Welcome to Bay By Bromtpon!

👋 After 10 years of living in Montreal, Canada – we (my partner and I) just moved to the Bay Area! I am really looking forward to this opportunity to explore a new region, connect and meet with old and new people and grow in different ways. The Bay Area, while beautiful, vast and full of opportunities, is notorious for suburban sprawl and patchy transit. It seems natural to get a car here to access life’s various needs. And not going to lie, the Bay Area (outside San Francisco) is designed around the car. I tried to fool myself into thinking it wasn’t. Despite this we have decided not to own a car! A lot of people are surprised by this choice and bet me that I’ll succumb to the pressure and get a car. I’m not excluding that future possibility, after all my masochistic streak may run out; but after living in Montreal and visiting some great cities like New York and London and smaller cities in Europe, I strongly believe that life is better when I don’t need to get into a car. 

How: The Brompton Folding Bicycle

To achieve this car-free lifestyle, I got myself a trusty Brompton folding bicycle. In particular, the Brompton C-line 2 speed. This ingenious piece of engineering folds down to a compact package smaller than a suitcase, making it seamless add-on to public transportation and urban adventures. With the Brompton by my side, I can hop on a train, bus, Uber or Zipcar and then unfold in seconds to conquer the “last mile” with ease. No more soul-crushingly boring and dangerous walks or being stuck in traffic and battling for parking spots!

Having a Brompton affords me the flexibility to move between places and choose my way back. I can now take the Caltrain up to San Francisco during rush hour, ride around in the city and then take an Uber back after a late night. The Brompton comes inside with me and I get to enjoy the journey or just catch up on life 📲.

Why am I doing this?

I can’t lie being car free in the South Bay is challenging but it is not impossible. This is a critique of a system and pattern of development that does not put humans first. It’s a way for me to think more critically about access. Questions like: Who is riding the bus with me? How can I access nature by transit? Why isn’t there a train to cross the Dumbarton bridge? Why is there no bike protection on El Camino Real?

I think what I am really challenging here is a built urban environment that makes us dependent on an expensive and stressful way to obtain employment, necessities and entertainment. Cars, driving and sprawl have many negative externalities. Low density sprawl artificially drives up housing prices and makes places soulless for those outside a motor vehicle. Highway driving sacrifices the joy of the journey for optimization of the destination. Cars create a fantastic way to consume oil and rare materials that drive environmental damage, labor exploitation and genocide and wars overseas. In our own backyard, cars contribute to air and noise pollution and death by collisions. In the face of climate change, the fact that we are not treating auto-dependance as a critical and frankly easy problem to get rid of instead of widening highways boggles my mind. 

A gateway to advocacy 

San Francisco and the Bay Area are full of interesting and passionate people, inspiring advocacy groups, powerful organizing and new concepts I never saw before. Moving here has made me realize that fast, frequent transit, beautiful walkable districts and bike infrastructure are things that I took for granted and not universal. I absolutely do not want to accept this as my normal. I don’t want my conversations to be dominated by how bad the traffic on the 101 is or how difficult it was to find parking. Seeing and meeting others here who also want to de-center the car and advocate for a place that is bustling with life, easy and safe to get around has given me a lot of strength.

So here we go, this blog (newsletter?) is my coping mechanism to document some of the ways I live without owning a car in the Bay Area and in particular how the Brompton makes that achievable. I have ideas for many posts, some better than others. A discussion on the costs and expenses and how it intersects with the privilege I have. How much time I waste and gain because of my choices; the journeys and adventures I have on this bike; the health benefits; the frustrations; the critiques.

I haven’t figured out any engagement stuff on here yet, maybe it will come, maybe this will be one way. Let’s see how it goes.