Tag: bicycles

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Bikesploitation Returns For More Cycle Films at the Metal Museum

CREDIT: valibus.com

The fourth annual Bikesploitation film festival is about more than just film. “I think a lot of communities that are embracing the bicycle are having film festivals. We’re seeing them pop up all over the place,” Christopher Reyes says. Reyes and his partner Sarah Fleming have been putting on the festival since their days as co-creators of the music, art, film, and culture website Live From Memphis.

The goal of the event is to both entertain and educate the public about the world’s most efficient mode of transportation. “It’s really popular, the bicycle genre, among filmmakers,” says Fleming, whose bicycle-themed short documentary Training Wheels was a hit on the indie festival circuit in 2011. “If you’re looking for feature films, it’s kind of hard, but if you’re looking for good, short bicycle films, there are lots to choose from.”

valibus.com

Art, music, races, and more at this year’s Bikesploitation

Curated by Memphis filmmaker Edward Valibus, the film competition includes selections from all over the world. “We try to have a really good collection, so there’s BMX stuff, and there’s mountain bike stuff, road bike stuff, fixes, you name it,” Fleming says. “And there are all different genres, like narrative films and documentaries, so you can get a great overview of films from around the world and locally.”

Films from as far away as Australia and Israel will screen at the festival. Walnut documents craftsman Geoffrey Franklin’s process of making bike accessories from wood by hand. The spectacular Dust in the Chain from Germany follows a daring stunt rider’s trick-filled trip through an abandoned industrial building. Canadian director David Phu’s six-part film on Vancouver’s bike culture is an inspiration to those trying to make Memphis more bike-friendly.

“Most of the films are geared to inspire,” Reyes says. “That’s what we want the whole festival to be. We want people to approach biking with creativity, with film, music, and art, so it’s easy for people to tap into the scene and find something that interests them.”

Live From Memphis’ multimedia approach will be alive and well at the Metal Museum during the all-day festival. Events include a massive bike-related art show, a number of races and time trials, and interactive sculptures. “If you’re an artist and you have something that is somehow bicycle-related that you want to be in the show, we wanted to include it in the show,” Fleming says.

The location is new this year. “We’ve been wanting to do it at the Metal Museum for a long time, but part of the issue was getting there safely on bikes,” Fleming says. A series of group rides (“slow jams,” as Reyes calls them) has been organized from all over the city to help riders find the best route to the bluff-side festival.

“The ride leaders are stoked,” Fleming says. “There’s one is South Memphis, one in East Memphis, one in the University of Memphis area, one in Midtown, and one in downtown. It’s not about, ‘Oh, I ride a fixie’ or ‘I like to race.’ It’s about the bicycle in general. We want all kinds of people who ride bicycles to get together.”

Bikesploitation 4

Saturday, May 17th

National Ornamental Metal Museum

Free

bikesploitation.com

Categories
Sports

Is Memphis a Fitness Friendly City?

Audubon_Park_Memphis_TN_06.jpg

Surveys of America’s fittest and fattest and park-friendly cities are a dime a dozen, and I see about one a week. Here’s one that came in today from the Trust for Public Land. I don’t read most of them any more. But public sports facilities — that means anyplace you can use for free or by paying a fee — have played a big part in my life and they are part of our lifestyle and our personal and municipal budgets.

Most surveys lie. Fat cities are not fat due to a lack of public facilities. The problem is diet, personal motivation, and access. Ours is a disposable city, and the facilities and the people are not always in the same place. Here’s my Memphis survey. It is personal, subjective, anecdotal, and uninformed in some categories, less so in others. But in most cases I have seen ’em and and used ’em, which is more than most of the surveys can claim.

Public parks: Oversupplied. Shelby Farms is four times bigger than Central Park. Overton Park is getting better year after year. There are riverfront parks from Mud Island to Tom Lee Park to Crump Park near the Ornamental Metals Museum, some of them rarely visited. Mud Island River Park is closed half the year. Greenbelt Park on Mud Island is the best of the lot. Tiger Lane at the Fairgrounds is for the football crowd. Kennedy, Willow Road, Bellevue, and Leftwich/Audubon serve multiple needs. There are probably too many parks for a disposable city to maintain adequately.

Walking trails and running: Adequate. Put your shoes on and take off. True story: a former colleague was so obsessed with training for a marathon that he ran hundreds of laps around his living room when it rained. There are oval tracks at the fairgrounds and many high schools. There is an organized race of some kind nearly every weekend.

Fitness machines and structured programs: Unbalanced. Suburbs oversupplied with clubs and community facilities, inner city Memphis is undersupplied. Kroc Center, Streets Ministries, Memphis Athletic Ministries, and Church Health Center are helping a lot.

Tennis: Oversupplied in both indoor and outdoor courts. High schools and colleges that emphasize tennis build to tournament capacity, which leaves a lot of courts unused at other times. The University of Memphis has moved its tennis operations to the Racquet Club, leaving several perfectly good courts on campus for everyday players. Memphis has more public indoor tennis centers than Chicago. There are unused and deteriorating but still playable courts at Frayser Tennis Center. There is no single public center to compare with the biggest public centers in Little Rock, Mobile, Murfreesboro, and Nashville but overall Memphis is still oversupplied.

Racquetball. Oversupplied. A dying sport that thrived in Memphis 30 years ago, but plenty of courts remain at University of Memphis, Racquet Club, downtown YMCA, and some of the fitness clubs and community centers.

Outdoor basketball: Adequate. The cheapest sport around, requiring only nets, backboards, level rims, and a ball.

Indoor basketball: Adequate. Schools, churches, and community centers meet the need.

Bicycle riding: Oversupplied. If you want to ride a bike, there’s nothing stopping you, assuming you can afford one, and if you can’t there are organizations that will help. The dedicated bike lanes, bike paths, and sharrows are nice but a city-wide grid is unnecessary. Memphis is mostly flat and the weather is more conducive to riding than in the Snow Belt.

Football: Oversupplied. Liberty Bowl Stadium is used nine times a year. Football defined the fairgrounds. Most high schools have a field, and some of them are putting in artificial surfaces.

Baseball and softball: Oversupplied. Baseball is a suburban game, and teams migrate to the suburban baseball fields for tournaments and leagues. An unkempt field and backstop is a typical scene at most Memphis parks and high schools, a relic of another day. Good fields like the ones at Rodney Baber are expensive to light and maintain and lightly used.

Soccer: Equals suburban, although some of the world’s greats came out of poor Third World countries. Adequate to oversupplied, thanks to Mike Rose Fields.

Golf: Adequate. Memphis had to close public courses, which are magnets for wasteful spending and political squabbles on the City Council. Galloway serves the high end, and if you are willing to spend $40 you can play just about anywhere. Overton Park needs real greens.

Swimming: Undersupplied, but expensive, seasonal, and fraught with liability. The Kroc Center will help when it opens next year. Closing the Mason YMCA hurt. High marks for suburbs, downtown YMCA, University of Memphis, and Rhodes College which offers a summer membership.

Others: volleyball, skateboarding, squash, lacrosse, field hockey, rugby, bowling, Ultimate. You want to play it, you can find a place. It may require some effort and practice but that’s the point. And it may require some cash and a car, but if you don’t have those there are less expensive or free alternatives. It comes down to motivation and lifestyle. A new building or a new facility — or a survey — is usually not the answer.

Categories
News

Bike Path

Marvin Stockwell started riding his bike to work about six weeks ago.

“That was after a year of thinking about it,” he said. “I would see my buddy [bicycle advocate] Anthony Siracusa ride his bike everywhere.”

It was just in time to get the jump on National Bike-to-Work Week. Today’s Bike-to-Work Day dawned sort of cloudy and overcast, perfect weather for a group of seasoned and inexperienced riders to bike downtown, where the Center City Commission had “energizer stations” on North Main, South Main, and in the Medical Center District.

Energizing at Central Station

  • Energizing at Central Station

Dawn Vinson is the project manager for Downtown Bike to Work Week. The Hickory Hill resident often rides her bike to do casual errands.

“We were sitting around one day and we thought, how can we get more people to ride their bikes?” she said. “How could we make it safe and fun?”

In addition to the energizer stations, the CCC organized group rides into downtown, as well as practice rides in the days leading up to Bike to Work Day.

“It can be stressful to ride with traffic if you’re not confident in your skills. I prefer neighborhood streets with lower speeds. I’m must not ready to ride down Poplar Avenue,” Vinson said. “We organized the meet-ups for those not confident in their riding skills or who don’t want to do it by themselves or don’t know how to choose a route.”