Rick Shaw's Blog

Alameda Antiques Fair!! (May 1, 2011)

2011-05-03T15:27:00.000-07:00

Photo borrowed from Katie S's review of the Alameda Faire

We had a blast at this past Sunday May 1st's Alameda Point Antiques Faire! Big thanks to everyone at the fair as well as the fair organizers. We had a great time and will remember to pack more water and apply more sunscreen next time :)

The faire is getting huge, bursting at the seams every time I've visited. The first time I went was probably in 2006 or 2007. Something I noticed upon going to the fair in 2009 was that suddenly everyone wanted "items for $10." Nowadays it's all about the "$5 item" because money is tighter than ever, although the lucky few middle and upper class shoppers are scooping up nice finds by the truckload.

Why I originally liked the faire and still do:

Items sold must be 20 years or older, meaning
Most items are "vintage" which is cool all by itself, and
Most items are "made in USA" which supports the "local economy" if you will, and
Most items are therefore made of HIGHER QUALITY MATERIALS than 99% of what you will find at Target-Walmart-Costco-HomeDepot-99centOnly-DollarTree -- thus the items (some of them) will last much longer due to their "heirloom design", plus
when you use cash you are cutting out hefty plastic ATM/DEBIT/CREDIT fees and saving yourself money and starving the big tapeworm banks ever so slightly.

You may not care about most of this stuff, but you probably appreciate half of what I wrote. (Which half, I won't know. :) And there are even more reasons to like the fair now: twice as many food/beverage vendors and even fresh fruit stand now. (Musicians might be a nice addition, farmers' market style.) There are more vendors than ever. There are more people attending than ever, which affords even more people watching. There is a free parking lot shuttle outside the gate. I'm probably missing something so feel free to chime in.

If you've never been, we'd tell you whether we were pedicabbing the event or not, you MUST go at least once or twice in your life. There are different strategies for shopping here, but at least during the non-rainy season, they must include these things:

Bring...

Cash money. (There are ATMs, but you will pay a fee. Probably $5 by now.) Few vendors accept plastic payment, though some do.
WATER bottles! Bring at least half a quart of water. There are PLENTY of food and drink options though, now on both sides of the faire.
Hat/sunglasses/parasol/sunscreen! It's on a former Navy Base airport runway, so imagine how hot it would be standing about in the sun for the hottest part of a day on a runway tarmac.
Camera! Take photos of yourself enjoying the faire and post 'em up! (Most phone cams suffice.)
Backpack or something to carry all the above, plus your "winnings."
Optionally, bring 2-way radios, because even with the best carrier (Verizon) you will have difficulty connecting to other cell phone users.

Aside from things to bring, you might choose to dither for hours in the front few rows, or run to the back and start shopping "backwards" from the last almost-mile (3/4 mile) of the fair and work your way back.

Just from side conversations we heard from dealers that customers come from as far away as Sacramento (one hour's drive). However, many dealers are from even further away.

It's a crazy, super fun event you should attend -- we recommend -- at least once per year. It's fun for all ages and both (many?) sexes... there are man toys, women's fashion, kid's books, bicycles, potato mashers, "bakelite" jewelry, precious metals, manual tools for kitchen and carpentry, plenty of knick knacks and "things to see" for all involved. It's almost like a post-industrial world's faire of the formerly rich and powerful nation that we all label America.

November update: pedicabs + food

2010-11-14T00:09:00.000-08:00

I've been busy! Not doing much bike taxi stuff, but other things.

Anyway, we're back out regularly now.

David got quite the workout Thursday night with Vintage Blue our Joy Luck Club pedicab (b. 1952)... between the Fox Theater, Luka's Taproom and other spots it was quite a busy night!

Tonight (Saturday 10pm~Sunday 2am) Dewey is pounding the pavement around The Trappist, Flora, The Layover and other happening Uptown spots.

Call (510) 545-CABS most Thursday Friday and Saturday nights for first class service to multiple downtown Oakland destinations! You can also check out our twitter to confirm that we're out working.

In local scene news, a partner of the Flora-Tacubaya food-empire told me last week that their new spot Xolo Taqueria (by Flora, Fox, Den, Sears, Uptown) will open "in six months" which is April 2011. Knock on wood! The beer-pizza place there hasn't opened yet either...

NEX Oakland next door to MUA is a very sweet getup: gorgeous breadstick starters, PISCO SOUR (Peruvian national beverage), food sooo good! EBX has a full write-up. And Matthew Stafford's right--Oakland's seeing a counter-intuitive resurgence of eating (and drinking) establishments. Bar Three Fifty-Five. The Trappist. Liege. Beer Revolution. Adesso. Commis: we LOVE Commis!!! Bakesale Betty Satellite---please extend your hours M&A! :) Plum. Vegetarian Filipino. Geisha. NEX. The eateries coming to Jack London Square market any year now. ;) Brown Sugar Kitchen of course. Long-time Chef Edward's continues to impress. And COTTON CLUB. (See next paragraph.) You'd almost think we're having a food.com bubble...

If you haven't been to this secret restaurant yet, you have to get in!! Awesome food+grog == dementedly.good.times. MORE THAN makes up for downtown Oakland's utter lack of bacon-wrapped hotdogs! Stab at it with gin or other spirits.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Ken

October 9th Green Drive Expo Photos!

2010-10-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

Dewey providing door-to-door service for Expo attendees.

We had a GREAT time in Richmond last week taking people on comfortable human-powered rides to the Green Drive Expo at Craneway Pavilion! The sun was radiant, Blue Angels flew loops on the San Francisco Bay behind us for Fleet Week festivities and we saw hundreds of people test driving Teslas (and going pretty darn fast too!), Priuses, Think's e-car, Mitsubishi's i-Miev, and Ford's PHEV Focus at GDE... lucky for us we had white tents provided by Autobytel and small gusts of wind off the bay! Take a look at our event photos and feel free to contribute yours!

Great thanks to our sponsor Autobytel (they match you up with cars all the way through to point of purchase), project coordinators Lulu Lin and Caroline Schweich, our indefatigable drivers Jerry Meissner, Tom Horner and Dewey Sprenzel, the show sponsors (Ford, Toyota, Nissan and others), show organizers Becky and her husband, and all the staff and security of Craneway Pavilion.

In between giving rides we also had good conversations with people attending the show from all over... Orinda, San Rafael, San Francisco, Oakland, BERKELEY, Albany, Hayward and even San Jose! Thanks again to everyone for helping out and jumping on board!

We're happy we were able to serve so many passengers in style and make this event memorable. Here's to Green Drive Expo 2011!

Cheers,
Ken
Backseat Driver Pedicab

Update: Summer 2010!!

2010-10-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

We've had an ultra busy 2010!!

Every First Friday for the past few months (except this past Friday 10/1) we've been not pedaling around downtown at night. Sad, yes. Instead, we were posted up with our vintage cab at Telegraph and 23rd Street peddling our organic home-made ice cream. So that's why you haven't seen us out and about on First Fridays. We've also been pushing cold creams at hipster-heavenly forageSF underground markets in SF and Oakland. A couple times a month you will find me zipping thru Alameda's Webster-Posey tube (it's hellish biking on a tiny pathway above cars hurtling toward you at 50-60mph with all the wind, soot, asbestos brake dust, noise and diesel PM2.5-10 exhaust... plus their lights on, sorta crazy) to get to Lucky's over there for dry ice. Oakland has no dry ice. What's up Oakland?! (Oh yeah, we did have some. But the West Grand am/pm is closed now.)

We provided first-class wedding service for a bevvy of lucky couples between May and September. Pedicab weddings are always a blast! So many awesome people who definitely should be getting married. While catering weddings I've lost count of which of my personal friend's weddings I've been to this year (two for sure) since weddings seem to blend together if you go to too many... but I do remember vividly my friends' weddings in Lima, Peru and Berkeley, California during the end of this September. Okay, there was Lizzie & Adam's sweet one too, but I'm not really recalling any before that this year :)

In July we went up to Portland and took a PDX pedicab around the aptly named Pearl District, then biked up the hill to the city of roses' rose garden and japanese garden... theirs gives SF's a run for its money but ours is still better :P The Met is okay but I wouldn't live there. Oakland is much preferable. Lima on the other hand... hm!!

Backseat Driver provided festival service to disabled people, children and plain tired-out adults at this year's Rockridge Out & About Festival last Sunday 9/26/10. Huge thanks to Scott and Sara of Market Hall/Cactus for providing us pulled pork sandwiches. They are "the bomb" times ten! Big thank you to the RRDMA for inviting us! We in turn invited Tom, owner-operator of eMotion Pedicab to join in the fun. It was a bit of an exhausting day for me since I pedaled one of our bikes all the way up from downtown Oakland. Great workout though!

You'll be pleased to find tech specs, photos and details about our electric-assist pedicab in ZEVTech's old website, now archived at Archive.org. You can also get the lowdown on True Blue's microcontroller.

I've been spending a lot of time hunting down spare tires to replace the seemingly 50-year-old tires on our beautiful vintage pedicab. The tire size is "26 inches by 1 and 3/8 inches" which is super generic and thus like a shoe or pant size these days. What I really need is a tire 582mm from bead to bead. Thanks for Tom Pisillo, Clay "Cash" Wagers and the dudes at VeloSport Berkeley for advising me on tire sizing and sourcing. If you have any 1950s era American or Chinese "26x1 3/8" tires loafing about please get in touch.

You have probably seen advertisements on our cabs this season in preparation for the upcoming local November election. These are for Robert Raburn (BART Board D4) and Rebecca Kaplan (Oakland mayor). Robert has given a lifetime of work into pushing for bicycling as a normal everyday transportation option in the urban East Bay. We heartily applaud Robert for his work. Rebecca has pushed for downtown Oakland's overhaul in various ways including the new "B" Shuttle on Broadway (aka freebie) and making it easier to open a nightlife establishment downtown.

We're working with the rough and ready crew over at California Covers to custom build a tight new awning for our 1952 Taiwanese Victory pedicab. No, we're not going all out with the LV leather this time! This cab is slightly awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing a new roof on this badboy after spending many late night hours patching up the old pvc canvas one with needle and thread...

I saw RadioGuy last night on his pedicab... it's now painted ALL PURPLE (instead of red with white stripes) and looks tres cool. Awesome! He'll give you a ride with plenty of bass pumping out of the surround speaker system. Radio Guy has been in downtown O. for the past 15 years.

Last but not least, we're gearing up for a huge event in Richmond this month with FOUR pedicabs out starting the party over at Green Drive Expo!

Thanks for reading and let us know where you'd like to see us next!

June Update

2010-06-25T13:39:00.000-07:00

After a cold spell of a week, next week looks to be nice and hot!

We'd like to thank one a fellow Pedicabbist, Tom of eMotion Pedicabs, for helping us tune up ye olde Vintage Blue pedicab. Hats off to Tom!

We'd also like to thank Adam and Clay for their work on our other pedicab, True Blue.

Look forward to seeing you at Oaklavia this Sunday 6/27/2010!

Pedicabbing Report

2010-05-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

Went out last night since FOX was having a show. Good crowd. It's warm enough now even at night that it's fine to wear shorts, though I banged my shin pretty good on the bike frame somehow. Somehow the freewheel stopped working -- so had to cut things short before midnight.

Thanks everyone!
Ken

Live from the bottom of the Ocean

2010-05-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

Somewhat unrelated to pedicabbing...

PBS is now showing BP's live feed, with an oilpocalypse gallons-gushed counter.

Check it out here and on our Media page.

Thoughts on the lingering effects of the oil volcano on Gulf Coast habitat and communities by Richard Heinberg over at TheOilDrum.

Memory Lane

2010-05-14T19:30:00.000-07:00

This post has little to do with pedicabbing but everything to do with travel, vacations, trips and memories.

Normally we're rather against the label "consumer" but that is what we all are to some extent. Either air, water and food, or those three and much more.

I've spent the last week sorting through thousands of receipts mostly from 2006-2010. What I notice about these is multi-fold...

They tend to pile up and go with you from apartment to apartment;

Receipts chronicle your exploits more accurately than any blog can due to the printed cost, date, address and timestamp;

They show your "consumer" metabolism -- in between jobs, few receipts, perhaps the telltale "EBT" on certain grocery receipts if you were really down and out. Making money hand over fist but no time to cook? Lots of train tickets, restaurant receipts, parking receipts.

Thrown into the mix with receipts are business cards, brochures, flyers, scribbled notes or letters or diagrams; statements, knick knacks, coupons and point cards. I've had fun reviewing where I've been, what I ate.

Lan Zhou Handmade Noodle, 144 East Broadway, NYC 10002 Tel.: (212) 566-6933 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (212) 566-6933 end_of_the_skype_highlighting. "We Delivery" (A couple days after New Year's 2009. BEST hand-pulled and -cut noodles I've had in my life, except for Lin's grandmother's noodles, and cheap! Starting at $4.50 a bowl. The owner pounds the flour out next to your head while you eat.)

Kimi Ryokan, 36-8, 2 chome, Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo 171-0014, Japan. PHONE: 03-3971-3766
(May 2009 super nice and super cheap "international house" hostel right in the middle of Tokyo. Say hi to Miho for us.)

City of Oakland parking receipt for 12/17/09, 02:05 PM. $2.00. Doesn't say where.

1 2 3 4 (front)
All sex maniacs pick 3 (back)
Compliments of Todd The Bubbleman 510-848-6017
(The guy in tie-die at the pasta stand, Jack London Square farmers' market, Winter 2010.)

Hand drawn map of Ikebukuro station and roads to nearest drugstores.
(I was helping a Chinese mainlander find safer baby formula for her sister on a layover. How do these people find me? May 2009.)

The pieces of paper jog my memory better than a polaroid can. A polaroid photo has no date or other context.

Time flies when you're pedaling

2010-04-22T01:10:00.000-07:00

It's late April 2010. It's been a year since we soft launched. Happy Birthday to Backseat Driver Pedicab, BDP!

I made myself a mojito yesterday under careful guidance from a bartender friend. Will do a full on party next year.

We've been busy training new drivers... here's hoping they soon pedal effortlessly and gainfully across downtown. =)

More pedicabs in San Francisco now!

2010-03-15T16:16:00.001-07:00

Golden Gate Pedicabs is now operating five pedicabs in Golden Gate Park.

So says SFExaminer. Also see CBS5 article. Good work GGP!

GGP is also keen on plying the East Bay market.

See GGP's Facebook page.

Ken

Valentine's Day

2010-02-18T15:30:00.000-08:00

I was lucky enough to be commissioned to give a woman and her husband a romantic ride around Lake Merritt for V-Day. (aka singles awareness day)

The ride itself was nice, though more hurried than I would have liked, since I was a bit late in picking them up. Of course, it being mid February in the early evening, it was a little cold and cloudy toward the end too. However, the sunset was nice. I'd do a ride a little sooner for any future VDay rides.

For future rides I think the pedicab should spend less time lakeside, and more time on the road, since the cab takes up nearly the entire width of the walking path at some narrower stretches. I don't like inconveniencing others, including joggers and walkers. However, for a few stretches it is okay and nicer to be by the lake.

Thank you Sarah & Francisco and hope you enjoyed it!

All the best,
Ken

Old news: attacked by uncouth passenger

2010-02-01T15:45:00.000-08:00

I've posted up most of the details of my attacked-while-blacked-out attack on the main bike taxi website.

Read the first and follow-on reports here.

I'll post suspect sketch and other info in the near future. Stay safe out there people -- lots more unemployed young men running about these days.

Ken

Anyone see a hand-pulled rickshaw lately?

2009-11-23T16:42:00.000-08:00

You know what a rickshaw is: it's a taxi pulled by a man who walks (or runs) in front of a two-wheeled chariot. Think back to that Seinfeld episode with Kramer and the downhill slide...

Please get in touch if you know of anyone who'd like to part with theirs, or if you know of a rickshaw rental business in the Bay Area.

See example below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickshaw

It's probably much easier to build a Palanquin so no need to email me about those! :)

I did see rickshaws in Kamakura (or was it Kawagoe) in Japan this year so I know they're out there...

Ken

Today: routine maintenance

2009-11-21T10:51:00.000-08:00

Looked at rear axle connections today to ensure smooth, reliable operation of pedicab #1. No more squeaking, hooray!

I'm also taking a pedicab to a wedding tomorrow in Pleasanton to celebrate the lives of a nuptial couple. Looking forward to it!

Cheers,
Rick

October Photoshoot!

2009-11-20T11:12:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos that Tom G took while riding around with me in mid October. Enjoy!

Photos :)

2009-10-22T03:22:00.000-07:00

Pedicabbing means hustling, showing people a good time, "driving" safely, and a lot of other behind the scenes work. Sometimes in the course of pedaling about there are lulls and other changes to take a break. Here are a few snaps from last weekend I have permission to post up.

See photos from last weekend (October 16th)

Look for more photos here in the future, or send them to me via blog comments or email. Thanks to my beautiful clients!

"Rick"

Sick at home

2009-10-05T22:22:00.000-07:00

I'm falling with a fever. Won't be pedicabbing it up for probably a week or two. Being sick isn't fun!

Have been reading a bit tonight. Sure glad I don't have a retail job where I'd have to slave away no matter how sick I was, or else be unable to pay the rent. Been there, done that, no fun.

So from tonight's reading, a few choice quotations:

One:

I've always been of the mind that unemployment benefit is provided for the well being of the middle and upper classes not the poor. As someone above said, if you take 3 million unemployed (as in the UK) and tell them that you won't feed them or house them are they supposed to shrug their shoulders and go and get a job? What if there aren't any jobs - and there aren't at the moment. So instead the middle/upper class subsidize the civility of the poor through taxation so that the poor don't start causing trouble.
Rather than throwing people on the scrap heap when the economy can't keep them employed it would be a better idea to repatriate the jobs we have lost to other countries. Like I have been saying for eons now, globalisation and 'free markets' make the rich richer but at the expense of the poor - and poorly educated in particular. The theory was that all the hum-drum jobs were supposed to have been shipped off to the orient and we in the west would all get nice new shiny jobs in 'hi-tech' or pharma. Well a few things were brushed under the carpet:
1) it doesn't take so many people to invent a new microchip or pill than to build cars, smelt iron ore or work in textile mills or agriculture. These hi-tech industries simply could not never soak up the unemployed.
2) it may not be politically correct to say it but not everyone is bright enough to work in hi-tech etc. The very nature of the work in more intellectual rather than muscular. And it really doesn't matter how good the schooling system is either. Some people just can't do mathematics and computer science.
3) The rest of the world is not going to sit there content in doing the drudge work - believe it or not the Indians and Chinese are quite capable of doing the hi-tech etc jobs too.
So millions of workers have been made redundant over the last decades, millions more have joined the workforce and now the only jobs are in the 'service sector' which are all poorly paid and more importantly do not have the same satisfaction as working in a heavy industry. So now the western consumer has less money with which to buy the imported goods which they would have made a generation ago.
The single most destructive ideology ever to spread its tentacles around the globe has been globalization and its bed pall the free-market. And to any one who thinks we are better off now than before the world embraced this cancer just ask, are we really? How many adults in the household does it take now to pay the bills? How much CO2 is there in the atmosphere? How full are the landfill sites with our rubbish? How much 'progress' has been made exactly? --HAcland

Two

Living on the boundary of a low-income neighborhood, I witness that the people growing vegetable gardens are working middle-class folks, who like me, live on the boundary. The folks on food stamps do not have vegetable gardens, instead many smoke crack and drink beer as much as possible. Government assistance has it's place, but it should be short-term. If I was collecting unemployment for a year, I would be traveling the country with a backpack. If I was collecting unemployment for two months, I would find try to find a job. --gogetter

What do you think? I find that both of these can be true.

It may seem strange I'm posting aout social issues as founder of a bike taxi business. But at the same time, it isn't. I'm at the ground level. I see our local "rich" bougies and poor people alike. As long as humans have lived, we've always had poverty, war, homelessness, famine, plagues.

I don't think these will ever go away. In the near term I expect them to all intensify due to us running out of enough oil plus environmental degradation. But as MLK said, even if the world would end tomorrow, I'd plant a tree today.

Now back to getting well again.