Sustainable Flatbush

Another brilliant campaign from the Copenhagen Bike Culture blog. In that Nordic mecca for stylish cyclists, a relaxed bike ride to work, school, shopping, or socializing is just everyday transportation (no Lycra allowed!). I’ve already mastered the “Slow” part, but full membership seems to require stiletto heels.

Tour de Brooklyn 2008 starting line
The Fourth Annual Tour de Brooklyn was, once again, a great success. I’ve ridden in all of them and because the route changes each year, the TdB offers a wonderful opportunity to see parts of Brooklyn that may not be on one’s daily itinerary. This year after starting underneath the [...]

I’ve received a number of inquiries lately from folks wondering where to recycle CFL bulbs locally (the bulbs contain a small amount of mercury, and shouldn’t be thrown out with the trash). This Wednesday the answer is at Brooklyn Green Drinks, hosted by Center for the Urban Environment at their beautiful new home, a showplace [...]

This is a community-organized, family-friendly, leisurely neighborhood bike ride, happening next Saturday morning. A great opportunity to see the architecture and sights in Bedford Stuyvesant, one of Brooklyn’s most beautiful and historic brownstone neighborhoods. Bed-Stuy Blog has the news:
To celebrate Bike Month, Bedford-Stuyvesant will be having a bike ride called The Steeple Chase. The Steeple [...]

Sustainable Transportation tidbits from this weekend:
Gas prices knock bicycle sales, repairs into higher gear
Four-dollar-a-gallon gas is good for business — if you run a bike shop. Commuters around the country are dusting off their old two-wheelers — or buying new ones — to cope with rising fuel prices, bicycle dealers say.
Hey, if the Parisians can [...]

Our neighbors to the north at Hawthorne Street blog in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens (part of Flatbush? You decide…) have been discussing the horrifically dangerous entrance to Prospect Park at Ocean and Parkside Avenues for some months now, and have formed a local Livable Streets group called PLG Public Works to address this and other traffic-related issues. [...]

photo by Flatbush Gardener
When I attended last year’s Brooklyn Blogfest at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, Sustainable Flatbush had been online for only a few weeks. Most of the names and people and language of the blogging world were very new to me, everyone at the event seemed to be from Fort Greene [...]

This afternoon I received word of a petition supporting a re-design of Vanderbilt Avenue (Prospect Heights) to include separated bike lanes. By providing designated space for cars, bicycles and pedestrians, this design would meet what the Department of Transportation calls the “gold standard” for safety.
Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of separated bike [...]

May is Bike Month! So many great events, so little time… check our calendar for a somewhat Brooklyn-centric assortment of great stuff to do on a bike this month. Look for the events marked “BIKE MONTH”… can’t say we don’t make it easy!
Don’t forget to register for Tour de Brooklyn on May 25th!

Tour de Brooklyn [...]

Have I mentioned that I’m a huge fan of New York City’s Department of Transportation Commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan? (Answer: yes, you’ve mentioned it.) She’s more like a rock star than a public official. She bikes to work, is a great speaker, and has traveled to cities all over the world in search of best-practice ideas [...]