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Street by Street, Mower by Mower
There’s been a lot said and written about the decline of Detroit, Mich after its deindustrialization. Long ago dubbed the Motor City, locals tell us that many streets are void of auto-traffic making them great for bikes. There’s lots of people and organizations trying to turn the city around. Folks like the League of Michigan Bicyclists and Todd Scott at Michigan Trails and Greenways Alliance are working to re-energize the city through bicycles and greenways. Now they may have some help from the Mower Gang.
Walking through a maze of shrubbery, trees, tires, paint cans and logs the size of wheelbarrows, it was hard to imagine that people raced bicycles there.
“I cannot believe that this has been abandoned in time,” said Tom Nardone, founder of the Mower Gang. The small group of volunteers was standing on the Dorais Velodrome in northeast Detroit on Friday. The motto on their shirts said it all, “Winning Detroit’s Other Turf War.”
Though the concrete velodrome needs quite a bit more maintenance to be race worthy, the group of volunteer armed with mowers and weedwackers did succeed in making it rideable again.
“It’s really not about getting some 45-year-old guy a better place to ride his bike,” said [Tom] Nardone, reflecting on the Mower Gang’s mission. “It’s more about getting 10-, 12-, 13-year-old kids a better place to spend an afternoon.”
Jeff Peel
State and Local Advocacy Coordinator
Peel joined the League in March 2008 as a Program Specialist for the Bicycle Friendly Communities program. Peel has a BA in American Studies from the University of Southern Mississippi.
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August 20th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Jeff, I read your excellent post with a lot of wistfulness.
I suggest everyone watch Capitalism: A Love Story if you haven’t already. It was written and directed by Michael Moore (who wrote and directed Roger and Me and other stuff).
Sadly, this is a mixed blessing. That velodrome, along with most of the other infrastructure that has been falling apart in the Rust Belt, was built with money from those big blue collar industries that are now gone. No jobs, no traffic.
My first two bicycles were bought for me by my stepdad, who worked in one of those Chevy plants all his life. First on the assembly line and later as a machinist. We have these liftime memories and one of mine is the first time I pushed that little 20 inch bike down the sidewalk in Buffalo as a five year old. It was a used bike, with red respray on the frame and solid rubber tires. But it was mobility!
The new Sears bike with the fake gas tank on the frame came later, as Pop worked his way up in the plant and we had some disposable income beyond food and the mortgage. He bought a 1960 VW bug for himself to drive to work, happily proclaiming 30 mpg in an age when everyone else was driving leviathans.
The Chevy plant is now a field and there is no money nor union jobs to be found in Buffalo, N.Y. But at least Buffalo is getting complete streets, I suppose, and we have to struggle with getting beyond cars and cheap gas at any rate. We move on.