sustaining a bike friendly community in spartanburg, south carolina

News Release: April 27

Bike Town Races into the Digital Age with Tweets, Tags, Vlogs and More

Bike Month Participants to Share Experiences through New Social Media Technologies

Spartanburg, SC – In a new twist on celebrating one of the country’s oldest pastimes, Bike Town Spartanburg is asking spectators and participants to digitally share their Bike Month 2009 sights, sounds and interactions.

Fans of the Spartanburg Regional Classic, which will take place this Friday, and other Bike Month events are encouraged to use their favorite social media websites to share their photos, videos, blog entries, video blogs (vlogs) or Tweets related to Bike Month 2009: the race, the rides, the downtown ArtCycle sculptures and any other bike-related events.

The term “social media website” refers to communication outlets like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Flickr.  A vast and varied number of people in Spartanburg already make use of these services to communicate with friends or to publish to a wider audience.  Bike Town intends to bring all of these people together by asking them to use to same “tag” wherever possible.

A “tag” is an easy-to-understand description of an item, like a name tag at a party that quickly clarifies who is who. On the Internet, tags are used to identify a piece of information as relevant to a particular topic.  Bike Town is asking people to use “BkTnSburg” as the tag for Bike Town Spartanburg events.

For example, anything relevant to Bike Town that is published on Twitter should include “#BkTnSburg,” and photos uploaded to Flickr.com should be tagged with “BkTnSburg.”  If everyone uses the same “tag” whenever they’re writing about or uploading photos or videos of Bike Month events, then Bike Town can connect everyone by linking to the resulting conversations from our website: http://BikeTownSpartanburg.org.

Whether documenting racers as they take “turn 4” of the Spartanburg Regional Classic course, or videoing elected officials as they bike ride through downtown at Pedal With Your Politician, Bike Town hopes to give Spartanburg, as well as the internet’s worldwide audience, an inside look at the local biking scene.

Keep an eye on http://BikeTownSpartanburg.org to see what happens. If you do not see materials that you have published online appearing there, send an email to info@biketownspartanburg.org.  For additional information about Bike Month events in Spartanburg, including the Spartanburg Regional Classic, please visit the website calendar or call 864.598.9638.

The Public is Invited to Meet and Greet of ArtCycle Artists

SPARTANBURG, S. C. (April 13, 2009): The City of Spartanburg will hold a meet and greet for the public to view seven ArtCycle sculptures and meet the artists behind this downtown project. The gathering and inaugural sculpture display is scheduled for Thursday, April 16th, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. at Morgan Square in downtown Spartanburg. A unique aspect to ArtCycle is the guide by cell phone program, a free audio tour to which participants can call in and learn more about each sculpture at their own pace.

As part of the Spartanburg Creative Energy campaign, Artcycle is a new initiative that will promote ten regional artists, each of whom has been commissioned to build an outdoor sculpture from recycled bicycle parts. One piece is designed by three high school students from the R. D. Anderson Applied Technology Center. The sculptures need not be made only of bicycle parts, nor need they be made of a specific percentage of bicycle parts. However, the sculptures must be made of enough bicycle parts that the viewer readily sees that a significant portion of each sculpture contain parts that were formerly from of a bicycle.

The sculptures will be on display in Spartanburg’s downtown area from May to August of this year. The project is the result of a collaboration between Spartanburg Creative Energy, Hub-Bub.com, Spartanburg Art Museum and Partners for Active Living. Artcycle celebrates the City’s national designation as a Bicycle Friendly Community, which made it the first in South Carolina to receive that honor in 2007.

2009 ArtCycle Artists
Jason S. Galloway – Roebuck, SC
Sean Pace – Asheville, NC
Miles Paquin – Spartanburg, SC
Ralph Paquin – Spartanburg, SC
Sarah Perry, R. D. Anderson Applied Technology Center Student – Spartanburg, SC
Lauren Ponder -Spartanburg, SC
Cody Roberts – Spartanburg, SC
Daniel Tripp- Campobello, SC
Brandon Waddell, R. D. Anderson Applied Technology Center Student – Spartanburg, SC
Blake West, R. D. Anderson Applied Technology Center – Student – Spartanburg, SC

For additional information please contact Amanda Ingram, City of Spartanburg, Communications and Marketing Specialist, 864-596-3068, aingram@cityofspartanburg.org.

Bike Town will join local planners and engineers in a webinar sponsored by the national Association of Bicycle and Pedestrian Professionals. We will learn about Bicycle and Pedestrian Level of Service Models. Bike/Ped LOS is a new, burgeoning tool for engineers and planners. Automobile LOS models have been used for decades to determine the quality of a road or intersection for cars. But until recently, there was no way to quantify the quality of a road or intersection from the bicyclist’s or pedestrian’s perspective.  In this webinar, we’ll learn how to apply these new models to Spartanburg’s current and future infrastructure.

Be sure to mark your calendar for a whole host of Bike Month events this May, including the Spartanburg Regional Classic on Friday, May 1st (at Spring Fling)  Spartanburg’s many cycling-themed activities are held in May each year to celebrate National Bike Month and as a major component of the Bike Town initiative (a collaborative campaign that earned the City of Spartanburg its national designation as a Bicycle-Friendly Community). That effort is spearheaded by Partners for Active Living (PAL), a nonprofit, 501c3 organization dedicated to promoting active lifestyles in Spartanburg County.