Burlington Bike Night (Every Tuesday from 5:30-8pm)

[NobodySpecific]

Can somebody try to save me a parking spot again? I'll be there with Mark

[korndogg]

It's really overcast here, but weather.com shows only 10% chance of rain.
I have to be home by 7ish tonight, so whether or not I show up for pizza depends on what time I get out of work. Hoping to stop by for a bit, but we'll see.

[markbvt]

Tonight. Who is going? I'm bringing a n00b if it stays dry.

It's supposed to stay dry up here.

I'll be there with Keith, both of us in his car. Hey, at least it averages out to two wheels per person...

--mark

[JohnCVermont]

Tonight. Who is going? I'm bringing a n00b if it stays dry.

Great ! I will be there too...sadly at my usual time, 7pm.

[kbroderick]

Guys, just saw this on Twitter:

I will never understand why the city of Winooski lets bike night at Donny's happen. I literally can't get in my door.

Are the bikes parked on the sidewalk playing by the rules? That's not exactly a sentiment we need from the neighbors.

(If the bikes on the sidewalk are playing by the rules, then perhaps the rules need adjustment...I've not seen any hyperbole otherwise from the source of that tweet, so I'm assuming it to be factual.)

Of course, I'd rather be there than here right now, but transportation in and out of Killington is still more than a bit limited, and we basically skipped a week at work...which means we're now trying to catch up. Hope you guys had a good night.

[NobodySpecific]

Guys, just saw this on Twitter:


Are the bikes parked on the sidewalk playing by the rules? That's not exactly a sentiment we need from the neighbors.

(If the bikes on the sidewalk are playing by the rules, then perhaps the rules need adjustment...I've not seen any hyperbole otherwise from the source of that tweet, so I'm assuming it to be factual.)

Of course, I'd rather be there than here right now, but transportation in and out of Killington is still more than a bit limited, and we basically skipped a week at work...which means we're now trying to catch up. Hope you guys had a good night.

There weren't very many bikes there tonight, and nothing even close to parked in front of a door At one point, for maybe 10 seconds, a bike was in the road while a car was trying to get by, but it was resolved quickly.

[markbvt]

I've not seen any hyperbole otherwise from the source of that tweet, so I'm assuming it to be factual.

I'm not going to ask who the source of the tweet is, but why assume him/her to be immune to hyperbole? Because tonight there were not many bikes at Bike Night, and I'm pretty sure none of them were blocking anything.

If the source of the tweet is someone you know, can you please advise them to come speak to one of the core group (Keith, Adam, Parker, Brent, Justin, me, etc) and we'll see to it that their concern is addressed.

--mark

[catamount]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A400 Safari/528.16)

All you've gotta do is go to Twitter and search "bike night winooski" to see the source.



Considering that there were all of 10 bikes there tonight, I'll assume she is someone with an axe to grind (i.e. Wanted one of our coned off spots).

[JohnCVermont]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A400 Safari/528.16)

All you've gotta do is go to Twitter and search "bike night winooski" to see the source.



Considering that there were all of 10 bikes there tonight, I'll assume she is someone with an axe to grind (i.e. Wanted one of our coned off spots).

I concur & when I got there ...there were even fewer bikes. I wonder if she called her landlord. We could always tweet her & ask her to talk with "Bike Night Staff" (i.e. Parker when he wears his name tag). It's not like we're bunch of hooligans. It seemed to be pretty tame. We could always send her a tweet mentioning that if there is a problem, she could always ask us to move the bike (if it is a BTVBN bike)

In fact, I saw more irritation by drivers of cars who saw my lonely bike taking up a *whole parking spot".... but it was a constant source of amusement for Adam, Dominic, Foster, Keith & myself... the car makes the turn, the driver spots the perfect parking spot by Donny's, "Holy crap, I hit the parking spot lotto", a beaming face of hope, promise & glee, they start the turn into spot...frick, frick, fuckin' frick fucker, motorcycles shouldn't be allowed to park on the street...frick, frick, gotta circle the block a few more times until a spot opens up within sight of the restaurant, so I don't have to walk 200 yards to eat.

[NobodySpecific]

I concur & when I got there ...there were even fewer bikes. I wonder if she called her landlord. We could always tweet her & ask her to talk with "Bike Night Staff" (i.e. Parker when he wears his name tag). It's not like we're bunch of hooligans. It seemed to be pretty tame. We could always send her a tweet mentioning that if there is a problem, she could always ask us to move the bike (if it is a BTVBN bike)

In fact, I saw more irritation by drivers of cars who saw my lonely bike taking up a *whole parking spot".... but it was a constant source of amusement for Adam, Dominic, Foster, Keith & myself... the car makes the turn, the driver spots the perfect parking spot by Donny's, "Holy crap, I hit the parking spot lotto", a beaming face of hope, promise & glee, they start the turn into spot...frick, frick, fuckin' frick fucker, motorcycles shouldn't be allowed to park on the street...frick, frick, gotta circle the block a few more times until a spot opens up within sight of the restaurant, so I don't have to walk 200 yards to eat.

Actually, it might be a pretty good idea to talk to the person that tweeted that to try and let them see that we, in fact, are not a bunch of hooligans. I wonder if they would be open to that?

[kbroderick]

In fact, I saw more irritation by drivers of cars who saw my lonely bike taking up a *whole parking spot".... but it was a constant source of amusement for Adam, Dominic, Foster, Keith & myself... the car makes the turn, the driver spots the perfect parking spot by Donny's, "Holy crap, I hit the parking spot lotto", a beaming face of hope, promise & glee, they start the turn into spot...frick, frick, fuckin' frick fucker, motorcycles shouldn't be allowed to park on the street...frick, frick, gotta circle the block a few more times until a spot opens up within sight of the restaurant, so I don't have to walk 200 yards to eat.

I wouldn't be surprised if the neighbors were annoyed by not being able to park near their homes, especially when one bike that could be on the sidewalk is taking up a whole space. Having to walk 200 yards to the restaurant is one thing, having to lug all your crap from work plus the coffee and eggs you bought on the way home is a little different (IMO).

I think I can find an email and touch base with her that way, but she's heavily involved in organizing Irene-relief efforts at the moment and it may not be the best time to take up the issue.

[yesterdayze]

Guys, just saw this on Twitter:


Are the bikes parked on the sidewalk playing by the rules? That's not exactly a sentiment we need from the neighbors.

(If the bikes on the sidewalk are playing by the rules, then perhaps the rules need adjustment...I've not seen any hyperbole otherwise from the source of that tweet, so I'm assuming it to be factual.)

Yeah, let's get someone on that ASAP

[JohnCVermont]

I wouldn't be surprised if the neighbors were annoyed by not being able to park near their homes, especially when one bike that could be on the sidewalk is taking up a whole space. Having to walk 200 yards to the restaurant is one thing, having to lug all your crap from work plus the coffee and eggs you bought on the way home is a little different (IMO).

I think I can find an email and touch base with her that way, but she's heavily involved in organizing Irene-relief efforts at the moment and it may not be the best time to take up the issue.

I agree she should be contacted. I am confident that BTVBN will listen. As you suggested, since she is active with #vtirene relief efforts, now may not be the best time. Perhaps, since she is active on Twitter, you can even offer her an additional avenue of communication, a #btvbn hash tag along with the @BTVBikeNet twitter id for posting any problems, we can monitored the id & hash tag for issues in a realtime ad hoc manner. I would be happy to monitor that channel but I don't get to Bike Night until 7pm. We could just post Parker cell # ? Feel free to give her my twitter id, JohnCVermont if she wants to DM me, just let me know.

We can definitely mark as an agenda item for the 6pm meeting at the next bike night. That should be enough time for the meeting to end before I arrive.

[korndogg]

She may be involved with Irene relief, but she's posting about BN now, so it should be addressed now.
Someone needs to ask her where her door is / why she can't get into it and we need to make sure that "that" doesn't continue happening. I would ask her, but I don't have a twitter account. Can someone please respond to that for us all, so that she doesn't get all up in arms about BN?

[JohnCVermont]

She may be involved with Irene relief, but she's posting about BN now, so it should be addressed now.
Someone needs to ask her where her door is / why she can't get into it and we need to make sure that "that" doesn't continue happening. I would ask her, but I don't have a twitter account. Can someone please respond to that for us all, so that she doesn't get all up in arms about BN?

I can do that. I have a twitter account. Easy to do.

Update : message sent, awaiting reply.

[korndogg]

Thank you John!

[MotoFreak]

Hooligans, all of ya...

[ranette]

If she has an issue accessing her apartment that has to be addressed. I know the one time I put my bike somewhere near the doorway adjacent to Donny's Keith came up to me and asked me to move it, explaining why. My best guess is she lives on the same side of the street as Donny's and isn't able to walk down the sidewalk because of all the bikes and must either walk for a few feet in the street or walk on the other side of the street and then cross after the lineup of bikes. This might make it a little inconvenient to access a doorway but from what I've seen I can't imagine someone not being able to access their apartment with the current setup. It that's her complaint there's not much that any of us could do about it, she'd need to take it up with the city.

The way the street parking is set up, allowing for multiple bikes in one parking space, actually saves space. If I remember my VT motorcycle manual, bikes are entitled to a full space just as any automobile is.

My guess, and this is simply a guess, is that even though the tweet mentioned apartment access, any animosity towards bike night by the neighbors was initiated by excess noise.

[korndogg]

The only issue that I'm aware of is a driveway across from and just down the road from Donny's. I know we've blocked that a few times on nights with 60-70 bikes, and on at least one occasion someone had to wait for a bunch of people to move bikes before they could enter their driveway. Not cool, and that shouldn't happen, but I don't imagine that was the case last night. I missed BN last night though.

[Huffer]

I can do that. I have a twitter account. Easy to do.

Update : message sent, awaiting reply.

I think contacting her is the most effective damage control. She's likely to stay mad but, at least she knows we care and want to be good neighbors. Most importantly she has an opportunity to fix the problem easily instead of complaining to the city or something even more damaging.

[JohnCVermont]

I think contacting her is the most effective damage control. She's likely to stay mad but, at least she knows we care and want to be good neighbors. Most importantly she has an opportunity to fix the problem easily instead of complaining to the city or something even more damaging.

Contact has been made. I would suggest that everyone refrain from commenting to this post for a few minutes/hours/days, best to kick back & get your Zen working ... unless you are critical of me, then by all means you can fire away, feel free, I will cry when you aren't looking.

Here are my tweets (msgs) ... (all of these tweets were in the public domain, i.e. not private)

"If you have issues w/ the Winooski Bike Night motorcycles blocking access, the organizers would like 2 help, let me know"

She responded ...

"It would just be nice if they weren't on the sidewalk in front of 8 Main so that my dog and I could get out the door."

"awesome. Mostly, I would feel awful if I knocked a bike over but...it's my front door."

"A. But B goes to the other units in our building." (see street level picture below)

" I mean, I can take a pic next Tues. Bikes have been parked on our sidewalk all summer."

"I don't know what point A is, but my door is the 3rd from donny's, rest of our unit is the 2nd down."


:
: Well...in the interests of transparency, I just put an image of the tweets below
: Check the timestamps to see my tweets & her responses. Sorry, I couldn't : find the tools that would allow me to interleave the tweets appropriately
: (I didn't want to write one tonight)
:

My last tweets were :

@swatermavt you can ask for me, but I don't get there until 7pm. If you have other concerns, just DM me.

If you can't drop by Bike Night, just send the pic to me & we can chat , the Bike Night Folks are discussing your concerns



Note : a "DM" is Twitter Speak for a "Direct Message" which would a private message/tweet only visible between the send & receiver (like an email)

References :
Images of the various "tweets" from this evening...


Annotated Google Street View Picture I sent to help identify the door in question...I sent this picture to @swatermavt

[korndogg]

"parked on our sidewalk".. It's the city's sidewalk and my understanding is that we have permits. Even without permits, we certainly have permission. We don't want to be blocking doorways and such but it just sounds like she feels like it's her sidewalk.

In any case, I'm surprised that she feels her door is blocked at entrance A. B, maybe..

I'll keep an eye on it. I don't usually pay much attention to that side of the building.

Thanks for the communication John, much appreciated.

I'll be curious if she does post up a picture next Tuesday. I don't remember a single time that we've been parked that far down on that side of the building.

[JohnCVermont]

[QUOTE=korndogg;1096889
I'll be curious if she does post up a picture next Tuesday. I don't remember a single time that we've been parked that far down on that side of the building.[/QUOTE]

I was curious too. Of the times the bikes are parked on the Main St sidewalk, they have been neatly lined up and right in front of Donny's window, not close to the doors indicated in my picture.

...but a picture is worth a 1000 words & easily worth 10,000 tweets.

Gather the data, analyze, take appropriate actions if needed.

We'll work it out.

[Huffer]

I was curious too. Of the times the bikes are parked on the Main St sidewalk, they have been neatly lined up and right in front of Donny's window, not close to the doors indicated in my picture.

...but a picture is worth a 1000 words & easily worth 10,000 tweets.

Gather the data, analyze, take appropriate actions if needed.

We'll work it out.

This is not where I pictured the problem at all. I think perhaps she's over reacting. Definitely need to see her pics next Tuesday. The only thing I can imagine is the bikes were a little tight to the poll on that side of the building making it a little tricky to get around. She vented, maybe its all over but I don't get a good feeling about this.

[NobodySpecific]

Thanks for reaching out to her John. It also never even crossed my mind that the problem would be over there, but it is an area that is normally out of sight, so I guess it makes sense. Hopefully we can establish and maintain a cordial relationship with the neighbors so that these concerns come through us and not a more official channel. I'm thinking a twitter account would be a great way for people to get in touch with us.