A group of Portlanders plan to honor Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving that is the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season) by taking over several parking spaces downtown.
According to a post on Portland Indymedia, the plan is to lock bikes together in prime parking spaces and have a picnic on the sidewalk adjacent to Pioneer Place Mall.
Here are more details from the Indymedia posting:
Join us at 6 am on Friday, November 28th outside Voodoo Doughnuts (the downtown location). Or 6:30 at Pioneer Place.
We will be locking our bikes together and to the meters to take over the parking places around the Pioneer Place Blocks.
Following the daisy chaining of bikes will be a sidewalk picnic and walking loops around the blocks.
Costumes, old bikes and extra locks are encouraged, as well as any picnic provisions you would like such as blankets, tea, turkey etc. We are arranging some food and drinks for participates, but bring what you can.
To honor buy nothing day and for the love of bikes be there!
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Why would people do this? It sounds like a bunch of people premeditating rudeness. I hope the meters at least get paid.
I think it’s meant as a protest to consumerism, but that’s just a guess.
as for meters, according to a comment over on Indymedia, there are none in the location they’re planning to occupy.
WTF?
Way to get people to sympathize with cyclists who are trying to share the road. Chain yourselves to the parking meters and leave the bikes at home please.
Better yet, honor buy nothing day by going out for a healthy bike ride somewhere and not buying anything from a shopping mall.
This is awesome. I love Portland.
“Better yet, honor buy nothing day by going out for a healthy bike ride somewhere and not buying anything from a shopping mall.”
It seems so simple, doesn’t it?
As long as the cyclists pay the meters, I’m ok with it.
If the cyclists pay the meters AND are courteous, perhaps providing the public with information about the event, I will want to be there 🙂
given the current financial situation people are going to be extra sensitive to anyone discouraging business downtown. there is an ad campaign put out by the city right now encouraging people to come downtown, and the commercial shows people riding bikes.
i think this action will just be seen as negative by most people. protest consumerism but leave the bikes out of it please. and downtown business is not the problem, go to a mall in the burbs if you want to protest driving.
Seems like a variation of PARK(ing) day,
http://www.parkingday.org/
but not quite…
The “locking bikes to meters” implies a degree of protest, almost as if they expect to be hauled off. Is that the case, I wonder? Is it meant to be confrontational at all, or just fun?
The reference to meters also implies a lack of familiarity with Portland’s “SmartMeter” system, with the little stickers. Which made me think this might be a local offshoot of a bigger national event, though I couldn’t find info on anything similar happening outside of Portland.
The thing with the meters reminds me of the disconnect in MoveOn’s efforts in Oregon in the 2004 election, where their push was all about getting people to polling places on election day, revealing an apparent unawareness that we vote by mail.
Anyway, I hope they keep it fun. It could make for a silly, bike-positive, consumerism-negative message.
If they pay for the space, will someone have to sit there with the sticker stuck on them?
I gotta say, this is a bad idea. My sentiments were summed up quite eloquently at #8:
“i think this action will just be seen as negative by most people. protest consumerism but leave the bikes out of it please. and downtown business is not the problem, go to a mall in the burbs if you want to protest driving.”
and this accomplishes what again?
This is only going to antagonize people who are already inclined to be annoyed with bicyclists. In fact it sounds like a pretty stupid idea.
We’re doing our own black friday ride: donning our black tights, and going for a ride, planning to hit several locally owned coffee and bakery shops (Stumptown and LRBC, to name two) for black coffee and chocolate items.
Okay!
I’m riding to work tomorrow. I promise I won’t buy anything (I’ll bring my leftovers and have tea at my desk instead of my usual trip to stumptown)
But since my continued employment depends (in the grand scheme of things for better or worse) upon facilitating the purchase of consumer goods. I’m gonna have to go ahead and do my job tomorrow and keep those tills running.
Sorry.
Yup, try to force your friends and neighbors out of their already poor paying retail/service jobs.
Brilliant minds over at Indymedia.
So, what actually happened?
I went out for a really nice rural ride while lots of people fought for parking spots in malls.
Oh, you mean with the Black Friday thingy?