Atlanta Streets Alive -- North Avenue Edition

Last Sunday was Atlanta Streets Alive, the wonderful open streets event organized by the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition.  This time the route was from the intersection of Virginia Avenue and Highland Avenue south on Highland through Poncey-Highland into the Old Fourth Ward, then north on Boulevard to North Avenue, then past the Ponce City Market and Historic Fourth Ward Park back to Highland, in a lower-case sans serif "d" shape, 4.5 miles in length.

I volunteered for the early shift to help with tactical urbanism projects.  We met on the stretch of North Avenue between the Historic Fourth Ward Park and Ponce City Market.  Our first task was spray painting the slates of some wooden shipping pallets, repurposing them as mobile blackboards.

Next, we constructed protected bike lane in along the Ponce City Market-side of North Avenue, with plastic bollards, plants, and sandwich board signs.  A man with a leaf blower came when we were done and cleared debris from the pavement.

Once that was done, I got a taco from Tex's Tacos food truck.  

The young woman who took my order said it was her boyfriend's truck and this was his third week of operation.  She recommended the chicken taco and I got one of those and one carne asada.  They were both terrific.  (Business must have been ended up being good because when I came by with Iain later, they were out of carne asada.)

I was still on North Avenue when the bike parade came through, with the famous huge flying phoenixes.  I think that's Chantelle Rytter in the lead.  

By then Iain was on his way home from mock trial, so I went home to meet him and then we walked the route on foot.  I took lots of pictures, and if you weren't there, I'll show you a little bit of what you missed.

There were people.  I think this couple was on Highland.

There were lots of children.  Before I took this photo I asked a woman standing nearby if I could take it.  She said "sure," and as I was taking the picture, she hastily added that this little girl wasn't actually with her.

There were friends and neighbors.  We saw Mia at Java Vino.

Even the APD officers seemed to be having a good time.  This was at Highland and Ponce De Leon.

There were dogs.  This one was near Ponce City Market, and the one below was near Blind Willie's.

This faux dog was spotted on Boulevard, on the back of a bicycle.  I think I'd seen the rider-bike-mannequin without the dog head previously at one of the Streets Alive events on Peachtree.

We spotted this pup at Java Vino and Iain and I were both struck by how much he looked like a younger version of Leonard; he has the same longer hair on his ears that Leonard does.  We told his owners that he looked like our dog, a Labrador retriever-Australian shepherd mix.  They were surprised and said their dog was also a Lab-Australian shepherd mix.  And it doesn't show in the photo, but he also has a patch of white on the chest and long white coarse fur at the tip of his tail, just like Leonard has.  So I bet this is what he looked like when he was a puppy.  If he ever needs a picture of himself as a pup for a project at dog school, I'll just use this one.

There was music. There was blues at Blind Willie's.  (There also was jambalaya, which Iain got for lunch before he had the taco.)

There was zumba at several points along the route.  This was near Highland and St. Charles.

There was a marching band.  We saw them later, performing at North Avenue and Freedom Parkway.

There was dance music on Boulevard.

And this trio was performing on North Avenue, near Ponce City Market.

There were plenty of other things to see and do.  There were people playing bicycle polo and a little kids' soccer field on the parking lot on Highland across from American Road House.  Iain and I played a couple rounds of corn hole; neither of us did very well.  On Highland, there was ping pong.

On North Avenue, there were acrobats from the Imperial Opa Circus.

The poets from Free Poems on Demand were set up on Highland.  As we always do, we requested a poem -- this one about the Braves moving to Cobb County -- but we didn't wait for it and were unable to circle back by to pick it up.  I need to follow up with them on that, as this is always one of our favorite Streets Alive activities.

This wonderful collection of portraits (part of this year's Art on the Beltline) was on North Avenue.

There were a couple of large constructions on Boulevard that were created by architecture students at Southern Poly State University.  This is one of them.

 And there were the other tactical urbanism interventions along the route.  The blackboards we had painted were all along the route, and cross walks had been decorated with sidewalk chalk, in a sort of temporary intersection repair-type intervention.

 This one, on Boulevard, was set up as a participatory color-by-number activity.  Iain and I colored in one of the large red squares before we moved on.

And here's the protected bike lane that we'd constructed earlier, when we came back by later.

It was a great event, and I'm so glad we went.  There were a couple of disappointments, though, besides not getting back by the Free Poems on Demand table to pick up our poem.  The commercial areas of Highland were totally packed with people and bikes and activities, but Boulevard seemed underutilized.  Atlanta Medical Center should have had displays and health screening in front of their facility, but once again they were completely missing.  The only sign of life we saw in that stretch of Boulevard was this stethescope-carrying guy in scrubs who was on a cigarette break.  

There also was nothing going on this time at Fort Street United Methodist Church.  One bright spot on Boulevard was a lively scene at Blueprint Church, near the color-by-numbers crosswalk, 

This was the last Streets Alive event of the year; already I'm looking forward to the next one.  And if Atlanta Medical Center needs any ideas about what kinds of activities they should have, the next time Streets Alive is on Boulevard, they should feel free to get in touch with me.  And maybe they could include some information on smoking cessation.

Addendum from October 6, 2014:  I got the poem by email!  Thanks to Zac Denton for writing it and Jimmy Lo for emailing it.  Here it is: