A few scenes from last week’s gathering. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Bring your voters guide and a notepad to Bike Happy Hour tonight (Weds, 10/16 from 4:00 to 6:00 pm at SE Ankeny & 27th) as we help each other get educated and excited for the upcoming election. We’ve spent over a year getting to know candidates, and now it’s time to make some decisions!
In addition to the usual wonderful community connections and vibes we’ve had at our previous 79 happy hours, here’s what to expect on the Gorges Beer Co patio* tonight:
District 2 council candidate Chris Olson will join us. Chris is an unabashed progressive who’s been endorsed by the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO), Moms Demand Action, and Bernie PDX just to name a few. Come around 5:00 to hear his latest stump speech and chat him up.
I’ll get things started with our traditional Free Fries at 4:00, so come early if you want a fresh hot snack of tasty fried potatoes. And remember, the mic is open to anyone beginning at 5:00 pm, so come and promote your project, ride, idea, song, poem — or whatever you want to share. Can’t wait to see you all there.
Oh wait, one more thing… Did you know Bike Happy Hour is so great we’ve now spawned two similar events? I shared a report from my visit to the Westside Bike Happy Hour back in July and I’ve just been told about another one… in Milwaukie (just south of Portland). Maitri Dermeyer of Bike Milwaukie and her co-conspirator Jay Panagos says they’ll host a happy hour for bike lovers on the last Monday of every month at Beer Store Milwaukie. The next one is on October 28th.
*Looks like we’ll have a gorgeous dry night (fingers crossed!). But if it’s wet and nasty we’ll move the party across the street inside Ankeny Tap & Table.
UPDATE, 10/18: The original post and photos on Nextdoor have been removed by Mel L.
People who live near Rose City Golf Course in northeast Portland awoke Monday morning to large scars of damage criss-crossing the grassy turf. The deep skidmarks and tread patterns make it clear the damage was done by people riding some sort of two-wheeled vehicle. Witnesses claimed the vehicles were electric and one Rose City Park resident, “Mel L.,” posted photos to Nextdoor and falsely blamed the damage on “e-bikes.”
“Just wait until bikes are allowed on the golf course,” Mel L. wrote. “Sorry, PP&R, but signage won’t stop this.”
The damage to the golf course has ramped up emotions surrounding a current proposal from Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) to build new bike trails in and around the golf course and adjacent Rose City Park.
Source: Oregon DMV
It’s clear Mel L. is using this terrible behavior and vandalism to further a position shared by other nearby residents who’ve made it clear they do not support any new bike access as part of the PP&R trail project. Another person on Nextdoor, Janet Loughery, who’s been a loud voice against the bike trails in the past, piled onto the anti-bike sentiment in the thread: “These are the people the city wants to legally allow on the golf course by building trails they can have easier access to. This behavior will be come commonplace. Just say NO to trails on the golf course.”
Both Mel L. and Loughery are spreading misinformation and/or willfully misleading other residents because they don’t want more and/or certain type of people using the park.
The products used in the park were not “e-bikes.” As I recently explained in reporting on a tragic electric motorcycle crash in Tualatin, it’s common for people to use the term “e-bike” for vehicles that are not technically or legally bicycles in an way, shape or form other than having two wheels and a handlebar. For some folks, like law enforcement officials who write crash statements, it’s simply a matter of being ignorant of Oregon laws and/or not thinking the words we used to describe things matters. For others, like with these Nextdoor posters, it’s a matter of willfully painting a group with the wrong brush to further an agenda.
The discovery of this damage just as new access for bicycling is being considered, reminds me of the debate around bicycling in Forest Park. Back in 2010, as the conversation was shifting to support new and improved bike trails in Forest Park, someone tipped off PP&R staff about an illegal, handbuilt bike trail in a remote section of the park. The trail damaged a creek and was sloppily cut into the hillside. Bike advocates condemned the unsanctioned trail, but more importantly, PP&R staff and people who opposed cycling in Forest Park used it as a way to thwart forward progress on the biking plans. To this day, almost nothing has come from years of earnest advocacy to improve cycling in Forest Park thanks in large part to how some people leverage irresponsible actions of a few into an agenda that excludes all.
When it comes to the damage to Rose City Golf Course, a PP&R spokesperson told BikePortland this morning the greens have been repaired and the damage had no impact on golfers. As for what they were riding? “Some sort of vehicle,” the PP&R staffer shared. “We cannot confirm that e-bikes were used as someone claimed.”
We’ll get our first sense of how this damage might influence the city’s trail project tonight when PP&R hosts its second community meeting for the Rose City Recreational Trail Project. On the agenda is a discussion of trail designs, proposed trail locations, and more. The meeting will be held online from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Find the meeting Zoom link and learn more here.
Game creator Sean Sweat in the Shed on Friday, October 11th. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Portlander Sean Sweat has gamified our bewildering city council election. His new Rose City Hall card game lands just in time to help voters make sense out of dozens of viable candidates for local office. Sean is an MIT grad, supply chain expert at Intel, an urbanist, former vice chair of the Portland Bureau of Transportation Bureau Budget Advisory Committee, and an active member of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association.
I’ve bumped into Sean at several events in recent years (we first met at the first fundraising party for Just Crossing Alliance in 2022) as he’s settled into our community from his former hometown of Phoenix. When he said he created a card game based on the council election, I invited him over to the Shed for a closer look.
Here’s the short description of game play Sean posted on the Rose City Hall website:
Each player represents an influential figurehead in one of Portland’s four council districts. The districts will elect three councilors and the mayor, and then you will try to pass policies that your district’s voters favor. In the process, you can help your councilors gain and wield political capital to influence the outcome and shape the Portland you want to see!
The feature of the game that excites me most are the candidate cards. There are 68 council and 7 mayoral candidate cards. Sean included cards of all candidates who have a campaign website, have earned at least 100 donations, and who answered and returned his questionnaire. He used the questionnaire and his own survey of available information to give every candidate a score between one and four on four key issues: enforcement of homeless camping, housing, transportation, and taxes. The score is presented on a spectrum between two poles of thought. For example, on the transportation line, “Car” is on the left of the spectrum and “Bike/Transit” is on the right (he flipped this purposely to move away from the traditional left/right political thinking). For housing, the left is “Preservation” and the right is “YIMBY” and so on. Candidate cards also include the district the person is running in, their job or background, and the neighborhood they live in.
The cards are really fun to flip through and make good conversation starters over coffee or tea with a friend.
There are also 38 “Policy” cards that have values on them the correspond to how much political capital it takes to pass them, what minimum value on the issue spectrum a candidate needs to pass them, and which districts tend to favor the policy. Examples of these cards include “Expand Portland Street Response,” “Remove the Rose Lanes,” “Eliminate the Arts Tax,” etc…
The stack of 19 “News” are another fun element that can shake up the game. They read like headlines and come with various consequences that impact the game. For example, the card titled, “Councilor caught pushing PBOT to secretly remove popular bike lane,” results in the candidate in your stable with the highest “Car” position losing all of their political capital points.
From the game instructions.
Each player represents a different council district whose three members are determined after a vote that combines “preference tokens” and a roll of the dice. The game play consists of reading News cards and trying to pass policy — which players can choose to support or influence. You can choose to play a competitive or collaborative game. In the competitive version, you win when three or more policies that favor your district have been passed and are effective. In the collaborative game, the council wins together once three effective policies are in place for each district.
This is peak Portland civic nerdery and I’m here for it! I’ll try to bring decks — or maybe Sean himself — to Bike Happy Hour soon. And if/when he or I make a video of the game play instructions, I’ll embed it here in this post and on our various platforms. I highly recommend taking time to get a set of these cards, and I hope Sean will offer booster packs for future elections.
The game is $35 for a high-quality, professionally printed version. You can also print the entire deck via a PDF on the game’s website for an estimated cost of $25 at a local print/copy shop. Read full instructions and find out more at RoseCityHall.com.
