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Tag: bike

  • Triplets of Belleville

    🎬 watched Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003)

    Released in USA as Triplets of Belleville, and I’m amused to see in UK and Ireland as a third title Belleville Rendez-vous.

    As two film enthusiasts living in Los Angeles, my partner and I do not watch many together at home. We make dates to visit theaters, and share scenes while in motion during monday night fort90 film clubs. Sitting down to our modest projected setup and sorting out the audio was a special event and a treat to itself.

    First impressions were such fun on a striking and enchanting ride into a surreal and groovy opening scene. The visual and sound design continued to surprise and delight up to the final car chase scene, where the story lost me in an aversion to excessive gunfire and pointlessly violent car chase. The experience overall far surpassed expectations and is one of the most unique animations I’ve enjoyed in a long time!

    It has now been a few weeks since watching and the visual experience stuck with me, especially the repeat views from in front of the lead son rocking back and forth on his bicycle. While searching today for loops of these views, I was also reminded how catchy and happy the overall musical themes are from the triplet stars themselves.

    The elder triplets finding and adopting the mother and dog through shared music and frog soup are such a sweet story of tenderness and discovered love between strangers. I found this obscured on first watch between the darkness of the mafia kidnappings and humans as horses on bikes.

    This is definitely worth re-watching as there is so much detail in the animation style and scenes I know I missed. I expect to further enjoy the elder triplets story, and the irony of their household instruments. At 1 hour 22 minutes, it’s a quick and other-worldy trip into animation land I’m so happy to look forward to again.

    Highly recommended for fans Cowboy
    Beebop, Tour de France and cycling culture, cityscapes, Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli, and jazzy grooves.

    I watched and wrote about this as encouraged by the IndieWeb Movie Club for July, and a personal endeavor to post. Thanks to Mark Sutherland for this month’s suggestion!

    #IndieWebMovieClub

  • Bike share industry notes following Portland WordCamp

    Portland’s bike infrastructure was fabulous over the past week at WordCamp US. In the central city, I was riding on protected and clearly signaled lanes. Most important, there were often locals biking, walking, and skating nearby to model expected routing and provide a sense of community along the way.

    I rented a BIKETOWN bike share for 134 minutes across 11 rides from 7 to 25 minutes in duration. The total was just over $20 , discounted from what would have been closer to $60 at full price. If I had chosen to call cars, I estimate it would have been $130, although some of the trips were also perfectly suited to Portland’s excellent light rail and busses. Props to the WordCamp team for coordinating transit passes for all attendees.

    In my home town Los Angeles, Metro bike share is a best choice for me increasingly often. I still prefer to ride my own analog bike, but bike sharing shows up as a multi-modal transit option, for example

    • Expecting to carpool to a second destination or return trip
    • Uncertain security for locking personal bikes ( DTLA, Hollywood )
    • Between locations after arriving by bus / train / walk
    • Group rides with folks who want to try an e-bike
    • Group rides with folks who don’t own or maintain a bike
    • Personal bike gear is out of service

    The Portland bike share is currently run by Lyft, which prompted me to purchase a Lyft Pink subscription last year in anticipation of using the bike share across multiple Lyft-managed markets. The car share bonuses on traditional Lyft service would be a bonus. I think it will pencil out after another week or two in Portland, certainly after a month of consistent short bike share rides. Lyft was reported to be in negotiations to purchase the Los Angeles system over the past year, and already manages other huge north american bike share markets including Bay Area, DC, NYC, Chicago, Denver, and Portland.

    Based on current news, it looks like Bicycle Transit Systems (BTS) will continue to run the bikeshare network in Los Angeles. Notably, BTS reports also having entered into an agreement to purchase BCycle from Trek, who manufacture bikeshare equipment including docking stations and bikes.

    For data interests, BCycle’s footer links over to the General Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS) managed by MobilityData in Canada, and sits next to Google’s General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS)

    If you live or plan to visit Los Angeles, please support Sunset 4 All to help extend our new Hollywood Blvd bike lanes into Downtown LA along the essential Sunset Blvd corridor from Fountain Ave through Silver Lake, Echo Park, and Dodger Stadium.

    Thanks all pushing these bike share systems, as well as all vision zero related efforts forward. Hope to see you out on the streets.

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