Dot Bike

Join us for our montly commute ride home.  Meet at 5:30 p.m. at Brewer’s fountain on the Boston Common next to Park Street station or at 6:00 p.m. at the intersection of Columbia and Dorchester Ave.  See our Ride Home page for map and details.

Moving Together 2008
Massachusetts Bicycle and Pedestrian Conference

Save the date. More info will be posted as it becomes available.

This month the Neponset River Greenway Council meets in Dorchester!  The Greenway is one of our most important bikeways in Dorchester, enjoyed by all kinds of cyclists.  The council, organized by the Boston Natural Areas Network, works to improve and expand the Greenway from along it’s length through Milton, Hyde Park, Mattapan, Milton, and Dorchester.

*Wednesday July 2, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.*
Old Dorchester Post, 500 Gallivan Blvd, Dorchester ( You can bring your bike in with you. )

File this one under Awesome!

Way back in the early days of DotBike – a few months ago now – we said wouldn’t it be fun to get t-shirts.  With the help of our friend Andrew of Urban Adventours we received our first batch of I <bike> Dorchester t-shirts.  We knew that Steve Madden, the editor of Bicycling magazine, is from Dorchester and that the magazine had routinely ranked Boston as one of the worst cycling cities in the country, so Debbie said “let’s send Steve a shirt to let him know that we’re trying and besides he’ll love the shirt”.  So she did.

A couple of issues ago in their annual Best Biking Cities piece Boston was no longer grouped with the worst but instead was given an “Heading in the right direction – future best” designation. We don’t think that the t-shirt had anything to do with this but you never know.

But we came home yesterday to the new issue of Bicycling in our mailbox and in a sidebar of Steve’s editorial there was this – and I quote:

“There was a time when to ride a bike in Dorchester, Massachusetts, my hometown, was to take your life into your hands. Not anymore, thanks to the hardworking advocates at dotbike.org, who are making the streets of Boston’s coolest neighborhood safe for things besides hockey and loitering. Cool T-shirts, too.”
Steve Madden August Issue Bicycling Magazine

So thanks Steve and Bicycling magazine for the shout out, Andrew and Urban Adventours for helping us with the shirts and Debbie for the fantastic idea to send Steve a shirt.

Oh and here is what the shirts look like.

Mayor Menino will be coming to our neighborhood this Saturday (6/28) at 10:00 AM for the grand
opening of the Dot-2-Dot Cafe and Dot Art’s Clay Station Sculpture Studio.

We will meet at the Clay Station, 1782 Dorchester Ave, at the corner of Shepton Street, and move on to the Dot-2-Dot at 1739 Dot Ave.  The event should be over by 11:00 at the latest.

The Clay Station is a ceramics studio providing classes for people of all ages, as well as work space for aspiring and professional artists. The Clay Station is the only studio of its kind in Dorchester, housing pottery wheels, classroom space and a glazing station, as well as exhibition space for original work made in the studio.

The Dot-2-Dot is Dorchester’s newest cafe. Owner Karen Henry-Garrett, a Cordon-Bleu-trained chef and local resident,  serves up everything from coffee & pastries to cuisines from around the world, in a menu that changes daily.  She also provides catering for office meetings and parties.  The Dot-2-Dot features plenty of seating, free wi-fi access, and exhibits of local artwork.

EJ in the ‘Hood

Start: 06/28/2008 – 11:00am

End: 06/28/2008 – 6:00pm

Join ACE in Dudley Square for our annual EJ in the ‘Hood event, now newly revamped as a street fair!

Saturday, June 28
11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Blair’s Lot,
Dudley Square, Roxbury

(Across from ACE’s office at 2181 Washington Street)

Rain date: Sunday, June 29

music ~ entertainment ~ neighborhood tours ~ open house

This event is free and open to the public.
Check back here as we will update this listing with details as they come in.
For more info, contact Khalida (also at 617-442-3343 x221) or visit ACE’s office.

aceadmin – Tue, 04/29/2008 – 6:34pm

General Ace Events

You may be a casual weekend rider, you may not have ridden for years or you might ride quite a lot but just not to get to work.  With the high gas prices, the nice weather and perhaps the desire to get fit you might be thinking about commuting by bike.

Check out this presentation by Sheila Fay that gives tips and info to help new bike commuters.  Clicking on the picture will start the download of a pdf slide presentation. NOTE: you may have better luck if you right click or control click and choose ‘Save link as’ - the file is pretty big (~4 Mb) and might overload your browser plugin.  You can then view the presentation in a pdf viewer (e.g. Adobe reader or Preview)

Thanks to Sheila Fay for permission to post her presentation.

Here is another in my series of commute rides. This is Debbie’s normal commute into her office in the Back Bay. To get to Franklin Park she rides down Talbot and then a short stint on Blue Hill Avenue. Then through the park and down the hill and onto the Southwest corridor. The Southwest corridor park is generally a nice path although there are quite a few street crossings where you need to take care. The bike and pedestrian paths are separated along most of the route.

View Larger Map

DotBike members have been attending quite a few events lately to learn about and advocate for bike improvements in our neighborhoods. Here is a quick wrap up of some things that have been going on.

• We had a great time at the C-11 Bike rodeo and helped get the word out on safety to kids and families. Check out the previous post on the rodeo.
• This weekend DotBike will have a presence at at least 2 events; the ACORN Dorchester Energy Fair and the ACE EJ-in-the-hood festival.

Some other things that have been happening behind the scenes:

• We had a productive meeting with Erik Scheier of the MBTA on bike parking at Dorchester Red Line stations with a particular focus on improved rack locations at Ashmont and Fields Corner stations.
• We attended the Move Mass presentation by Professor Peter Furth on improving bike path interconnectivity in Boston.  Dr. Furth is planning a project with his students to develop specific proposals for Dorchester bike improvements and he was interested in getting our group involved.
• We took input from several of our members and created an annotated google map of Franklin Park, high lighting points of access, routes used by bicyclists and problem areas in the park.  This was then submitted to the Franklin Park Coalition to be used as input to the Transportation study that is being done to improve all types of access and use of the park.

We’ll let you know how these efforts pan out in the coming months and keep you updated on more efforts that are underway.

It was a beautiful day and DotBikers had a lot of fun helping out at the C-11 bike rodeo.

We helped the kids find a good fit for one of the helmets that were given away throughout the day.

Vivian very diligently checked every bike for road worthiness. His safety check included taking the bike for a spin, no matter the size of the owner.

We also helped out with the obstacle course and enjoyed interacting with the participants.

Thanks much to Officer Rorie for organizing this fun event and we look forward to next year.