the Mall for pedestrians as well! The City backed building the 13th Street Pedestrian Bikeway and held a contest to design it in 1985. The City failed to consult first with downtown businesses, and cyclists failed to back up the city. Bicycling has at least doubled since the start of mass production of mountain bikes in 1984, our paths and racks are full, and we are still waiting for the City to keep its promise and put our money where its mouth is, ecologically speaking.

Some comments on story specifics:

The claim of Vagabond Travel owner Jane Morrissey that closure would be “death to downtown Boulder” is ridiculous, considering what closing Pearl Street did for life in downtown Boulder. Unfortunately otherwise reasonable and intelligent people like Boulderado Hotel owner Frank Day echo this, telling me that closure would “destroy downtown”. Sounds like “The Bike Path that ate Boulder” or the “Evil Empire” to me.

Strangely enough, it was Frank who suggested to me the closure of just the 2 blocks from Spruce to Walnut, which is now backed almost unanimously by the Bolder Bicycle Commuters club and the 1000 cyclists who’ve signed our petition. Cyclists and the City previously backed closing the 5 blocks from Pine to Arapahoe, which should still eventually happen as business is revitalized again by a new Mall addition. We think asking to close it incrementally is being extremely reasonable. There are many people saying all of downtown or even Boulder should be closed to cars.

The merchants worship parking, which costs about $14-18,000 per space to build downtown, never to be completely recovered by parking fees, but subsidized by taxes. Since the City first proposed the 13th St. closure, 392 new spaces have been built at 11th and Spruce, and about 200 above the bus depot. Sacrificing 94 to a new Mall addition should be relatively painless. We hope all 94 will come by bike or on foot.

Morrissey shouldn’t worry that her customers won’t be able to lug away the luggage she sells: parking will still be there 1/2 block South of her store in the lot behind United Bank; the alley North of her is less than 1/2 block away. Research for the Pearl St. Mall showed people would walk several blocks if it were pleasant. They do.

Morrissey commented at the City Open House that “…people ought to think of the future. As they grow older, and biking becomes less of an enjoyment, then what are they going to do?!” Personally, I intend to cycle into my 80s, and then walk. Indeed we should think of the real future: gas prices rising to the world average- about $4 a gallon- and beyond, as oil fields become more remote. We’re already poisoning our air, warming our globe and paving the paradise that Boulder and America used to be.

Morrissey says “It’s the older people who have the real money, and are more likely to buy the goods and services available in downtown Boulder. They certainly don’t ride bikes – they are dressed in business attire and know the value of hard work.” That doesn’t sound like the Mall I’ve worked on for 13 years, but it does sound like ignoring our children’s future to cater to the lazy.

Jane should meet Municipal Judge Richard Hanson, who rode a bike, judicial robes and all, into his late 60s. He stopped because of the increasing traffic danger Boulder bicyclists know so well. One Bolder Bicycle Commuter said bicycling was better in New York City! Indeed about the same portion of vehicles are bikes in Boulder and Manhattan- 10%. In a town as compact, warm and dry, with people as young and fit, as Boulder, that’s pathetic. Considering all our environmental consciousness in Boulder, now known around the country as E-Town, it’s hypocritical. We should really be known as C-Town, Car-town, the home of the 8th-highest per-capita car ownership in the nation (American Demographics Magazine, 12/3/84).

I was mildly misquoted in the article. I said the “13th-14th couplet” option, not the failure to close 13th Street, was a slap in the face to the biking community. Here’s why: The “couplet” is the way cyclists (and motorists) now must go, legally- North on 13th, South on 14th- it’s really the 14th Street Detour. This “option” adds merely 4 signs to direct you, an additional connection to the Creek Path to the Southeast, and most importantly, enforcement.

Enforcement is the key, because cyclists largely spurn the 2-block Detour for illegally riding south on 13th or the sidewalk. These cyclists include the Chair of the Planning Board, the Boulder Bike Coordinator, and the City Planner supervising this process known as the Downtown Plan. If our leaders don’t like the Detour, why will anyone else?! Only to avoid the Police ticketing spree the downtown merchants look forward to bludgeoning pesky cyclists into submission with.

Bureaucrats: The Bike Coordinator and Planner I mention have now mended their ways and take the Detour- they know that you can make their lives miserable. Perhaps this is why Bike Coordinators turn over so fast in Boulder- they aren’t allowed to be advocates for cyclists- they have to toe the City “neutrality” line, and ride the Detour. Maybe that’s why Coordinator Sharon Harvey is confused enough to claim “The bike community strongly supports the contra-flow lane”, when Open House attendees voted 57% for closing 13th and only 14% for contra-flow.

A Harris poll last fall shows 2% of Americans cycle to work, and 20% would if facilities were improved. With 10% of Boulderites now cycling to work, a similar increase would have all of us cycling! Even if only 30% did, our traffic and pollution problems would largely disappear, and the streets would be safer for all of us. The fact that there are more bikes- 100,000 -than people- 83,000 -in Boulder further shows it’s possible.

An Alternate Modes publication shows that the average car trip is 5 miles here, easily done on a bike, and faster, as bikes usually win the Non-polluting Commuting Race during Bike Week.

Portland, Oregon, and San Diego both limit maximum parking allowed for new construction projects. Here in Car-town, City laws mandate plenty of parking. While the City of Aspen provides free bicycles to workers, residents and visitors, Car-town nixed the idea, leaving it to Doug Emerson of University Bicycles to pursue. While Colorado State University plans to phase out cars from campus, CU spends $8.4 million of our money on new garages, only provides needed bike racks when forced to and recently considered banning bikes. CU teaches what City government practices: Greenwashing. Ecopocrisy. E-pocrisy

City government is putting our money where its mouth is with the Eco Pass bus program, which has already increased bus use by 42% in a year. In perspective though, bus trips still represent 3% of all trips, while bicycle trips constitute 10%, also a growing figure. The only way the Eco Pass can be made “the cornerstone of Boulder’s plan to reduce single-occupancy automobile trips 15% by 2010” is by reducing pesky cyclists with the “enforcement” approach the business community anticipates. Otherwise, cycling will continue to move many more people than the bus. This is Boulder, not Texas, Mr. Alternate Modes Co-ordinator. Everything in town is close. Boulder loves to cycle.

13th Street is the most important missing link in the bicycle network- connecting the Broadway and Creek Paths to downtown and North Boulder. The City already spent $7000 in the mid-80s to design it, and millions on parking garages nearby for those who won’t ride. City bike facilities are bursting at the seams- give the people what they want!

Recently, when the County wouldn’t take down the gate blocking the Canyon path in response to the pleas of cyclists who were made to risk riding the highway, brave “vandals” destroyed the gate over and over, until the County had to give in. Government will learn: The customer is always right. If Boulder were a democracy, the 13th St. Pedestrian Bikeway would have been built 5 years ago.

Stop by the Boulderado Hotel for coffee and to tell owner Frank Day you like his plan to close 13th from Spruce to Walnut as a beginning. Leave a business card, or a note, saying so. Economics talks louder than ecology.

You are invited to join Bolder Bicycle Commuters on Monday January 2, 6:30 at Morgul Bismark Bicycles, 1221 Pennsylvania, for our monthly meeting. We’re working for you, our beautiful town and the Earth! See you there!