Photo Of The Day: Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn

by Elizabeth Seward on


Today’s Photo of The Day is a photo shot from the rear-view mirror of a car in the elusive Greenwood Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, which borders Gowanus. Along the industrial 2nd Ave. that borders the waters of the Gowanus Bay, abandoned lofts and factories are sandwiched between those that are still in use. A fenced parking lot houses for-sale cars. Semi-trucks sweep in and out of the area for deliveries. I walked down to the water in this neighborhood shortly before Hurricane Sandy struck; I watched the powerful wind churn up rough waves within the normally stagnant puddles on the street. It’s a ghostly area, flush with industrialism and views of the Manhattan skyline. This photo was taken by Ben Britz. If you’d like to contribute a photo to our Photo of the Day, just upload your shots to the Gadling Flickr Pool.

[Photo Credit: Ben Britz]

Spirit Airlines Ditches Toll-Free Customer Service Line

by Libby Zay on

Famous for its no-frills approach (and for being the first airline to charge for carry-on bags), Spirit Airlines has decided it no longer needs a toll-free customer service line, the Los Angeles Times is reporting. In lieu of a 1-800 number, Spirit quietly replaced all its phone numbers with 801 area codes, which correspond with a geographic area in Utah.

The change won’t affect most mobile customers, who typically have unlimited long-distance calling plans. But according to the L.A. Times, people dialing Spirit from a landline could incur fees up to 18 cents per minute, depending on the phone plan. Let’s just hope Spirit doesn’t have long wait times for speaking with customer service reps, or else fees could start adding up quickly.

“Our new numbers are allowing us to keep our costs low, which we in turn continue to pass along to our customers by way of the ultra-low fares they have come to know and love,” airline spokeswoman Misty Pinson told the news outlet. Although the toll-charge number doesn’t seem like it will hit most wallets, when coupled with the airline’s 71 other passenger fees, the price of a “low cost” flight just keeps getting higher and higher.

[Via Skift]

[Photo credit: Flickr user ​Clemson]

Dinner And Bikes 2013: An Annual Tour To Grow The Bicycle Movement

by Anna Brones on

There’s a lot of talk about bikes these days. From single speeds in New York City to nighttime tours in Guatemala City and the bike share in Paris, the discussion of bicycles as a real means of alternative transportation is taking hold in a big way.

But talking about bikes in cycle centric hotspots like Portland, San Francisco and New York is only part of the step. As with anything, getting more people on two wheels means getting people engaged all over the country. And that’s where Dinner and Bikes comes in.

The annual month-long tour is a traveling combination of bicycle inspiration, vegan food and pop-up bookstores that brings people together to get inspired about bicycle transportation. If you’re a bike junkie, it’s hard to resist.So what do you get from a Dinner and Bikes evening? A gourmet, vegan and gluten-free buffet dinner prepared by Joshua Ploeg, a presentation by Elly Blue on transportation equity and the everyday bicycling movement, and a near-complete excerpt from “Aftermass,” Joe Biel‘s forthcoming documentary about the history of bicycling in Portland. This year, they’re hitting up the Midwest and Northeast, with over 30 events from Michigan to New York. You can find the full schedule for May and June here.

Elly took time to answer a few questions about the tour and the inspiration behind it. And in perfect nomadic traveler form, she answered them on an Amtrak train somewhere between Portland and Chicago.

What was the inspiration for Dinner and Bikes?

In 2010, Joe and I did a tour called Bikestravaganza around the Western US. It was similar to what we do now, but just the two of us talking and showing movies about bikes. The idea was to energize people about bikes, show them a little of what we’ve seen is possible, and also let them know that Portland’s bike-friendly streets weren’t this huge, unattainable goal, but that in fact our achievements could easily be matched or surpassed by any city or town that wanted to. It went great, but one big problem was that the event was always during dinnertime. Everyone was hungry including us! We invited Joshua to join us the next year and it all fell into place.

Why bikes?

When I first started bicycling, it was liberating and it’s continued to be so at a personal level. Culturally, though, it’s about as good as it gets as far as a movement goes. With bikes, everyone wins and there’s no problematic temptation to put someone else’s happiness or livelihood secondary to your cause, as is the case in a lot of other social movements. Also, even when people are vehemently anti-bike, they usually change their mind once they start riding. So even when it’s polarized, it isn’t really. That photo of Senator Schumer smiling as he rides down the cycle track he fought so hard to prevent? That’s why I do it.

How do you decide which places you visit/where you host dinners? Why the central/northeast for the 2013 tour?

It’s an inexact science. As we go on tour, people’s friends in other cities hear about the events and get in touch to invite us to their town. I keep track of all the invitations in my spreadsheet, and then Joe and I go out to breakfast with an atlas and a notebook and create a route that we can do in a month that incorporates as many of those cities as possible. Then I set to work filling in the gaps. I believe the impetus for the Midwest/Northeast route is the result of invitations from folks in Michigan and DC. Next year I already know where we’re going: up and down the eastern seaboard, Maine to Miami. People should get in touch if they want to talk about doing a stop.

Having traveled around the country talking about bikes, how do you think the attitude towards bikes differs by region?

People who are deeply involved with their local bike scene read a lot of the same blogs and articles, so there is some unity in the movement. But local attitudes generally differ quite a bit, and in unexpected ways. A lot depends on the culture, layout and politics of a city. Some cities have a culture of being polite, so even if most people don’t understand bicycling, they don’t mind waiting a bit till it’s safe to pass the person riding in front of their truck. In other cities, there’s some kind of hostile force against it, maybe driving culture or city planning or the police – which oddly enough often has the result of catalyzing a far stronger bike movement.

What was the most surprising location you have visited in terms of their support for cycling?

Over the last four years, I’ve learned not to be surprised. Everyone’s got their stereotypes, like only big cities like bikes, or only small cities, or only liberal cities or secular cities or gentrified neighborhoods or cities with lots of young white creative class people. None of these things are true. People like bikes who have started bicycling already is the only generalization I can make. Once you get riding and have just the barest amount of community and infrastructure to support you, there’s no turning back.

Is it true that you travel only by train and by bike?

Nope, we rent a car to travel from city to city. If we’re lucky, we get to go on bike rides in some of the cities. I am still trying to figure out how to do it all by train, but we would pretty much have to have a source of funding from outside the tour in order to make that happen. I see it as an opportunity to not totally lose touch with the car-oriented reality of most of the US.

Any top tips for traveling by bike?

I’ve only been bike touring a few times, but I will say it’s important not to run out of water, and always to talk to people.

Check out the Dinner and Bikes 2013 schedule here.

[Photo Credits: Dinner and Bikes, Elly Blue]

Harvey Milk Likely Honored With Terminal, Not Airport

by Libby Zay on

A proposal to rename San Francisco International Airport after Harvey Milk has been scrapped by a California lawmaker, the Associated Press is reporting. Instead, there is a possibility one of the airport’s terminals will be named after the politician and gay rights leader who was assassinated in 1978.

David Campos, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, told the news outlet that public opposition to re-naming the airport caused him to cancel plans to put a question on the city ballot. It seems the city’s daily newspaper and Mayor Edwin Lee are not thrilled about the idea, as well as other politicians, businesspeople and locals.

Moving forward, Campos now plans to establish a committee that would recommend which of the airport’s four passenger terminals should be named for Milk, as well as additional airport landmarks that could potentially be named in honor of other prominent San Franciscans. Milk’s nephew, Stuart Milk, who is also a gay rights leader, said he believes the airport’s international terminal would be most appropriate – especially since Milk is already recognized abroad, with a gay rights celebration observed in his honor in Chile and a gay community center named for him in Italy.

[Via USA Today]

[Photo credit: Flickr user Håkan Dahlström]

Please Don’t Smoke Or Steal The Signs In Weed, California

by Dave Seminara on

I’m not a smoker but I can’t resist unusual town names so when I saw an exit off of Interstate 5 in Northern California for a town called Weed, I pulled over, eager to find out how the town got its name. This being California, I imagined that some hippies moved into the town in the ’60s and voted to change the name to Weed. I expected to see aging Boomers with tie-dye shirts, ponytails and unkempt dogs passing around huge spliffs on the town’s main drag, Cheech and Chong movies playing in perpetuity at the Weed cinema, and the melodies of Bob Marley & The Wailers filling the streets.

But a visit to the Weed Store, a souvenir shop at the entrance to the town, quickly disabused me of that notion. Stacey Green, the shop manager, explained that the town was named after a guy named Abner Weed, a native of Maine who came to the place to open a lumber mill in 1897. It isn’t clear whether Weed smoked ganja himself but Green said that marijuana definitely isn’t legal or even decriminalized in the town.”There are definitely some hippies here,” he said. “But there are conservatives as well.”

The town’s other primary claim to fame is that Weed is the place that George Milton and Lennie Small fled from in Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”

Like many people who live in small towns, Green is something of a jack-of-all-trades. He manages the Weed Store, which sells weed-related T-shirts, hats, signs and other souvenirs, but is also an ordained minister and was elected to the Weed city council in December. Green grew up in Weed and moved back to town a few years ago to care for his mom. He said that the town’s road signs get stolen all the time because everyone wants a sign that says Weed.

There used to be a sign just outside town directing motorists to turn one way for the College of the Siskiyous and another for downtown Weed. But the allure of stealing a sign with the words “College” and “Weed” with arrows pointing in opposite directions was too strong and so they eventually ditched the sign and replaced it with the one you see above. You can, however, buy a postcard of the old sign at Green’s shop.

There isn’t a lot to see in downtown Weed, and in truth, I’ve seen more prosperous looking places, but the town is dramatically situated right near Mt. Shasta, a 14,000-foot peak in the Cascade Range. Even if Weed isn’t the hippie haven I thought it might be, the town’s merchants seem to have no qualms with capitalizing on the town’s name. I saw “Enjoy Weed” T-shirts with the Coca-Cola logo, “I’m High on Weed” hats and other Weed-related souvenirs for sale all over town, including at one of the town’s motels and at a gas station.

At the town’s little tourist information office, a young man made no bones about the town’s claim to fame.

“Most people come in here to ask me about the name,” he said. “And to ask if pot is legal here.”

He said that not only is marijuana illegal, the town also has a law preventing any medicinal marijuana dispensaries from opening inside the city limits. After I left Weed, I looked up the town’s election results and it turns out that Mitt Romney carried Siskiyou County, where Weed sits, to the tune of 56 percent. I didn’t stick around in Weed long enough to understand the town’s political dynamics but even in a brief little foray off the highway, I learned that Weed is full of surprises.

[Photo credits: Dave Seminara]