I don’t exactly know how I got involved in this . . . but, this is what I observed and experienced yesterday . . . that ended in this . . . 
I happen to know on of those crazy innovative entrepreneurs that the city loves to love so much. Except maybe not this one. 🙂 I first met him through Feeding the State St. Family when the couple who had their baby taken by the county because they were camping in the campgrounds with Occupy was living in my house (to get the baby back) and Jesse came by to fix their truck. We’ve been in touch off and on since them, bumping into each other out in the community, marching in the streets, coming up with innovative ideas here and there, giving us some technical advice at Occupy Madison from time to time, friends on facebook kinda thing.
At some point, he asked if he should build a prototype bicycle “Minnebago”. I had seen them on-line previously and they are adorable and of course I said yes! Duh. And, magically, using one of the entrepreneurial spirits and creativity that the city loves to love so much, he came up with one and it magically appeared on the lake! And around town!
But, then . . . the city who loves to love that entrepreneurial spirit and creativity suddenly didn’t appreciate it so much. Boo. I got an email a 4 days ago, asking “Can we chat?” I said yes, gave them my phone number and then didn’t hear from them. But yesterday around noon the person finally called and said the city was going to tow the “trailer” because there was a complaint form Michaelangelos (yeah, don’t eat or drink there, they hate homeless people) and that the city was going to tow it. I asked what the violation was, they said that you can’t park a trailer on the sidewalk, that they might be using city electricity and that the city attorney said it had to go. I contacted Jesse and we went to State St. to check it out.
As far as I can tell, Jesse did his homework, quite brilliantly.
He registered the bike
What’s weird is that he put his name and phone number right on the back of the trailer, so why did they call me? And not him?
Oh yeah, a little more about the “Minnebago”. This one cost about $400 but its pretty heavy, to make one light enough to be functional it would cost about $1000. This one isn’t using city electricity, it has a battery and would likely have solar in the future. This one also has free WIFI! Cuz, you know, why not? When you’re one of the tech crazy entrepreneurs that the city loves to love, except in this case, you can do things like that!
Anyways, this appears to be a bike within the city definition, they didn’t tag it, they didn’t call him, and they didn’t tag the other bike that was sitting there as long as the Minnebago was, so I’m not sure what the city is thinking right now. But, it might be time to contact some lawyers – however they never take the Madison cases and we have had soooooooooo many.
The update is apparently the Minnebago has been freed! He was never contacted by the city, which is beyond me as to why when the city must have figured out to contact me through his facebook page – but his number was RIGHT THERE. Of course, everything *IS* my fault. 🙂 I have to still find out what the ticket was for, but it was about $150 and I think it was for a trailer blocking the sidewalk – but . . . it wasn’t . . .
Lesson for the day
