John Anderson – Giving San Diegans an Opportunity to Experience Cycling in a Non-Stressful, Enjoyable Way

John Anderson is the founder of the upcoming Bikes and Beer Event which is designed to invite participants to experience some of San Diego’s best urban neighborhoods, bike infrastructure and sample some of the world’s best beer. Below is our profile of him and his incredible efforts in supporting our advocacy work.

First things first, what brought you to San Diego?

We moved here from Chicago because after my wife finished law school she was assigned a clerkship in the city. I didn’t know much about San Diego as I’d been here once before and within two weeks decided that we would stay here.

How did you become such a strong supporter of bicycling?

I went to school in Indiana and after college, I moved to Chicago. It was in Chicago that I was first exposed to bicycling. The company I was working for, Deloitte, at the time moved into a new building and they provided free, secure bicycle parking inside the building, along with the in-house shower and spa as well as the workout facility for free. So that was a perk that I thought was pretty nice. At the time I had never ridden in the city whatsoever but I went out and bought a bicycle and my commute was about four miles one way, so I started commuting in Chicago and continued the habit when I moved to San Diego.

Would you say that your employer was the impetus to inspiring you to start commuting by bicycle?

I’d say the employer provided a nice incentive to push me over the edge especially from a monetary perspective since they paid for half the cost of the bicycle. They also provided the facilities to store the bicycle securely. The main consideration for me is physical fitness as I like to run and play basketball. So for me, bicycle commuting was a way to build in a little exercise to my day. But yes, the employer side was very important.

How would you compare and contrast your riding experience in Chicago with San Diego?

I’ve kept tabs on Chicago since I left and they are really doing some big things. They already have a bike share program .Their Department of Transportation has done a lot in terms of how they measure and implement new infrastructure. Just recently, the Chicago Tribune had a front page story about a proposal to make parts of Chicago’s streets car-free and a pedestrian plaza. So there are a lot of exciting things going on now in Chicago. When I lived in Chicago, I wasn’t involved in the bicycling community but then again Chicago is a much big, busier and denser city than San Diego. So riding in Chicago is much more stressful. There are buses everywhere, small lanes and a lot of cars. Even though they have great transit, there are so many more people.

Here in San Diego, obviously the weather changes things a lot. You don’t have to carry that much gear and we have very wide streets in many areas of the city. So although it is still a challenge (because those wider lanes mean higher speed traffic), I find it overall a much more pleasant experience here. But I think we can do a lot of small things like implementing bike lanes, protected bike lanes, and  separated bike paths relatively easily because of our existing infrastructure such as our overbuilt (road) capacity. That would take San Diego a long way toward introducing San Diegans to bicycling. I think that San Diego still has a suburban mentality in a lot of ways, in the “everybody wants their own space” attitude. The city hasn’t really embraced being a city even though we’re one of the top ten cities in the U.S.

San Diego constantly comes up in most “desired place to live” lists or “more desired place for tourists to visit” lists.  But we haven’t latched onto our identity as a true city hub. Part of that also involves recognizing that Tijuana and San Diego are part of one region. While there is a border, we’re talking about 5-6 million people that are constantly sited with San Diego.

What motivated you to get involved with BikeSD?

Just before I left Deloitte to become a stay-at-home dad, one of their higher-ups at Deloitte came to visit San Diego and I had known him from Chicago. He did a lot of sponsorships of the running clubs and other athetlic events so I thought he was a sympathetic ear to bicycling especially because here in San Diego the new Deloitte was not as bike friendly as the Chicago facility. At the Deloitte offices in San Diego there was no facility to securely store your bike, or shower, or anything. So I brought it up with this higher-up, explaining the Chicago facility and how despite the fact that it is cold in Chicago half the year, we should have this in San Diego too. I said it would be a good investment for the San Diego office.

He made a few jokes and after he left, he sent our office an email recapping our visit. In the conclusion of his email, he said the most interesting question he got was about bicycling and so he came up with this idea for shower facilities, and the image was a picture of a portable shower facility you can buy online. So he basically poked fun at the entire idea. And I thought that that email encapsulated a lot of people’s views toward cycling in San Diego, in that… it’s great that you want to do it, but its all on you.

That got me more interested in taking an active role of some sort in making things better. The default attitude for a lot of people is, “it’s great that if someone wants to do it but it’s not my thing. I’m not going to support it”. But to me, on a number of different levels, environmental, cost, personal finances, health, child safety – bicycling goes a long way toward addressing those huge fundamental issues we’re dealing with, especially in urban areas.

Would you say that having institutional backing (business, government, societal) is the most important in order for bicycling to become normalized?

I think the biggest opportunity to normalize bicycling is on an individual basis. Institution is great, but every business, every organization, every neighborhood is comprised of individual people making decisions.

When certain things are important to people or they are aware of certain issues then it can become a focus or a thing that receives dollars, respect, importance. So here in Hillcrest and North Park there has been recent debates and some businesses are against bicycling and some businesses are speaking out in favor of it. It’s not really a business issue on the whole. There are a lot of things that are more important to a business such as rent prices, inputs, outputs, wages, or managing schedules. So I think these people are speaking out on these issues because it is important to them on a personal more than it is on a business level. That view I hold applies to SANDAG, the mayor’s office, and individual homes as well.

For example, I started bicycling and my wife saw me do it and became more interested and invested in it. I think that’s kind of one person talking about it or one person doing it spreading to the next person that really makes the change.

It would be great if you could have someone at the top of the institution like at SANDAG who said, “bicycling is our priority. We’re going to really focus on it this year.” But unless there is widespread buy-in from the public as well as the people inside the organization, its not going to go anywhere.

Let’s change gears and talk about the event you have founded. What was the thinking behind starting the Bikes and Beer ride? 

I am from Kansas originally and my parents still live there and they send me newspaper articles of things I might be interested in. Last summer, they sent me an article about Tour de Brew Kansas City. It’s the first time I’d heard of an event of that sort. So when I went home to visit, I met with the organizers and learned that the event benefits Bike/Walk KC, a local advocacy organization and learned a lot about the event.

I figured if Kansas City which is most well known for Boulevard Beer and a couple of other smaller breweries  has an event like this and has a much smaller population, I figured it would be a great event in San Diego.

We have so many excellent, world-class breweries and a burgeoning bicycling scene. I think there is a lot more to be done, but the momentum is there. The biggest goal for me in wanting to do it here in San Diego, other than it being a natural fit and that someone had to do it, was that…I think it’s a good way to bring in casual cyclists. Meaning the people who have a bike in their garage or, people who ride once a year. Or people who only ride on a bike path. We’re hoping to have a few hundred people so one will be riding with big groups and it will be safer where you can talk during the ride. With the tasters on the ride, it’s not about getting drunk nor is it about drinking as much as possible. It’s about sampling good quality beer, socializing with people, making connections and helping to develop that community.

I envision that at the end of the ride, the ride’s participants now will know three more people in their neighborhood, or they may meet someone who bikes to work, or they may start a bike train for their kids’ school.  I want to facilitate those sort of connections where, again, on the individual level you’re bringing people in that had never considered bicycling or perhaps, considered it only in passing. We are giving them an opportunity to experiencing cycling in a non-stressful enjoyable way with a lot of other people.

I would encourage anyone who is thinking about doing the ride to sign up.

What is your overall vision for both the ride and our advocacy since you’ve chosen to support us. 

Advocacy wise I hope that this event will bring in people that might not be exposed to cycling or have been exposed but aren’t involved in an active level. So I want to give them a bit of a push and let them know that people are out there. I want our participants to individually do more for advocacy. Hopefully we will have people who sign up for bike advocacy and that’ll be a way to connect them.

We are making a donation to BikeSD to help support advocacy year round. This is a one day event and although we’re hoping to have a lot of people at the event if it ends that day it hasn’t accomplished much. We want people to be involved more frequently throughout the year. Whether that is doing a family ride on the weekend, coming to a bicycle corridor meeting here in North Park or in Uptown or, attending other bicycle events or meetings. Outside of advocacy, we want to expose participants to some existing infrastructure that’s very good that they might not be aware of.

Along the San Diego river there is a dedicated bike path. It’s great. You can see herons and egrets, you have a nice breeze going toward the ocean. If you’re going to the beach you don’t have to worry about parking. On the return, we will ride along the bayside bikepath. It’s nearly complete being a dedicated bike path and loops the entire bay. It’s almost fully complete. I don’t think a lot of people are aware of it, so by exposing these existing paths I hope they will tell others to utilize it.

We’re starting our ride on University Avenue. We settled on University because SANDAG is looking at projects to connect Uptown to La Mesa. Having ridden on all these roads for the past year and a half, as part of the process for public input, I really think that University presents a great opportunity economically, functionally (because of the grade) to be a piece of the regional bike network.

So we want people to be out there so they can see what the current conditions are like and hopefully get a feel for, how when you have more cyclists out there it is more comfortable for drivers and cyclists as well. There is not a lot of people who are going to go and ride it by themselves ’cause it is a bit intimidating. So we want to show what’s existing and what’s good and…what’s existing that’s not so good but could be better.