GreenDrinks Savannah is frontpage news

By John Bennett

November 22, 2007

Mary Lander’s story about the November installment of GreenDrinks Savannah made the front page of last Sunday’s Savannah Morning News. One interesting detail is a comparison of the attendance at the first GDS event in October and Green Drinks debuts in other cities:

The inaugural GreenDrinks Savannah get-together in October, also at Churchill’s, attracted 129 people. Compare that to the three people who showed up for the first Green Drinks New York in 2002. Or the “more than 100″ who showed up at the first Green Drinks Beijing, a city with a population of 15 million. (If Beijing residents had turned out at the same rate as Savannahians, that bar would’ve been packed with more than 15,000 people.)

I was pleased to see so many people at the November event and the large turnout drew my attention to a infrastructure deficiency: We could use some additional bicycle parking in the first block of West Bay Street. While there is plenty of street furniture in the form of planters, there aren’t too many vertical structures to which to lock a bike. I shared a sign post with another bike, being careful not to entangle my cable with the other bike’s (the bicycle equivalent of blocking in someone’s car). While bicycle racks are reportedly part of the upcoming Broughton Street streetscape improvements, it would be nice to see them deployed throughout the city.

Posted in Advocacy