CITY Issue 51

CITY LIFE Check Out: Colette, 213 Rue Saint Honore SUGGESTED ITINERARY An afternoon’s bicycle journey through the center of Paris 2ème Arr. Check Out: Place Georges Pompidou, Centre Pompidou Ch am Bike Pickup: 215 Rue Saint Honore ps- Ely sée s Ru ed Start / End Here eR ivo li Rue Réa umo r Con cord e ai d e Voi es 7ème Arr. leva rd uch e Ro yal eR ive Ga 1er Arr. Seb ur B eR ivo asto po ed Ru sT uile eri ries es Ru Bike Pickup: 40 Boulevard Sebastopol l ed eT em 3ème Arr. Qu sT uil vre erg li Check Out: Notre Dame Pon t ac Qu uB ai V olta i Voie Ge re s orges ed Seine Quai M alaqua is Pomp id ou 4ème Arr. Bou Rue Ru de s-P ére ed 6ème Arr. Check Out: L’Ecume Des Pages, 174 Boulevard Saint Germain es Sa int Ru Po nt Bike Pickup: 141 Boulevard Saint Germain Ne Riv oli uf 5ème Arr. No Da tre me Bike Pickup: 32 Rue de la Harpe walk p ath Rue de la Harpe and happy. While on the Left Bank, I took a small pilgrimage to the Rue de Visconti, where Miller had taught his wife June to ride a bike. There is a Vélib station right around his old corner. I wonder if he would have approved. (I think so.) Opponents to the initiative have little, wormhole concerns—vandalism, theft, a general lack of goodwill between cars and scooters and bikers—but if the latter is really there, I didn’t sense it, apart from a sneer or two after my wreck at the auto club. I suppose it’s because there is always a great amount of hope when anything new makes its way into a city, a sense of perkiness and success and benevolence that sunlights out all sense of future graffiti. I’ve felt it from time to time in New York, when walking through the Hudson River Park when it opened, when happening upon a new subway car, when sitting in the re-beautified Madison Square Park. And even taking my own sense-for-the-romantic handicap and recalibrating accordingly, that’s the feeling, all over the place, in Paris now. While Vélib’s dual missions—reducing both a whole city’s carbon footprint and it’s urban congestion—are easy bedfellows, they are not, after all, the same issue (though you’d hardly know that from the Vélib press materials). Congestion control has a direct impact: fewer cars mean less traffic and less traffic-related impact on the city and its blockages. The effect of Vélib, if successful, will be felt immediately and tangibly. Cutting Paris’s carbon footprint, meanwhile, is perhaps a more philosophical goal. Eleven thousand free bikes aren’t going to solve global warming, but they will get Parisians and tourists out of their cars and onto bikes. Though Vélib isn’t the first bike-sharing program in a major city, it is, by a long stretch, the biggest. Lyon, France, comes in second at 4,000 bikes. And it’s not tax dollars paying either, but rather big outdoor advertising giants who set up the bike programs in exchange for city billboard space. In other cities with working bike share programs— Copenhagen, Barcelona, and at one point Stockholm—many of the ads are placed directly onto the bicycles. So for all the things you’re free from, you’re subject to a few more unwanted subversives in your visual field. It’s a trade off that I would gladly accept for New York, and I’d like to think most Americans would for their home cities, as well. Though New York only has about 100 miles of bike paths, compared to some 230 miles in Paris, a bike-sharing program doesn’t seem unfeasible, considering Paris had less than five miles of official paths just six years ago. New York has plans to add over 200 miles before 2009. And, at about $30,000 per mile, it’s not too expensive relative to other transportation undertakings like a new subway line. In July, the New York Bike-Share Project held an unofficial experiment to the tune of 20 free bikes over two weeks. Though small, it was successful—and more importantly, hopeful. Before I arrived in Paris, I had a premonition that I might have a near-miss experience with a car. After actually living through one, I’m glad that the run-in with the Audi happened. I needed to see if, after a threat to my health and safety, biking was still freeing, still worth it. It was. ple Q ua id e Co i nt Jar din Rue Sai nt H de ono re Lou 38 CITY M A P I L LU S T R AT I O N B Y A L E X A N D E R W O L F. Bo va ule rd Sa int Ge rm ain

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CITY Issue 51

Contents Letter from CITY Our Friends Action Wanted City Moment The City Life Fast Food Fit Field Trip The Suite Life Paint the Town Red Fresh Tracks After the Sunset One City, Many Destinations The Winning Photographer The Entries By the Numbers The Finalists Expert Opinion Amateur Hour Meet the Finalists Nowhere Man Dune Raiders Just Go Where To Buy It Socials Icon

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