In one corner of the city, I recently watched an International Bike Polo Tournament unfold at a pair of tennis courts in Grandview Park – surrounded by colorful flags and a cheering crowd. A few days earlier, as one of the B:C:Clettes, I practiced our pedal-inspired dance moves on 4th Avenue, studying our reflections in the mirrored windows of an adjacent office building. Two weeks prior, a rolling festival of song, wheels and dance paraded through the city’s streets, seawalls and parks during Vancouver’s first Bicycle Music Festival.
We’re delightfully redefining public space. We’re throwing out precedents and creating something new. Urban planners, architects and engineers could not have imagined these uses when they first designed our cities. Is it possible for the most appropriate use of a space to change over time, based on a changing demographic? How does the intended use of public space evolve?
As both a member of Vancouver’s all-women bicycle-performance group – the B:C:Clettes – and an architect, I happily ponder these questions and offer my thoughts. To me, it’s clear that the B:C:Clettes are one of Vancouver’s many bike-culture groups that use and redefine public space with almost every activity: our performances, practices and workshops.
Our “Clett-a-festo” begins: “We celebrate bikes and those who like to ride them. Perpetually in motion, we take back the street for revolutionary use as bicycle ways and dance floors. Revolutionary, YES, like our wheels.”
This year’s B:C:Clettes shows graced public spaces such as: Denman Street and Commercial Drive for the Car-Free Festival; the Grandview Park tennis courts during the Women’s Bike Polo Tournament; Crab Park during the Bicycle Music Festival; Rathtrevor Provincial Park; parks in Nanaimo and Courtenay and Robert Creek’s Community Mandala during our “Wheely Wheely 2 Fun” summer bike tour. In May, we held a bicycle safety workshop for Brownies at the tennis courts of New Westminster’s Queen’s Park to help them earn a bicycle badge.
Use of public space is, however, not always encouraged. While watching the polo tournament with her infant son, Cordelia “Marinona” Horsburgh of Victoria – both a polo player and a Velovixen bike performer – explained the troubles facing her polo team at Topaz Park. “It’s essential to have public space for community activities but the Parks have been discouraging; unless you pay money for insurance, they don’t want you there. There used to be bleachers to sit on and electricity outlets for our lights. They took away the bleachers and turned off the electricity. Now we can no longer play in the evenings; we’re the community, families with kids. They are taking away access by these means.”
The B:C:Clettes have not run into difficulties with our use of space, except in finding reliable covered practice space for the rainy winter. In the past, we’ve held winter practices in the public underground rink of Robson Square. When that space was taken over by construction crews, we rented second-floor space once a week from the Anti-Poverty Committee (APC) on Main Street. As the APC space may not be available this winter, we’ll again be on the lookout for an inexpensive, covered space to work our magic. It’s a plight that many creative groups encounter.
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