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Katherine does everything from lobbying to laundry - on her Bike Friday
August 8, 2004: Katherine is a Local Hero
Read about Katherine's Best of the Bay 2004 local hero accolade. Press article
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I ALWAYS ASSUMED everyone had a right to own a car. I never questioned it. It was only after being the victim of more than one freak collision as a passenger, that I started to question the wisdom of it.
Katherine Roberts, San Francisco bicycle activist and owner of two Bike Fridays, is talking about her recent victory for the nature-loving public: she single-handedly halted the construction of an 800-car parking garage in a historic section of the Golden Gate Park.
"People have been coming up to me in the street, thanking me, congratulating me, calling me a 'hero' and 'The Queen of San Francisco'", she said.
At the same time letters in the local paper are branding her a 'racist, extremist, and anti-democratic'.
Financier for project and heir to the Wells-Fargo fortune, Warren Hellman, is threatening to move the hugely popular, free Bluegrass Festival which he sponsors in Golden Gate Park to Oakland.
How did a willowy teacher of Latin and Greek who never owned a car, does not have a driver's license, and has no plans to acquire either, get to scratch the eyes out of Goliath?
"After my last accident in NY where the car I was traveling in was broadsided, I started thinking seriously about the sheer injustice of it. Here we have cars hurtling around at insane speeds, minimally regulated, causing more deaths in this country than AIDS, cancer and guns combined."
She read a book called 'The Geography of Nowhere' by James Kuntsler, which clearly pointed out the irony and insanity of our whole car-centric society. But it also pointed a way out.
"I looked into the history of how we got to this place, how after the war, the government offered cheap finance for people to live out in the suburbs, necessitating a car, and how you could not get a loan for redeveloping a house in the inner city. Then I looked further, at the soot on our beautiful buildings, the same eating away the ruins in Athens and the Parthenon which have been standing for thousands of years. I looked at how cars destroy the fabric of society at every level, how people don walk or talk to each other, how our cities are designed for mayhem and misery. I thought, how could we be so numb?"
"I contacted an activist group called Auto Free New York, which I previously thought was a bit crackpotty. They turned out to be a major inspiration, and validated my decision that if I never got in a car again, not even a taxi, I'd be happier."
So in 1990 Katherine's crusade began. And that's when she discovered Bike Friday.
"A folding bike - it was the missing link. I first saw it at American Cyclery, the bike shop on the corner of my block, which had one on the floor. It was not my size, so when I tried it I did not like it. Based on my lack of knowledge I decided it was not useful for me."
She hooked up with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition a very active group with the slogan: Promoting The Bicycle for Everyday Transportation. Together they filled a Green Tortoise bus with 25-30 people, with their bicycles strapped to the roof, and headed for Eugene, Oregon, home of Center for Appropriate Transport (CAT).
"Eugene was a Mecca for us. It was a gorgeous October day and Jan Vandertuin at CAT invited us to come up and see all his amazing human powered machines, like a human powered plough. We camped on the floor of the factory and rode all the bikes. It totally inspired me, and validated my idea of a car free world. Then he showed me a Bike Friday packed in its suitcase."
It was only then that Katherine made the connection between the folding bike she saw at American Cyclery and the travel bike packed in the suitcase in front of her.
"I thought, now I can see how it could be useful if only it rode better!"
Four years passed, and Katherine decided to go to cycling in Europe for 3 months.
"I thought about renting a bike. I was totally discouraged by the time I tried to disassemble my Kona Mountain bike and take it to New York. Then I remembered the Bike Friday. I thought, even if it doesn't ride that great, it would be worth it. As you can see, I was totally clueless about the Bike Friday!"
She called Dave Hess, a renowned former Bike Friday sales consultant, and told him she was leaving in a week and needed a bike.
"I had no idea they were custom-fitted and had a lead time of 4-6 weeks. Dave asked me for my measurements. He then said that an order had been duplicated by accident, and the extra bike, a Sapphire Blue Pocket Llama, was built almost to my exact size. He said he'd let me have it, with a used suitcase thrown in, for a used bike price. Blue is the last color I would have chosen, but I said, Are you kidding? Blue is now my favorite color!"
So the next day, Katherine practised assembling, riding, disassembling and packing her Bike Friday, with Wolf Moritz on the phone walking her through every nut and bolt.
"I normally figure things out myself but as was leaving the next day I had to be sure it was going to work for me. Every time I sat on the suitcase and closed the latch I got an incredible rush of satisfaction. My first day in France, I cycled 75 miles, farther than I have ever ridden before. It was an incredible 3 months, I took a train from Paris to the southwest of France, cycled all of Provence, the Dordogne, down to Montpellier and Marseilles, the Pont du Gard in Nimes...then took a train to Amsterdam and cycled a big chunk of Holland - all on my new folding bike."
Since then, Katherine has purchased a second Bike Friday, a Crusoe, for zipping around town.
"You need a second one in case you wake up with a flat tire and you gotta be somewhere."
I came down to join Katherine and the Bike Friday Club of San Francisco's inaugural ride, and she was zipping off to her lawyer who is handling her Golden Gate case.
We met in Tadich's Grill to briefly to get the "Reader's Digest Condensed Version" of the 6-year battle to date. You can read the recent article at the link on the bottom of this page, but let me try to summarize here:
In June the city put forth a citizen's initiative to build an underground parking garage right where the Music Concourse is located. The concourse includes a band shell and three beautiful pedestrian archways. If an initiative is approved it becomes law.
What happened is all on public record, but in a nutshell, the proposal was made so attractive (no public money used, a surface car space removed for every underground space created, all revenue goes to the park after costs and so on) that it was voted in. The developer then proceeded to do a sneaky 180-degree turn on at least three agreed areas:
1) The garage could not be constructed from public money (a loan was proposed, to be paid back with garage revenue but since that revenue was supposed to go to the park, SF citizens would effectively end up paying for the garage to the tune of $100 million over 30 years)
2) The garage entrance must be outside the park (the developer planned to knock down two of the historic arches and use the third one as the garage entrance)
3) The garage must not destroy pedestrian walkways (the arches were being destroyed).
Katherine's lobby group, The Alliance for Golden Gate Park, spotted the required tiny printed notice in the paper announcing theses changes and sounded the alarm.
"I thought it was a no-brainer, and I was stunned when people in high places kept rolling over on their promises to not support what ranged from non-compliance to outright illegal."
Was there a whiff of a rat?
"No ... I think they must have been thinking of all the future gala events at the Museum and not wanting to walk across the wet grass in their high heels..."
When it looked like the Alliance was losing the battle, most members lost heart, leaving Katherine to go it alone. At this time the bulldozers were already starting to dig at the concourse.
She formed Trees Not Cars, contacted Citizens for Tax Justice, a non-profit lobby group in Washington DC, for advice and moved through a string of lawyers until she found one with no conflict of interest and no familial or social connections to the garage project - and as much guts as she. Enter lawyer Tom Lippe, who specializes in getting injunctions against logging companies "with their chainsaws inches from tree trunks."
They took it to the Superior Court, and the judge ordered an injunction. The $6 million demand for compensation for lost estimated revenue aimed at Katherine by the onsite M.H. de Young Museum which stood to benefit from the garage, was reduced to $1 by the judge.
"People are coming up to me in the street and giving me a dollar!" she laughs. "More importantly, people are focusing on the Music Concourse like never before. It used to be an abstract idea in many people's heads. Now it is being photographed; people are going there to walk around, perhaps for the first time."
So what now, as Goliath rubs his eyes and tries to find a way to swat the tiny blonde activist who got her bulldozer in first? Katherine Roberts for Mayor, or even Governor of California?
"Not this year," she laughs. "My goal and total focus right now is to further this work: to preserve urban green spaces from being destroyed by automobiles, so that conditions will be better for pedestrians and bicycles. You have no idea how hard it is for big wheels to win their big deals in this town let alone little nobodies like me trying to champion causes. I'm gonna rock this town!"
Katherine prefers to talk in person than on email and you are welcome to call her at 415-387-5435 and congratulate her. Or invite her to dinner where she'll tell you all about it -- and probably try to sell you a Bike Friday.
Katherine Roberts is determined to protect her beautiful city from the scourge of the car
Copyright 2004 Lynette Chiang All Rights Reserved