Picture the Occupy movement — but with bikes.
Alexander Jarman, a Barrio Logan resident and artist, is planning a piece of performance art on Saturday that he's calling BikeFo(u)r. It's a demonstration against the overturning of the Barrio Logan Community Plan Update.
Last month, San Diego voters rejected Propositions B and C, which undid the City Council's decision to put a buffer between industrial and residential spaces in Barrio Logan.
So Jarman and a group of Barrio Logan residents planned BikeFo(u)r, named after the 4 percent of San Diego voters who live in Barrio Logan, to protest. Jarman expects hundreds of cyclists to circle the same block on Logan Avenue between Sampson and Evans streets in Barrio Logan. They'll wear signs that say, "I am riding for clean air," or "I am riding for cyclists' rights."
The idea was born out of the sadness Jarman and other organizers felt when Barrio Logan's Community Plan Update was overturned.
"It's kind of cliché, you always hear that a lot of great art comes from pain and sadness. And I'm not saying this is going to be necessarily great art, but it definitely was from that original sense of loss or pain," he said.
Cyclists will gather at the Bread and Salt gallery on Julian Avenue at 2 p.m. Saturday. Then at 3 p.m., they'll bike through Barrio Logan to the Logan Avenue block, which they'll circle over and over again.
As with the Occupy movement, Jarman said he wants to use the cyclists to temporarily take over the space in Barrio Logan.
"I've always been very cognizant of the bike community, how bike riding can almost be a political act," he said. "I've also really been interested in the changing of space, and Occupy (was) one of best harbingers of that. If you can change a space just by using your body to sit some place, you can do the same thing using your body and your bicycle to temporarily take over a space."
The ride is not meant to be disruptive, Jarman said.
"We're not there to try to shut down traffic, or try to disrupt the flow of people coming and going," he said. "We are there to try to make a statement in a very peaceful and proactive way."
The San Diego Police Department did not return a request for comment on the bike ride.
