Church Street is somewhat abuzz with holiday cheer. The lights are up, the tree is lit, and the shoppers are out and about. It seems a bit more mellow than previous years.
The Burlington Bicycle Council painted some new stencils about the city center. I lobbied for changing the language to the more positive ‘Walk Bikes’ message – I even did up several versions with my limited photoshop skills – but the group compromised and did two versions. A local design house designed the graphics and output the stencils. That bumpy thing is supposed to be a ‘universally’ recognizable mountain bike wheel… debatable from how I see it. Sigh.
It seems that “walk bikes” is not only more positive spin, but sends a clearer message. “No biking” could be confused with “no bikes.”
I made the same argument several times. Folks that argued against it felt that in the crunchy granola land of Burlington being nice wasn’t going to work. Some folks wanted the direct ‘No’.
I felt that ‘Walk Bikes’ is pretty direct.