Discuss: Send in the Clowns

P.S. Hey Mark. If you wanna see a more functional group that’s really making a difference, come visit us at Community Cycles…and while we don’t have a composting toilet, we really have potential to make gas less popular within our community.
;)

Ida,

Community Cycles sounds very much like some of the great organizations in the Austin area that I didn’t have room in the article to mention, among them the Yellow Bike Project, located in a fabulous old airplane hangar filled with bicycles and bike parts—frames and forks neatly arrayed in a loft, rims hanging within reach, tools of every sort on the wall, bins and boxes of just about any part one might need all properly sorted and organized, and experienced volunteer mechanics moving from one bike repair station to the next offering helpful advice. Being there was like stumbling into an Industrial Workers of the World propaganda film, only with real people—a father and daughter quietly repairing bikes to be shipped to New Orleans; a couple of kids doing community service work in lieu of doing time in juvee—and they even had regular bike repair workshops, some of them specifically for women.

The Rhizome Collective in Austin also has a smaller but useful bike repair shop and there are probably more of the same that have developed since I visited. Many thanks for your comments.

M

This was a terrific article.  I have not read the other comments, so please forgive me if I repeat someone else’s thoughts.

One of the major themes for me is the importance of awareness and acceptance to the environmental movement.  Each of us fall somewhere on a spectrum of how much we do for the environment.  Some more so than others.  But in this matter of degrees, who can say “I’m better than you, because I do x, but you only do y?”

I think that is a point Dave misses and in so doing, alienates himself and his cause from others. While Dave’s mission and beliefs are inspirational, they are not practical for society at large, as Mark pointed out.  That doesn’t mean that those of us who cannot spend our lives riding our bicycles are any less concerned or involved in helping the environment and moving for change.  And it shouldn’t create a separation between us, as it does for Dave.  That is likely counterproductive to the movement as a whole.

Rather, we should all be accepting of each other.  And those who care enough to make some change in our lives to better the environment and society, from the bike utopians to the light bulb changer and everyone in between.  We should join together and in so doing become stronger and work towards spreading awareness and understanding to the community at large. 

Perhaps by spreading awareness and acceptance, and with no small amount of perseverance, utopia will someday be where
we are actually living as a community and not some far off place “over the rainbow” or “off the grid” where most of us can only dream of reaching.

composting toilets in manhattan is perfect,with bicycle pickups to haul the compost to the fields,better yet to have food growing out of every window in the city.we our at the cusp of the agro-information age;homegrown,low energy living coupled with high tech, information sharing technology.show me a host with a parasite and i will show you a host that needs a parasite,symbiotic relationships are abundant in the free market economy.a “waste stream"is nothing more than a resource not recognized or utilized yet.necessity is always the engine that will eventually persuade us to see the light.

I loved the article. There are people like Dave in most places in the world and I think they are needed. They push the edge out so the rest of us don’t have to feel so crazy. Great writing!