Filmores peelers not likely to peel out on bikes
Remember that feminist rallying cry: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
Gloria Steinem popularized the phrase, although she didn’t coin it.
So here’s a new spin: Strippers need bicycles like fish need two-wheeling cycle-crats with a one-track mind.
Because there’s no rationale for planting a Bike Share station on the doorstep of Filmores, the longtime peeler emporium and hotel on Dundas Street East.
“Bike Share’s gonna come here. You can argue all you want, but it’s gonna come.”
That’s David Cushnie speaking, as he uses a measuring wheel to mark off distance so that a docking station can be shoehorned into the space. But Cushnie isn’t the bogeyman here, merely a transportation services officer trying to do his cog-in-the-wheel job.
Rebecca O, City of Toronto parking supervisor, isn’t a stiff-neck either. She was caught unawares when bikeplanters showed up this morning, all set to complete their task, despite ongoing discussions to arrive at a reasonable solution. “They didn’t even tell me they were coming. They don’t tell us anything.”
Maybe it’s Sean Wheldrake to blame for the standoff. The Bike Share manager is late to the party that’s convened outside Filmores. “If I don’t have this installed, it’ll be sitting in the warehouse.” And he doesn’t want stuff idling away when the objective at hand is so monumental: adding 1,250 bikes, 105 stations and 2,292 docking points this year to the Bike Share network.
Which is all fine and dandy, even for those of us who don’t give a toss for urban bicycling.
But this particular docking station is a mad social engineering big-foot stomp. Unwanted, unneeded, disruptive and undertaken — as are all the Bike Share stations — without public consultation.
Strippers won’t be hopping on a bike at 3 o’clock in the morning. Believe me, they can well afford Uber.
Set aside, for the moment, the fact there’s a Bike Share hub one block to the east and one block to the west, five within seven blocks. A third station on this stretch of Dundas would make it three within a distance of 300 metres — which runs contrary to the criteria stated in the organization’s own materials: “highly visible” areas that are near cycling facilities, landmarks or tourist destinations, transit hubs, areas of high employment density, retail destinations and college/ university campuses.
Set aside, for the moment, the argument from Filmores proprietor Howard Adams — his family has owned the establishment for four decades — that installing a Bike Share alongside his premises would cost him three of five parking spots he leases from the city (designated for staff ) and block access to the building’s delivery entrance.
Set aside, for the moment, that Toronto is hell-bent on turning itself into a pedal paradise, regardless of how many people are inconvenienced and how unfit this burg for bicyclelane grafting.
Fact is, that particular George Street corner is among the most crime-infested in the city, scarcely blunted by all the surveillance cameras Adams has affixed to the building and the private security guards he employs. There’s also a dogleg chain strung along the western periphery of the property — the chunk of land owned by the city — placed there some two decades ago at the urging of former councillor Kyle Rae. The intention was to discourage drug dealers from huddling alongside the wall while also routing foot traffic — mostly transients, the homeless, the booze- and drug-fuelled, and the wandering mentally ill — back onto the sidewalk.
I can be more mealymouthed descriptive of the area; in no way wish to demonize the down-and-outers. But that’s simply the reality of this sad-sack wedge of downtown Toronto, where flophouses abound, an overdose prevention site this way, Seaton House that way (scheduled for decommissioning by 2021) and All-Saints Community Church — urban angel — just yonder. I live in the vicinity and have no grudge against the destitute, unlike many Yuppie-comelatelys who belong to residents associations and wish to see the neighbourhood vacuumed of undesirables. The truth is, they were here first and there aren’t many places for them to go.
But none of these poor souls, I’d wager, are spoiling for Bike Share comforts, any more than the strippers. Which is why, at any time of the day or night, there’s only one (1) bicycle at the nearby fancy docking posts — and not because they’re in use.
“A bike station outside Filmores is a bad idea,” Adams told the Star in an email. “It puts potential Bike Share users at risk and it will disrupt deliveries to Filmores, a 7-day a week business that employs approximately 50 people directly and hundreds of entertainers indirectly.”
Go ahead and try to fight the bump ’n’ grind of city hall, though. It’s taken a year for Adams to get the ear of pinhead officials and only because Rebecca O finally came to take a look for herself. Although she is a civil employee of the politicians and basically must do their bidding.
“I think the struggle here is he just wants his parking,” Ward 13 Councillor Kristyn WongTam tells the Star.
Well, why shouldn’t he? Adams has been leasing that city-owned parcel for years.
“The exercise here is trying to reclaim all the commercial boulevards in the city,” WongTam says. “It’s not just for Bike Share, it’s for opportunities of greening, it’s to try to address the lack of public space, for public amenities. These boulevards are not private property and they never have been, they’ve been on lease from the city. For a lot of folks, they would probably admit the city has been undercharging. The city’s now looking to pursue a larger public service initiative — public furniture, pocket parks, pop-up infrastructure.”
Again, all fine and perfectly commendable. In years to come, the area is to be completely transformed via the George Street Revitalization Project, which will include replacing the rundown row houses — the city has already purchased a swath of properties — and turning the Seaton House location into a topnotch facility providing specialized care for vulnerable populations (long-term care home, emergency shelter, affordable housing, a community hub), and street-level commercial business. Directly across the street from Filmores, a building is going up that will incorporate, in WongTam’s words, “the world’s largest Indigenous business incubator.”
That under-construction building has a honking huge sidewalk space that could easily accommodate a Bike Share, if the city insists. Although turning this area into a modern biosphere for business coexisting with a ragtag population of needy people is a tall order, ripe for disharmony. What is the city going to do — ask the indigent nicely to move along?
As of Friday, Adams and the city mooks appear to have reached a compromise whereby the docking station will be double-sided, taking up only one parking spot. Geez, was that so hard? But Lord help any Bike Share patron who peels open a wallet to remove a user-pass in this hostile ’hood. The naïfs would be sitting ducks for muggers and miscreants.
Safer to hop on a stool and just enjoy the view inside Filmores.