Come and Enjoy Progressive  Food Tastings at Participating
Brickell Area Restaurants
Live Entertainment
Sing Happy Birthday to Miami!

Presented jointly by the City of Miami and DowntownMiami.com since 2010, Happy Birthday Miami is an annual celebration honoring our history. This is a tradition that we can all be proud of, a joyous occasion with 100% of proceeds benefitting local programming.

This year our goal is to fund Bike Miami Days 2012 featuring a monthly Bike Miami Day from January – April 2012.

A little secret within Miami culture, ‘Bike Miami Days’ is hard to put into words. This temporary park/street party/cultural neighborhood flash gathering has taken over streets for a few hours on Flagler, in Brickell and in Coconut Grove 10 times since 2008. Each one is a little different, but you can get a taste of what Bike Miami Days is about: http://vimeo.com/2198753

For more information on the event and participating venues, and partners please go to www.happybirthdaymiami.com

We regret the inconvenience.

TheMiamiBikeScene.com made a video diary from the very first time Miamians pulled this off ~ while the Sunday, May 8th will probably have more walking, skating and just dancing in the streets, this is the inspiration behind what we do.  Check it out!  

1. Is it a race? No! There is no beginning or end point. Come early and stay all day!
2. Is it just for bicycling? No way! You’ll see people walking around or jogging, kids playing in the streets, couples dancing…. You might bring a lawn chair and soak up the Sunday morning in your city, bring a guitar and play for passers by, meet up with friends and play some impromptu roller hockey on a side street. 
3. Is it all really FREE? Fresh Market, Bike Rentals and more – yes, it’s all free! The only thing you might need to pay for is car parking, so Mary Brickell Village is offering discounted All Day Parking in their Garage on SW 9th Street.

Thank you for your questions and ideas! Got more? Please contact us here!

 Bike Miami Days has received national attention and has been held more than five times since its inception in November 2008.  As with Bogota, Miami’s event was the mayor’s idea and is coordinated through Mayor Manny Diaz’s Office.  On designated [Sundays], crowds of cyclists and pedestrians flood the streets of downtown Miami…  Music, food, and basic bicycle mechanic lessons are available for all participants.  The event itself is free, provides a forum for community interaction, gets people outside and exercising, and provides much needed visitation and an economic boost for local businesses on what might otherwise be a quiet day downtown.

Bike Miami Days promotes a sense of COMMUNITY in our City by bringing people together to enjoy Miami’s people, music, neighborhoods, shops & restaurants, streets and parks. What does ‘community’ mean to you? Let us know! Join the comment stream below.

Thanks for all you do ~ See you on Sunday, May 8!

BIKE MIAMI DAYS is proud to share another story about residents who came out to explore their city in a new way – contributed by our friend, Jennifer Lane, from ELEVATE Miami - Familes Riding Their Bicycle Together Through Downtown

Two families rode their bicycles, side by side, down the middle of Flagler Street, high risers engulfing them and no cars near them. The families were celebrating Bike Miami Day on December 14, 2008.

“The kids have this mental image of being surrounded by tall buildings, and not having to worry about cars. The kids will remember this,” Robert Beguiristain said as he stood next to his Kevin Beguiristain, his ten year old son. Both had their bicycles next to them.

Bike Miami Days is an event put on by Mayor Manny Diaz. With support from the City of Miami Police Department and the DDA, the Mayor closed streets in downtown Miami so people could freely walk, skate and ride bicycles throughout the city. The event is part of a Mayor’s Office initiative to make the City of Miami bike friendly – a place where residents safely ride their bicycles for both fun and as a way to get to work.

Beguiristain stands next to his friend Allen Cueli, who was also at Bike Miami Day with his two sons, Ethan and Ian Cueli. “The way Miami is set up with wide roads, just promotes people to drive fast,” Cueli said. He said that Miami doesn’t have enough bike lanes and places for people to walk. He will only allow his sons to ride in parks or in the neighborhood.

He thinks that events like Bike Miami Days will teach drivers to go slower around cyclists and make it safer for people and kids to ride their bicycles.

“I think Bike Miami is awesome. I hope they do this every week,” Cueli said. 

Bike Miami Days wants to share your stories! Here is a profile of some of our friends. Many thanks to Jennifer Lane of ELEVATE Miami for contributing this great story and photos: A Tandem Riding Through Downtown.

A bicycle for two is called a tandem. Melanie Ashby and Wayne Phelps ride their tandem, together as a married couple, throughout the streets of southern Florida. They have been riding bicycles for 12 years and together on a tandem since 2005.

Braving the streets of Miami was not an easy task after a truck collided with them in January of 2006. The truck swiped the sides of the tandem, knocking the two to the hard pavement.  The truck then drove away, leaving the couple unconscious on the side of the road.

Phelps pulled out his cell phone and showed an x-ray of the four metal rods that had to be put into his hips after the collision.

“I broke my back and leg…oh and a couple of ribs, but that doesn’t count,” Ashby described what happened to her from the hit and run collision.

Sometimes he limps at a walks after the multiple surgeries he went through to bring his hip back to place. Still though, Phelps can ride his tandem with Ashby.

I asked why they would still ride after a near deadly collision with a truck.

“Because we love it. It is our life,” Ashby replied.

Ashby and Phelps were riding through downtown Miami during Bike Miami Day on December 14, 2008. They normally don’t ride in downtown because they are afraid of cars. They hope Bike Miami Day will help make it safer for cyclists to ride downtown and not be so dependent on cars.

If the roads were safer for cyclists, Ashby thinks more people would commute to work on their bikes.

“Miami has gotten so big, so fast,” Phelps said.

Ashby thinks that there are more people in a hurry to get places, “more visual distractions for drivers, more personal distractions for drivers such as cell phones and coffee drinking.  A driver’s eye is not trained to see or expecting to see a bicycle on the road. Here is where education helps and designated bike lanes would help”.

Ashby and Phelps have come up with some of their own rules.

When there are multiple lanes for drivers to drive on, the couple will try to ride in the middle of one of the lanes.

“If we ride within the two foot limit**, we are at much greater danger because people try to pass too close,” Phelps described how they have learned to ride their tandem on the roads, just to protect themselves from being hit again.

**The “Two Foot Limit” practice dictates that cyclists ride not less than two feet from the edge of road, thus encouraging motorists to go into the other lane to pass them instead of passing too closely. Florida State and Federal Laws state that cyclists have the same right as motorists, and may take up a full lane of traffic. Regardless of how cyclists ride, the Florida State “Three Foot Law” makes it illegal for motorists to pass within a minimum of three feet from cyclists.

We had a survey after the first ‘Bike Miami’ and asked people what they loved most about Downtown streets suddenly becoming public park space, walking & bicycling trails, an eclectic gathering of over one thousand people from all over Miami – and here are  just a few of your favorite things:

1. Exploring: “I didn’t know Mary Brickell Village existed”…”There is a rock garden in Downtown!” (it’s at Bayfront Park)… “The bridge!!”…”Being able to see downtown at our leisure.”
2. Community: “Life in the streets”… . “The sense of community and the initiative to take Miami to a standard of urbanism you don’t usually see here”….”So many different people having fun”…”The excitement, enthusiasm”…”streets OPEN to me”…”helpful policemen, nice volunteers”…”friendly atmosphere”…”that it happened”
3. Green is Good: “Small step towards awareness”…“Going green and saving the Earth while having a blast!!”…”Supporting Miami’s Bicycle Plans”…”getting out of my car for an entire afternoon with my family.”
4. Bike Valet- overwhelmingly, you appreciated a safe, easy, free place to leave your ride. (Thanks, Green Mobility!)