If it’s a summer weekend, there must be a street fair – a chance to buy crafts, eat from food trucks, and engage in the great warm-weather sport of people watching. Street fairs, as enjoyable as they are, are all pretty much the same, right?
Not according to Alex Tsatsoulis of the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition (MBC), which has put on the Open Streets Minneapolis events for the past five years. The 2015 season will feature eight of them, beginning on Sunday with Lyndale Open Streets. Lyndale is the largest and oldest of the Open Streets Minneapolis events, and is billed as a way for the community to experience “car-free fun.”
The inspiration for the Open Streets movement, which has spread across the U.S., is the ciclovias (literal translation: cycleways) which began in Bogota, Colombia, more than forty years ago. Every Sunday and major holidays, 75 miles of main thoroughfares are closed to motor vehicles so that they can be used by an estimated two million bicyclists, skaters, runners and walkers each week.
And like the ciclovias, Lyndale Open Streets participants will bike, skateboard, run, walk, and rollerskate; there will be dancing and yoga and exercise routines – in short, lots more movement than you’d expend in your car. “Most of the Open Streets draw about 5,000 people. Lyndale draws about 15,000,” Tsatsoulis said.
Lyndale Open Streets will span 20 blocks, from West 22nd to West 42nd, and will run from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. “Lyndale Open Streets brings people together to meet their neighbors,” said Larry Ludeman, co-president of the Lyn-Lake Business Association. “Besides people biking, it’s a great way for everyone to take back the street.” Continue Reading