By Jerry Hiniker
Bicycle racks! Wow!, finally. . . .
Bicycle racks! Wow!, finally. . . .
A couple of weeks back I ran into Dave Tersteeg at the recycling center (you meet everyone there) when he told me the bike racks were actually on there way. It was exciting after all the work we had done on the Active Living committee, and holding our breath for the grant approval. Then a few days ago I got an e-mail confirming the arrival and installation including the locations where they had been installed.
I decided to take a look, and maybe a couple of pictures and headed out to Harbor Park across from the Trading Post first. I was speechless, I couldn’t describe it right away, but when the words did come my reaction was that someone had placed the rib cage from a whale just off the street. I searched around to see if I might have been looking at the wrong object but saw nothing else to rest a bike against other than the usual lamp post and park benches. Hmm, I wondered, would anyone actually think to use it for their bikes? Well, maybe I should look for the others first, maybe I would have a different impression in a different location.
Headed over to the Joyne’s parking lot where I found rack #2 inconspicuously behind the sign on the corner with 4 bikes attached to it, but surmised that the bikers might not have recognized it for its actual purpose but rather as an accidental convenience. Even haphazardly in their arrangement with the rack it was in use with bikes attached to one of the ribs. Ok, let’s take a stroll over to Drury Lane Bookstore and the Historical society. These two racks were smaller and quite visible, I was able to shake the whale rib image but now replaced by that of a 1958 Buick grill without the 177 little diamond dots between the bars. I cancelled my plans to visit the last three, fearful of what new image I might conjur. Even when visible the racks are sort of innocuous, and perhaps that’s what the designer at Dero racks intended, but we are Grand Marais, an arts community, something “artier” should have been recommended.
It’s not as if better designs were not available, scanning Dero and Saris catalogues I found some basic but appealing designs that invited artistic embellishment, and that fit the budget we had available. They had nice names like “City rack” and “Campus Rack”, not a bland ‘hoop rack”, and they were designed to compliment public spaces. All is not lost though, and certainly this not a failure but an opportunity: what can we do to enhance both the appearance and utility; to make them more inviting? Paint schemes? Added sculpture or other artifacts? Maybe permanently parking a bike at some of them to attract usage? Help me out here with suggestions, if we don’t get usage I fear they may eventually be displaced, and I really want them to work.
Headed over to the Joyne’s parking lot where I found rack #2 inconspicuously behind the sign on the corner with 4 bikes attached to it, but surmised that the bikers might not have recognized it for its actual purpose but rather as an accidental convenience. Even haphazardly in their arrangement with the rack it was in use with bikes attached to one of the ribs. Ok, let’s take a stroll over to Drury Lane Bookstore and the Historical society. These two racks were smaller and quite visible, I was able to shake the whale rib image but now replaced by that of a 1958 Buick grill without the 177 little diamond dots between the bars. I cancelled my plans to visit the last three, fearful of what new image I might conjur. Even when visible the racks are sort of innocuous, and perhaps that’s what the designer at Dero racks intended, but we are Grand Marais, an arts community, something “artier” should have been recommended.
It’s not as if better designs were not available, scanning Dero and Saris catalogues I found some basic but appealing designs that invited artistic embellishment, and that fit the budget we had available. They had nice names like “City rack” and “Campus Rack”, not a bland ‘hoop rack”, and they were designed to compliment public spaces. All is not lost though, and certainly this not a failure but an opportunity: what can we do to enhance both the appearance and utility; to make them more inviting? Paint schemes? Added sculpture or other artifacts? Maybe permanently parking a bike at some of them to attract usage? Help me out here with suggestions, if we don’t get usage I fear they may eventually be displaced, and I really want them to work.
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