5th Annual Bicycle Swap Meet and Classic Bike Show, Sunday January 28, 2007

From my friends at the St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation…
5th Annual Bicycle Swap Meet and Classic Bike Show
Hosted by the St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation
Sunday, January 28, 2007
12:00 Noon – 3:30 PM

Gateway Center
One Gateway Drive
Collinsville, IL 62234
(just 12 minutes from the Arch)

NEW THIS YEAR: Members of Circus Day Foundation’s St. Louis Arches youth circus troupe will perform using bicycles and unicycles combined with an array of circus tricks and skills at 1:00 p.m.

For more information: e-mail: swapmeet@stlbikefed.org, or phone: 314.707.5001
For directions and a map, click here [UrbanReviewSTL: it does say you can get to the center via bus or metrolink but I have not verified the route(s)]

Riding your bike to the Swap Meet? Click here for maps & cue sheet.

$5.50 admission fee starting at noon (free to St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation members and we’ll have a table where you can join at the event. Always free for children under 12)
Early Bird Entry: $10.50 will get you in the door at 10:30 a.m.
All admission fees include a $.50 surcharge for Gateway Center.
Hosted by St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation.

Individuals, bike shops, non-profits, and bike-related businesses will have booths with all sorts of bike related goods. Display your vintage bike, or vote for the best of the classic stingrays, balloon tire, middleweight, and special interest models. Enter a raffle for a brand new reproduction purple Stingray! Expert bike fitter, Tim Ray, will do bike fittings for a fraction of his usual fee. All proceeds from bike fittings will benefit the Bike Fed.
For some additional information and pictures of prior swap meets visit the official website.   To read about some of the 14 bike shops with booths at the meet continue below.
… Continue Reading

Staircase Further Degrades Attractive Building on Grand

Today I was trying to decide what to write about and scanning through my image collection I ran across the following from last February.  Many of you have likely seen the emergency staircase constructed in late 2005/early 2006 at the SE corner of Grand & Park.  The building is the location of the Hopewell Center, a group that provides much needed healthcare to the underserved and mentally ill.

While I applaud the services the Hopewell Center provides I want to call into question their stewardship of this fine building.  For years the former retail level has had the windows closed up, giving the feeling of an area unsafe to have windows.  Then, a year ago, this stair appears attached to the north face of the building.  Most likely they were required to add a secondary staircase.   My issue is how they added the stair.

Above we see the stair working its way down to the sidewalk.

The north face of the building, not too attractive with the windows closed up, has become worse with the cinder blocks used at the base of the stairs.  However, note the fine detailing and white glazed brick of the original.

Turning from Grand to Park you can see how the stair intrudes into the sidewalk.  It is unclear from the records I found as to the exact property line — it is possible that some or all of the stair is built on the property owned by the Hopewell Center.  However, that would place the traffic light pole on private property which is unlikely.

From the back of the building we can see they had more than enough room to use their parking lot for any needed expansion.  The staircase can be seen on the right side in this image.

While I appreciate that non-profit organizations do not have excess funds to spend on fancy designs I think all need to be thoughtful about how their decisions impact the public space.  With an annual budget of over $7 million, I believe this organization could have found a way to enrich this design enough to not be so offensive.  This design may be functional but it is also degrading to the public realm.

At night the staircase becomes a beacon with the remainder of the building dark.  The lighting, especially that nearest the sidewalk, is a visual assault to anyone attempting to walk on this sidewalk.  We don’t need to blind people to provide quality safety lighting.  This project is located in the 19th Ward during the tenure of Mike McMillan.

Advertising Blocks Public Sidewalk

Over the weekend I drove across the newly rebuilt and just reopened Chouteau bridge. At the end I pulled into the parking lot for Bellon’s Market Deli & Pizzeria, owned by the family which razes much of St. Louis’ history. I could not believe my eyes, a big cheap sign ugly blocking the public sidewalk.

I will be contacting Bellon’s as well as Ald. Joe Roddy, asking them to immediately remove the sign. If you spot other situations where the public space is being abused let me know.

UPDATE 1/22/07 – 2:45pm:

I received the following email response back from owner Carrie Bellon:

“I am very sorry about the sign. MODOT workers have been moving it around for several months, while all the road construction was going on. We will move the sign asap. Sorry I did not notice that it had been moved to the sidewalk.”

I’m glad they are on top of the situation now but I guess I am a bit confused why MoDot workers would be moving a sign that should be contained on private property, not in the public right of way where they have been working.

UPDATE 1/24/07 – 2pm:

The Potato, not to be confused with The Onion, did a really funny posting today mocking this post:  Newspaper Blocks Public Sidewalk

Third Establishment Gets Valet Zone, Others Remain Out of Control

Last night I drove around for a bit over an hour looking for all the valet parking areas I could find. Starting at 9pm, I figure I hit pretty much all of them. In the past I’ve pretty much focused on the 1100 & 1200 blocks of Washington Avenue with Copia and Lucas Park Grille, respectively. Just over a week aga the Department of Streets set up new valet guidelines which includes the establishment of designated valet zones, they started with Copia & Lucas Park Grille. These keep the valets within a certain boundary but also alert motorists where they cannot park after a certain time.
Keep in mind the intent of the valet zones is to provide an on-street space for customers to drop off or pick up their cars — it is not intended to provide any sort of “VIP” parking for really nice cars. Here were my findings last night.

Restaurants w/valet zones:

• Lucas Park Grille, 12?? Washington, a Range Rover was parked within the no-parking valet zone. Keep in mind they have an 88ft long zone which by many accounts is too long. If they can keep a Range Rover parked there then they don’t need the space.
• Copia, 1122 Washington, a Maserati and Mercedes were parked within the no-parking valet zone. The Mercedes was parked in a designated no-parking area blocking fire access to stand pipe for an adjacent building — the fire marshall needs to keep a closer eye on them. Copia’s zone is an amazingly long 129ft so it is no wonder they feel they can park two cars within that
• The Loft, Olive east of Compton, no problems to report. Zone is a very reasonable three spaces long, all were empty around 9:45pm.

Restaurants w/o valet zones:

• Eleven-Eleven Mississippi, 1111 Mississippi, large amount of space, cones in street reserving spaces.
• Pepper Lounge, 2005 Locust, cones reserving large number of spaces on both sides of street.
• Kyo, 14xx Washington Ave, cones in front of business,
• Dolce, Broadway @ Olive, massive quantity of spaces reserved on both sides of Broadway, charging $5. Midwest Valet.
• Tony’s, Market St, block-long no-parking zone in front of restaurant was full of cars presumably parked by valets. Should be designated as parking with time slot for valet service like all other establishments or cars should be ticketed or towed from no-parking zone. Tony’s should not receive any special treatment simply because they are Tony’s.
• Ten14, 1014 Locust, cones on both sides of street.
• Harry’s, cones on both sides of street creating lanes with cones and signs.
• Dante’s, Olive west of Compton, cones reserving spaces on both sides of club, Midwest Valet sign placed within marked bike lane.
• Mandrin, Maryland Plaza, a few cones out but using limited space not yet marked as valet zone.
• Bar-Italia, Maryland, cones reserving quite a few spaces.
• Sub-Zero, Euclid, four spaces taken.
• Restaurants on Laclede @ Euclid. Valet sign out, two cars parked on Laclede at narrow area.

I have no idea how many of the above actually posses a valid permit. If they do they will, at some point soon, be forced to comply with the new valet regulations and be limited to a still genereous valet zone. Those operating on the streets without permits will become more and more obvious to everyone as the will be the places lacking a designated zone.

In the past I’ve seen on-street valet service at a few other restaurants but none were observed last night. If you can think of additional locations where valets routinely operate let me know using the comments below. I will keep an eye on them and make sure they are all known to the Department of Streets – I’m just thinking they don’t have the staff to drive around at 9pm on a Saturday night.

Dante’s on Olive just west of Compton:

The actual club is up where the cars are parked. These three spaces plus about that many on the other side of their club are being reserved for those willing to shell out $5 to park at public parking spot after you are no longer required to feed the meter. Note the bike lane to the left of the image above.

Midwest Valet has placed their sign within the bike lane, a complete disregard for the safety of others. In more urban minded cities this sort of abuse of bike lanes would not be tolerated.

Harry’s on 22nd at Market Street:

Here they are using public parking spaces across the street from their restaurant to establish a valet lane. This place creates an interesting delima in that most customers will arrive off Market Street (behind me) and their parking lot used to park valeted cars off-street is up ahead. So here a valet zone directly in front of their location might present functional problems for both customers and the valet operator. That said, a reasonable solution needs to be worked out as they are taking up way too many public parking spaces but unless someone is visiting the FBI at night (behind fence at right) they literally are the only users of this street.

Dolce at Olive & Broadway (SE corner):

Once again Midwest Valet is up to old tricks. Here their sign is actually out of the way along Olive but that is only because Olive is two lanes between Broadway and 4th street to the east. My observations on several occassions has been they use Olive for customers to drop off or pick up their cars. It appears they take the cars to a parking garage and do not use the spaces coned off on Broadway.

Dolce is located at the far corner of the building on the right. They’ve coned off 10 spaces on the east side of Broadway and another 3 on the west side (visible at left above). The balance of the west side is no parking in front of the Metropolitan Square building.

This shot gives you a good overview of how empty the area looks, a false impression. Again, I think they park cars in a garage and simply cone off all these spaces so customers will be forced to use the valet service. If customers self-parked, how would they make any money? Again, these are public spaces and someone visiting a friend at a nearby hotel might wish to park there or perhaps going to see friends in the newly opened loft building seen in the background.

It is pretty clear these valet companies, especially Midwest Valet, will continue to abusively take spaces away from the general public until they are forced not to. I’m just glad the Department of Streets if finally taking charge of the problem.

FYI on Committeepersons in St. Louis

In keeping with some recent posts on various ward committees endorsing candidates I wanted to bring you the how and why of these committee postions. Basically, the state of Missouri requires each party to maintain committees.

Chapter 115 of the Missouri Revised Statutes governs the “Election Authorities and Conduct of Election.” A number of sections mandate political parties to maintain committees at various levels. In the city the ward-level committtees can be open or closed to member vote on endorsements. In fact, just finding out who comprises each ward committee in the city’s Democratic party is a chore. Before I get into that, here is some selected text from the statutes:

Purpose of committee.
115.605. Each party committee shall be selected as provided in this subchapter for the purpose of representing and acting for the party in the interim between party conventions.

County committee members, when elected (St. Louis City and County).
115.609. In each city not situated in a county and in each county which has over nine hundred thousand inhabitants, all members of the county committee shall be elected at the primary election immediately preceding each gubernatorial election and shall hold office until their successors are elected and qualified.

County committee members, filing fees.
115.611. 1. Except as provided in subsection 4 of section 115.613, any registered voter of the county may have such voter’s name printed on the primary ballot of such voter’s party as a candidate for county committeeman or committeewoman by filing a declaration of candidacy in the office of the county election authority and by paying any filing fee required by subsection 2 of this section.

2. Before filing such candidate’s declaration of candidacy, candidates for county committeeman or county committeewoman shall pay to the treasurer of such candidate’s party’s county committee, or submit to the county election authority to be forwarded to the treasurer of such candidate’s party’s committee, a certain sum of money, as follows:

(1) One hundred dollars if such candidate is a candidate for county committeeman or committeewoman in any county which has or hereafter has over nine hundred thousand inhabitants or in any city not situated in a county;

3. Any person who cannot pay the fee to file as a candidate for county committeeman or committeewoman may have the fee waived by filing a declaration of inability to pay and a petition with the official with whom such candidate files such candidate’s declaration of candidacy. The provisions of section 115.357 shall apply to all such declarations and petitions.

4. No person’s name shall be printed on any official primary ballot as a candidate for county committeeman or committeewoman unless the person has filed a declaration of candidacy with the proper election authority not later than 5:00 p.m. on the last Tuesday in March immediately preceding the primary election.

To summarize in plain English:

• Elections for committeeman & committeewoman in our 28 wards are held in the August primary in same year as Governor (& President). Next election is August 2008.
• Filing deadline is 5pm March 25, 2008 — just over a year away.
• $100 filing fee to be paid to party for which you are running (Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian). Can be filed at the St. Louis Board of Elections.
• Candidate must reside in and be registered to vote in the ward for a year prior to election (see 115.607)

So why do I bring this up now, so far away from the election? Well, I want plenty of time for people to consider getting involved. I personally dislike that our local elections are partisan but until we change the city’s charter we are stuck with that. In the meantime I want to challenge the establishment that has a hold on the committee-level positions within the Democratic party. I’d also like to see the other parties get more organized and actually field some local candidates in the 2009 municipal election. Note to Greens: elect an alderman before you think you’ll elect a Mayor.

Running for committeeman & committeewoman is literally the most basic level we have in St. Louis. Thought about running for alderman but family and work committements too much for you? This is the perfect way to get involved. And while such an election won’t be a cake walk most of these candidates are never challenged. The proof? I looked up the election results for all 28 wards for both 2000 & 2004. I’ve summarized the democratic elections, see Commitee Elections (pdf). I looked up the republican, green and libertarian for the city but they are a joke. Pretty much if you want to be a committee person for any of those three parties simply pay your fee and the odds are very good you’ll be the committee person.

I also requested a copy of the current democratic central committee (see citydems.org). I took the 5-page Excel spreadsheet that was sent to me and reduced it down to a 2-page PDF file, see Roster of Committee persons. This will show you who is currently holding each position within the democratic central committee and how to reach them. This is also helpful if you wish to be involved in your ward with respect to the upcoming elections. Sorry, at this point I don’t know which wards are open vs. which are closed although I did make a few notes about the ones I knew.

So contact your committee people and get involved. If you don’t like what it is all about, consider running next year to replace them.