Looking Car-Like

As in most cities, lack of bicycle infrastructure is a problem in Berkeley, California. A big problem. And like most cities, the city council won’t listen or only pretends to. So a group of cyclists thought they would wake up the council and make it see.

Expanding on Montreal’s idea of “space frames” and Dijon’s idea of cardboard cars, they’re building “bicycle-cars”—bicycles with large PVC structures built around them so they look like cars. And behave like cars. The group threatens to go on the road with 10 of them for at least a month, taking up a lane of traffic, parking in car spaces and making bike issues visible. There’s even talk of building enough of them to create a traffic jam. After all, bicyclists don’t block traffic, they are traffic.

Drivers will suddenly be faced with the shocking reality that cyclists exist, have a right to the road, and take up a lot less space (normally, without the frames) than those on four wheels.

Life in the Fast

Lane Michael Hartmann, f amous for “car walking” in Germany, founded a new tactic last year. He would walk out into the middle of an intersection, nail together a few boards, and start building a hut to protest the space taken up by cars and attempt to solve his own homelessness problem.

A couple of times he got the hut built; a couple of times he was stopped by a hoard of police officers. But the idea was launched in the minds of waiting motorists and other activists.

“The best way to do this kind of action is with a group of, say, four builders and a group of activists blocking the traffic and protecting the house,” says Pim van Gaelen of Amsterdam.

Other ideas include building the hut beforehand and nailing it together on site. It hasn’t been tried, yet.

Maybe next time a road widening in your town takes out a row of houses, a village of the homeless could appear within minutes in the middle of the road…

Breakfast Power!

The notion of community tends to get lost as cities move from public and pedestrian transport to the isolation of single-passenger cars, as local streets become too dangerous to easily cross to chat with the neighbours. What better way to deal with it than to sit down the neighbourhood for a meal?

Activists in Dijon, France, recently organised a community meal—in the street. They pasted up posters and distributed leaflets through the neighbourhood. The street was blocked, people brought along food…and even talked to each other.

The group Mobil Ohne Auto (Mobile Without Cars) in Münster, Germany, has put together several “breakfast actions,” cordoning off a roadside parking space for a communal breakfast.

“We’re taking back our living space,” said one breakfaster. “There’s enough parking space, but too little space for people in this town.”

Crossing Like a Zebra

In the centre of Melbourne, Australia, cars are outnumbered by pedestrians trying to push their way through the crowds and the traffic to get from office to cafe or shop to shop. So activists began to wonder why the cars always get the right of way—aside from the fact that cars are obviously more important than human beings.

To highlight pedestrian issues and make some people realise pedestrian issues exist in the first place, Streets for People organised a pedestrian-crossing action. Participants dressed in solid black or white, marched into the middle of the road, and laid down. Voilà, a human zebracrossing. Or a zebra human-crossing. A traffic guard’s costume and stop sign borrowed from the city council kept the cars obediently waiting, while activists passed out leaflets and pedestrians miraculously found they could cross the road without waiting for endless traffic. The small-scale action didn’t cause a revolution—but it was positive, fun and visual.

It was repeated in front of Melbourne University’s main pedestrian entrance and got a photo in the city’s daily newspaper, leading to an official inquiry about the intersection, which is likely to change priority from cars to pedestrians.

It’s a Good Day to Pie

“Comical terrorism” is how Noel Godin describes the tactics of his Patisserie Brigade Internationale, whose members spend their time throwing cream pies in the faces of government leaders and heads of corporations responsible for environmental and social crimes.

The brigade, based in Belgium, has been pieing people since 1969, and now has counterparts in the United States and Britain.

Successful pieing relies on solid information on the whereabouts of the intended victim, the ability to blend into a crowd, being able to get into close range, and good aim.

Beyond that all you need is a large cream pie (although People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which recently joined in on the act, opted for tofu).

While the idea is undeniably silly, it has had surprising success, not only in humiliating the victims and giving the piers a certain sense of satisfaction, but also in attracting media attention and adding some vaudvillian comedy to life.

As Godin points out, “the victim is only injured in his self-esteem.”

Pulling Strings

The November international Climate Meeting in Buenos Aires was a bit of a non-event for environmentalists, journalists, human beings and even some politicians, who wanted real decisions, as opposed to decisions to make decisions later.

But the journalists at least got a bit of entertainment, when a Transnational Resource and Action Centre representative highlighted the U.S.’s reluctance to allow any decisions to be made which could threaten the oil industry, with the aid of a bit of theatre.

The representative, Kenny Bruno, dressed in stars and stripes and sang the praises of the oil industry, all the while hooked up like a marionette with the “Exxon Tiger” pulling the strings.

Oil industry reps weren’t impressed, despite being somewhat jealous of the tiger suit.