Clarence Eckerson ep. no. 100
[00:00:00] Kate: Bikers are a pimple on the butt of any city bikers think that they own the road, they Dodge in front and they dart and I feel unsafe. Yeah.
[00:00:18] John: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Active Towns Podcast conversations about creating a culture of activity. My name is John Stemerman. I'm the founder of the Active Towns Initiative, and I'm honored to serve as your host each week on this podcast journey. Thank you so much for tuning in. It's always wonderful to have you along for the ride.
Well, this is it. This is the big one episode number 100 and I'm so stoked and honored to have Clarence Eckerson with Streetfilms on to celebrate. And celebrate his milestone of reaching and surpassing 1000 Streetfilms to say that I've been influenced and inspired by his work would be a huge understatement.
And he just like fellow content creator. Ryan Van Duzer has always been so generous with his time and mentorship. I'm so humbled and grateful that he agreed to join me for this special episode. So enough with me gushing. Let's just get on with it.
I am so incredibly excited to have Clarence Eckerson Jr. On the podcast. I've been trying to get him on for some time now. And what better time than to celebrate the 1000th Streetfilms video. And we're going to do it. We're going to release this. This is going to be on November 12th and The 100th podcast episode for active towns.
Clarence Eckerson Jr. Welcome, man.
[00:01:47] Clarence: Thank you. Thank you. I think I purposely delayed. So we could have this group synergy and also a banner going across the screen here.
Wow. That's our 17 fans.
[00:02:03] John: Absolutely. Seriously though, it's so much fun to have you on the podcast here and to have this opportunity to share. Streetfilms with an audience worldwide. I'm assuming most of my audience already knows about Streetfilms and knows about Clarence, but let's do this.
let's Have you just do a really short introduction who you are and how you got started with this.
[00:02:30] Clarence: Oh boy, that's a heavy lift, but we'll try and keep it short. My name is Clarence Eckerson. I am the director of Streetfilms. I am currently up to about, I think 1,003 or a 1,004 films. I don't know the exact count.
But I got started making films back when I was in college at what my own video camera and found myself just like walking around campus, just shooting random stuff. It was all Al fresco, not transportation yet, but cool things. I saw it. And I also, when I was in college, I had worked for a news station called WTEN in Albany.
And while I was there, I actually made a short film with my friend, Rick Easton, who still works there, which is quite amazing. And that just kinda led, I moved to New York city. I started riding a bike within days. I bought a bike. I rode it home from Manhattan it was one of the scariest things I ever did when Broadway was nothing but ugly traffic sewer.
And I started noticing things that I was like, okay some of these things are horrible and we need to start capturing that. And that led. Working on a cable access show with a couple of friends that we put together called Bike TV. And then from there I started trying to do a lot more volunteering with Transportation Alternatives, which is the leading bicycle advocacy organizations and alternative transportation in the United States.
And I did so much work for them that I decided that at one point I was their head of their Brooklyn Transportation Alternatives Chapter. And. I was just pretty good at this, but I think I should leave because there are other people that can do better than me and I can do something. Nobody else is doing that's video.
And that all led to just doing more and more films on the cable access show. Eventually getting hired to do some freelance stuff and some films about traffic and transportation and parking and cars. Trains and everything in that kind of green area that we all know and love. And suddenly I was hired by Mark Gorton from Open Plans.
And that's where I've been with Streetfilms ever since Open Plans is the umbrella organization. They also work with another number of other entities include Streetsblog.
[00:04:38] John: Fantastic. That's a great overview and I love that too, because it gives a little bit of the connection between Streetsblog and Streetfilms, now, Some of that history is included in your reel that you put together. But maybe not overtly. I want to play a little bit of the real and give us an opportunity to comment on it live while it's happening.
[00:05:02] Clarence: Yeah. This is pretty funny. I just put this together cause you were suggesting having some B roll of me in the older times, or some of my films or spots that I just popped up in. Cause I'm not in every film, not unlike what you see on YouTube. I'm probably in one out of every 10, dozen films and sometimes it's just for a few seconds. So I said, okay. And then became a project of its own. And I thought there's probably a lot of people that want to see it, even though we're doing it for that Active Towns Podcast.
So yeah, this is going to be fun.
[00:05:33] John: Let's say play.
[00:05:34] Clarence: We really wanted to go out and document how bad the streets were, but also show people how good they could be. And right away, the bills got people motivated and they use them as tools and they use them as rallying cries to say, let's make our city better.
And that was just a little scene from when we did a wrap-up of our 15 year anniversary.
[00:05:55] John: Okay. Yeah.
[00:05:57] Clarence: And here's Citi Bike in New York debuting. And as you can hear behind you. We had done at that point. And I think it's still is probably more films about bike share than anybody in history.
This was 2014.
[00:06:10] John: Yeah. And I think that you thought that maybe you had the record of the most number of bike shares riden and tested.
[00:06:17] Clarence: Prior to COVID I know that I either was, or very high up on lists of the person. Tested the most blank shares. Oh, here's my son.
[00:06:28] John: Yeah.
[00:06:29] Clarence: I forgot about this. We were going to do a film with Transit Center and Clarence was with me. I had to bring them in tow because I had to bring them to the shoot. And here he is getting. One of his first appearance, his first real talking appearance on Streetfilms. So you can hear right now.
[00:06:46] John: What's great about the fact that you know, C3 is frequently a co-star in many of your films.
Partly just because he's so fascinated by transportation and especially transit and trains.
[00:07:01] Clarence: Yeah, he loves, he's a fanatic about trains, but he loves bosses. He loves cars. He loves every aspect of transportation. And he never really pushed this on him. I don't know if he saw me interested in it, but this is what I couldn't have helped design my own son.
Be better if I really tried. And now
[00:07:18] John: it's fascinating stuff. He probably just follows your lead and he's like, look at all the fun stuff dad's doing.
[00:07:25] Clarence: Yeah. Oh, here we are in Portland. Wow. This was probably 10 or 12 years ago when I was a little more slender. This is when Portland and Portland is still great, but when Portland would just, wow.
You, if you lived in the United States. Yeah. We also did a number of films as you can see are about COVID. About how this was the first one that I did that I was scared to attempt back then, we didn't know if you touched the surface, you could get COVID or anything, but I wanted to show. At that point, how not crowded our streets were.
[00:07:53] John: Yeah.
[00:07:54] Clarence: So the best thing you can do is go out, oh, this is Houston. Have you ever been to the bayous of Houston to ride?
[00:08:00] John: I haven't, no.
[00:08:01] Clarence: It's funny. I remember I, a lot of times I go to cities. I have a good idea of what there is going to be to see, but sometimes I just say the best thing you can do is just roam and the best cities, you just find things.
And that's what I found the bayous of Houston and then was busy the next few days, asking everybody about them. Oh, Malmo
[00:08:23] John: I was just going to pause on Malmo there because I think it's one of those cities that if I hadn't seen that particular video, I probably wouldn't have made the visit.
I was in Copenhagen, Laura and I were there. And so we went out of our way to make sure that we visited . And in fact, we rode the train. With our Brompton bikes and went to Lund which was the next major city Just north of Malmo.
And we thought Hey, let's do this. we know we can ride because there's wonderful infrastructure between that university town of Lund and ride down to Malmo. It was just such a wonderful experience. And I get the sense that you probably hear that frequently is that people will tell you that.
I watched your film and that was inspiration to do XYZ, maybe travel to someplace talk a little bit about some of those inspiring feedback that you get from your audience.
[00:09:18] Clarence: I, yeah, that is one thing, especially the last five or six years. I have lots of people who tweet me. Yeah, message me, email me and say I went to such and such city because of what you showed there and let's be honest.
Most of these kind of things are European cities. Nobody goes to me and go, I went to Washington DC, cause I just had to see it because of the bike share system. They don't do that in the United States, but they do that with Montreal. It was just in Montreal. A lot of people went up there and just the weeks after my film to go up there and check it out, and I know we're going to probably talk about this later, but Utrecht, when I did my film on Utrecht, that was the one film that by far the most people. We planned our vacation around going to Utrecht because of your film or we diverted from going somewhere because of that. And then almost universally, when I get more feedback from them, they'll be like, your film was really great, but it's even better than you show and you just have to go and experience it.
And that's what that's what the films are. A jumping point for people who are in the business, or want to know more about this or advocates. To go and learn firsthand. And if they can't, they still have the Streetfilms and the films, I try to make them evergreen so that people will be able to use them for a long time.
I still look back at some stuff. I did 2006, 2008, and they're still pretty relevant I try not to cut them with dates in mind. just show in the moment what the films are, what I am experienced,
[00:10:52] John: Yeah. So I interrupted you when this scene popped up. set this up for us.
[00:10:56] Clarence: You can probably start playing this, but this is one of the most famous things that we have done. And even Mikael Colville Anderson mentioned his book Sneckdowns. Oh, I started, yeah, I started. So if you play and people will see what snuck downs are there.
Places where, you know, after a snow, you can see where there are spaces that cars don't use. But you can see right here, watch this, watch that goes from that's the same exact corner. okay, this car here comes in.
they don't use that, but they can get around. You can make traffic calming and make your street more civilized just by building out the corners with neck downs or protection. And what's actually really interesting about the street. This is the famous 34th avenue in my neighborhood. This is also the end, which has been now.
And open street and I'm sure we're going to talk about that a little bit later, but there's traffic rolling down. It doesn't anymore.
[00:11:56] John: Yeah. Yeah. Did you coin the term Sneckdown?
[00:11:59] Clarence: Oh, I did not. I did not. Aaron Naparstek who is founded Streetsblog. We were trying to come up with a number of people who are going back and forth on Twitter, about it, about what should we call these things? People were like, they need a better name. And I had called them snowy neck downs, and he just said Sneckdown. And everybody seemed to think that fit. Now, the funny thing is you'll now get people who'll be like Sneckdown is one of the worst terms I've ever heard.
It doesn't describe anything. yeah, but before that, for years and years I'd been making films on these and nobody was really wasn't getting any traction except them on like kind of the most ardent transportation people. But the Sneckdown went viral. There was probably at least 50 articles. Across the world. BBC interviewed me a number of people about why Sneckdown? And what's with a Sneckdown? And it was extremely popular for two winters in a row.
[00:13:01] John: Yeah. I sometimes even see in the fall I look at the leaves and go, yeah, there's a leaf down.
[00:13:06] Clarence: Yes. That's something else that and in. I think in LA there was two people that would see the Palm tree leaves come down and they call them a frond or Palm frond, neck down.
So there were a couple of takeoffs on that. Hopefully this winter we'll take off again year. It seems to go in some cycles. Oh, look at this. This is wonderful Transportation Alternatives and I'm at the head of the Queensborough bridge. You a look at all those people. This was probably five years ago. We get a little crowded over there sometimes.
Oh, here I have new Orleans showing off and yet another bike share station video. And I told my wife, this is, that was probably where I was the heaviest. Here's a meat packing district, which now has. A lot of car-free streets in lower Manhattan and they're doing some great stuff. So sorta like Superblocks from Barcelona,
[00:14:06] John: right.
[00:14:07] Clarence: We found city bike share parking protected.
[00:14:11] John: Yeah, this is the bike share bike protection. I don't like it.
[00:14:15] Clarence: Yes. And there's Rotterdam, which that's an amazing city. It's so unique and all it's modern. Skyscrapers, and then you've got the small buildings right next to it. I put the trans on grass or amazing.
[00:14:28] John: Yeah, exactly. And the great thing about Rotterdam and, frequent listeners of the podcast will know that I've said this before is I think it's one of the most applicable comparison cities for north America. Because of the fact that they had to completely rebuild after world war II.
And so they built based on the car and then decades later, they were just like, oops we made a mistake and then really started to work hard to transform their environment into a more Dutch like environment.
[00:15:03] Clarence: I agree. I agree. We are all there. If there's 2001, when I was their first time to ride a bike, and this was, I think, 2013 or 2014, there's Chris Bruntlett from now living in the Netherlands.
And so
[00:15:19] John: he's in Delft.
[00:15:20] Clarence: In Delft. Yes. Oh, there's my wife exercising. This is in a Uruguay where I also wrote a bike share there. They had only eight stations, but I wrote that too.
[00:15:32] John: So when you look back at all of these, you were putting together this reel and everything. What were some of the emotions that, that came out while you were doing that process?
[00:15:42] Clarence: The enormity of how much time and effort I've put into this and how tiring it is, but how much of a joy and also is and being very thankful and fortunate to be able to visit all these great cities and to get paid and okay. Good wage to do it. But it's more about, I have a lot of good creative control and it's about how I get to educate people and show them things.
Even as I discover new things that I didn't know, they had all the other, I forget when I was in Rotterdam we stopped at an intersection and they said this. We'll leave the light green longer in rainy weather for bicyclists. What we have to stop. We have to stop and do something out of this because nobody knows about this, except maybe people in The Netherlands.
Looking back at it all it's quite cool to have. I don't know how many people have a thousand films, short films, probably not many. I know that Bicycle Dutch, who we all know and love Mark Wagenbuur, where he's in the eight hundreds. And next time I see him, I want to sit down with me and him almost like we're doing it.
Just talk about all the films we've done.
[00:16:57] John: I would love to get a Mark on the podcast as well. So hopefully he'll see this one and hopefully that'll inspire him to set up a camera. And we can have that conversation because you're absolutely right. Of course he does double duty because he's actually producing a very extensive blog post for every single one of his and sometimes his blog post has multiple shorter videos to them, but really fascinating stuff.
Let's hit play.
[00:17:23] Clarence: A lot of people don't realize how hard a lot of this stuff is. This is one of the videos I did for Open Plans, Streetfilms.
[00:17:29] John: You looks so young there.
[00:17:31] Clarence: I know this is probably 2006 showing like how painted bike lanes just doesn't cut it.
[00:17:36] John: Yeah.
[00:17:37] Clarence: And then this is again, another clip from our retrospective. This is what ninth avenue used to look like now it has a protected bike lane on it.
[00:17:44] John: Nice.
[00:17:45] Clarence: So it's cool to look back and see all this here again. I'm in Portland, but this is like the early two thousands. And again, something I never knew was there, even though people I came out there to hang out with, I look so young.
Oh my gosh, please. But they have a floating walkway, which is the same situation. We had along the west side highway, we want to do something similar and I was stopped immediately and I'm like we have to document this to talk about how it happened. Another bike share this one's from Ghent.
[00:18:17] John: Oh, cool. Yeah.
[00:18:18] Clarence: Yeah. Another beautiful city to go to. And one of my, one of my most recent favorites in the last five years, so I was just showing people how to, oh this should be really bizarre. So this is for Bike TV, that cable access show I had and what we used to do, we essentially me and a few other people, and I was mostly, always the video camera, the person editing and stuff, but this was a promo of 20 different things I had been in.
And back then I was in the films a lot more. And it was really telling you New Yorkers and anybody who were watching. We had a few cities that also aired it for. how togo out and have fun on a bike and things you could do and how you could get there. But in a way, this was a precursor to Streetfilms because Bike TV, I started bringing my camera on vacations.
There I am in San Francisco. Here I am at Acadia national park. There's that's Adams, Massachusetts. So it's I started that process of seeing how that could happen.
[00:19:13] John: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:13] Clarence: So much cool stuff to see all these, I got paid nothing. Back then, five years working a normal job. I like to say that I used to put 70% effort into my films, whereas now I put closer to a hundred because it just didn't happen.
[00:19:29] John: But what's funny about those, that Bike TV stuff. The earlier stuff you had mentioned that it was, you were in the film a lot more and it reminds me a little bit of that you were sort of
like this activity ambassador a biking ambassador And it reminds me of our other good friend, Ryan van Duzer it could be because his content is about trying to get people off their couches and go out and have fun adventures.
[00:19:52] Clarence: Ryan is just wonderful. I I love that guy. He might be up to a thousand. I forgot. I had never asked him, but he might be close to a thousand films.
[00:20:00] John: Yeah.
[00:20:01] Clarence: There's people out there that have done a lot of really good stuff. And he does that crazy stuff where he'll run a marathon and record it and talk to you the whole time. I've run three marathons in my life and I'll go, I'll tell you right now. This guy talking at all. I might have a little fun slap a few hands, but I can't read, I can't provide a running commentary
[00:20:23] John: well, not to, brag on him too much, but I am very proud of the stuff that he produces.
And, but yeah,
I he will literally document him doing an adventure, whether it's. A two-week bicycle, adventure ride or a hundred mile race. He documented the Leadville 100 when he was doing it.
[00:20:41] Clarence: And he's very creative too. He has drone in places where he's allowed to fly a drone.
He just really you watch his stuff and you know what, I've probably done a few duds over the years, but I just am like every time you watch a Ryan van Duzer film you're of. I'm going to be entertained, something cool is going to happen. I'll never forget. There was one film that a spider was in his storage facility when he went to go.
That was one of my favorite ones, just like spider in he posterized the film.
It's so funny. I do sometimes get people asking me that. Do you get jealous or do you guys all have. All the people out there doing bike films. is there a real healthy competition? I'm like, no we all do so much different stuff and it's also useful to different people. And so I do different films than Ryan and Mark Wagenbuur.
And even Not Just Bikes, they have totally different films. And the more of that we have out there the better..
[00:21:41] John: Yeah and I'll pause it or interject at this point and say that I've been incredibly grateful to you and to Ryan over the years in terms of you've never hesitated to answer questions when I had stupid questions cause I've been in disease prevention and health promotion for 30 plus years. Five, six years ago, I decided I was going to be a content creator and producer of videos and film and now podcasts. And so you guys have just been amazing in terms of your generosity of helping mentor me. So thank you.
[00:22:12] Clarence: That's really nice, but obviously I couldn't help you at all at the podcast.
Cause it's just, it's a very different world. I'm glad you've come to create your own kind of niche and creativity, the way you put together, your stuff. Even just going through the preamble, the setup right before we started recording, I'm just like, yeah, I'm glad I'm not doing this. This is just, I have a lot of people are glad they're not doing what I'm doing
[00:22:34] John: yeah.
[00:22:35] Clarence: It's not easy. It's not like you just flick on a switch. You start interviewing somebody.
[00:22:40] John: Yup. Alright we've got 43 more seconds on this one. So let's play.
[00:22:43] Clarence: Oh, and this is coming back, the full circle, the Sneckdown. This is just basically another film showing that I'm sure the New York City DOT didn't go out there and measure the snow, but you can see, these are spots where Sneckdowns would form during a snow storm.
And here we are referencing again. There's the Sneckdown a lot of it is real world kind of lessons from. And this is again, we were talking about the meatpacking district. This is looking back at the first iterations of what the New York City DOT, and now the whole place is turned every year.
It becomes more of a pedestrian Plaza or like a superblock. Hey, that's the end.
[00:23:21] John: That's and that's the end. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. And when you look back and you do that retrospective and appreciate how many places that you've been, and what would you say looking back in history, what was the film that really changed everything?
[00:23:40] Clarence: I would say it was probably pretty early on, it was the Bogota's Ciclovia film, that film, which we visited in September of 2007. And I say we, because Aaron Naparstek and Streetsblog went down a couple of people from Transportation Alternatives Ethan Kent from Project, for Public Spaces, Karla Quintero, who was our great help with translating and interviewing people.
She did a great job that series of films. Really put us on the map and also got people trying to see. Yeah. There's different way that things could be. And I'll be honest. In 2007 there were a number of places in the United States that were trying to do the Ciclovia, which is closing the streets on Sunday for 10 20, I think down there it was closer to 80 miles, but I can't be sure about that number, but 80 miles or 80 kilometers at that time. And it's just so much fun. I was totally blown away. I'm like, here I am going to Bogota, Columbia, and I'm thinking, okay, different country. Hadn't been around too much outside the United States at all and wow, they accomplish this and. That led to cities like San Francisco and Portland and New York city. The year after we did this film, all of them had movements to do this. And one great story I can always tell people about is in San Francisco when Gavin Newsome who's now the governor of California, but when he was mayor, they would have monthly meetings and Ciclovia has always came up and they said, Can we do Ciclovia and they'd get really close to say yes.
And then it would never happen. They'd be like, let's postpone to the next time let's look at it next time. And then they said at the beginning of one meeting, I think it was the San Francisco Bike Coalition got together. Let's instead of using our time to describe once again they showed this Ciclovia film and he was just like, let's do it.
Back then, video wasn't as big a tool for advocates and transportation people you'd always use a lot of photos and things. And so this really helped push the open streets. Ciclovia movement into the forefront.
And. this film was probably the most important thing we did. I have films that I would consider a lot better now and more professional and better done. And I learned so many things from making this film. But this was probably the most important at that time. To have happened.
[00:26:13] John: That's great stuff. So with that in mind, then we take a look back to the Most popular,
[00:26:22] Clarence: Most popular and favorite videos
[00:26:24] John: Of all time.
[00:26:26] Clarence: The number one film Utrecht is over 1 million plays. Now it's Utrecht, then everybody talks about Utrecht. it seems like 50% of all the people that I've run into that love Streetfilms will bring up Utrecht. And it's a wonderful place. I encourage everybody to go there.
If they can, if you can't watch the film, you'll learn a lot. They have one of the world's busiest bike intersection there. I think everybody always says it's right there coming up in that video right there. I did actually have separate short on it because one of the things I try to always think about while I'm out there.
I it's only me on these shoots. It's I rely heavily on the generosity of people to set interviews up for me or say, oh, you should talk to this person . so when I was out there, I just was like, Hey, there's a mall of the world's busiest bike intersection. I bet you, I could find a window somewhere to shoot above it.
And then I found a restaurant and ordered hamburger or something. And I don't even think I ate half the hamburger. I was just shooting out the window the whole time. And that film alone, somebody tweeted just one clip of the intersection. And I think over a million people just watch that here is the busiest intersection right here.
You'll probably see a little bit of the footage of Vrendenburg has just nothing. It's only buses transit and bikes and pedestrians. And. this is that street and it's just really cool to experience it. Yeah, Utrecht number one, favorite good quality film that I've ever done. And Bogota on number two .
Yeah, I have really fond memories. I've met so many nice people. There's the overhead shot of the right from the restaurant. I have few shots in this about that, but everybody's been so great. it's just me filming, editing, producing, writing, setting it up, everything it's me, but there's no way I could pull it off without all the different people I meet and how much they do for me.
And sometimes he would let me crash at their place.
[00:28:20] John: Yeah. I hear you. and you and I have had the opportunity to be in the same place at the same time, a couple of different times. One of them in fact is when we both showed up gosh, it must've been, was it 2018? I think it was.
[00:28:35] Clarence: That sounds about right. Yeah.
[00:28:37] John: Yeah. 2018. And this is what it looked like here.
[00:28:41] Clarence: Seville! There you go. You were the first shot. I think that's so funny, but yeah, my main mission on this trip was go to Barcelona to see the Superblocks and to this date nobody's done a really good job of documenting it except for Streetfilms.
And that's why that feels so popular. But I decided, I was like, okay well, while I'm there, I should pick up another city. And then I went to London to do film on. Bike super highways, but this is who we both came to see that we both happened to be there at the same time, which was just too ironic.
And I don't know, I realized you were coming and I was like, Hey,
this is crazy. Here's like how they built their network so fast.
[00:29:20] John: Basically it got built out in 18 months and they went from
a very small percentage of people riding and then they were able to get it up around 10% mode share, which is just phenomenal when you think of a place that can have that big of an impact.
[00:29:38] Clarence: Yeah, and it's funny because I make these films and of course they don't exist in a vacuum. every once in a while, I'll watch it all film or have to be reviewing stuff. Maybe somebody is looking for some footage to use and I'm giving them permission or I just get melancholy about wanting to look back over things and or sometimes even when I, sometimes something will auto play on my YouTube.
you wonder what's going on with these places like Seville a lot of the bike lanes were already pretty crowded, so they widen those. And I can't be everywhere and we don't have a lot of people out there doing this kind of thing so. And it always makes me wonder you come back from a place and you're like how good, how well is it going?
[00:30:20] John: More and more eyes on the street for sure. Now you mentioned that the main reason why you went to Spain was the Superblocks what a superblock is.
[00:30:30] Clarence: I wish I had one of the experts to do it even better than I can, but my film does a good job of talking about it. It's essentially designating a small grid two blocks by two blocks, three blocks by three blocks and keeping out through traffic so that you could redesign the streets and see, you can see here right here that they, this is an intersection that used to just have cars running through it. And now they have a play space for kids .
It's so cool. The track. I love that the track that people, anytime I was, I stayed in a hotel really near here, and I was only there for about 36 hours. And then I flew to Seville and it's just amazing to watch how happy people are at outside enjoying this. And this is finally what we're getting here in my neighborhood in Queens.
We have a, we have an open street and we're demonstrating that once you remove. The traffic. there's space for deliveries to come through emergency vehicles. Even people who live there or are in a garage, but you design it. So you don't have streets where cars are just barreling through.
when you see a car, people are either there because they live there, they're making a delivery or they're visiting. And that's really about it. So that's the goal in some of these neighborhoods in Barcelona. I encourage people to go there too. I know that they've expanded the program greatly since I was there.
So that'd be another place I'd love to go back to. And actually I'd love to take my family. So it'd be a good way to explore it again.
[00:31:56] John: Yeah. That's a good point. .
[00:31:57] Clarence: Oh, boy,
[00:31:58] John: I'm pausing on this one. I propose that we just play this because it's hilarious.
[00:32:02] Clarence: Just play it and sit back and not say anything. How about halfway? People will get the idea, but this is Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live fame. I've had the pleasure of working with a few famous people when they were not so famous, but this is one of our most loved films. And the favorite film I've ever had making, because she's so damn talented and she's so funny and you just throw a phrase or an idea and she just ran with it.
[00:32:29] Kate: Pull it together Veronica, pull it together. We're standing just around the corner from the newly improved. Times square. I am horrified by the events that have transpired and I'm about to see their disastrous effects. Oh my God. Oh my God. This is the crossroads of the world. Where are the roads? It turned it into a playground. This is not Italy. This is not
look at all this look at all this wasted space. They could put an office building here. They could put a car dealership here, parking lot.
[00:33:25] Clarence: I mean s he's incredible. This is from two, this is from 2010, it's at least 10 or 11 years old.
[00:33:33] John: So my question for you on this, because part of what makes this, so funny for me is that this combined with the one when she was in the Navigator? Was it a Navigator? Escalade?,
[00:33:48] Clarence: Lincoln Nav.
[00:33:49] Kate: This is my Nav, my Lincoln Navigator. So I go down to Washington and I just am, they're saying, hold up. What about cars?
What about the car?
[00:34:02] John: Yeah, it's, that's just one of those things that is just. So incredibly entertaining and fun about the work that you have done. And. It's and it's so cool.
Like you said you, when you have that opportunity to be able to get some of these people who have an audience that's out there, and of course her audience is completely blown up. Now since joining Saturday Night Live and then doing movies and all of that, so it helps, I think normalize in a weird sort of way in the sense that it broadcasts out to a more general population versus just inside our insular urban transportation bubble.
[00:34:45] Clarence: Yeah. Laura bliss even wrote up an article on how this even happened. It's available. I think it's on Bloomberg now. I used to be city lab, but.
She did a great article interview with me and even Janette Sadik-Khan who was commissioner at the time, who said that was a really fun, great thing, because at that point there was still so many naysayers, There were people like breathing down Bloomberg's back saying let's rip this all up.
It's not like it had been in only a year or so, but there's this constant fight of trying to get these really wonderful places for people and to remove some of the cars. It's the kind of thing that eventually we will get through this and it was one film that I made.
I was like, I can help defend what New York City DOT did here and the administration. And I know that people are loving this and sure. It might be creating a little extra traffic, but people are going to get used to it. And we all know that eventually it all becomes more normal.
[00:35:41] John: Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of The difficulty and being able to do this. You labeled this the Miracle on 34th Avenue. This is really close to your home, right?
[00:35:50] Clarence: Yeah. I could walk a couple hundred feet and I'm on 34th avenue. And what happened was due to COVID back in March of 2020 the city after a lot of pressure from organizations decided.
All right, we're going to give some open streets. We're going to try to create some space for people to get some exercise and also to space out and to really try to make our city have some place where people can go because of this terrible pandemic. And it ended up being just so wonderful.
The volunteers and the people in the community, the ones that made this happen and the politicians like you. So Danny Dromm. Jessica Ramos is our one of our state senators. She's great. Let's just all these volunteers. I just talked to them and this is what happened to our open streets. Now, 20 months later, we still have it and it runs 26 blocks.
1.3 miles in length, all these great volunteers, all these people, and you go out there and you just see people really enjoying the street. They're walking around, they're biking, they're sitting, they meet up with their dogs. We now have tables and chairs on a few people. We have planters and the city has committed to making it permanent.
And now they're presenting what are the next design options? Because it still could be improved a lot and made better, but it's one of the most wonderful things and to have a son who learned to ride his bike there and learned to ride a scooter. And so many people in the neighborhood just, they love it so much. They really do. And it's the nicest thing ever if you're having a blue day or even a day where the weather is not so good, you can still go out and walk a loop real quickly. And this was one of the easiest films to make because I didn't have to travel. And if I was bored, I was like, I'm going to go get.
One of the kids rock garden, there was a rock garden that was Danny Dromm. Who's our city council person who was really instrumental in getting this happen. There he is again. And this film was great and I love it. And I know it's helped keep the momentum to keep this street and open street.
[00:37:54] John: Yeah. It really brings us back to appreciating just how. Powerful. This video medium really is. You mentioned it right there. You mentioned that it helps keep that momentum moving forward. We mentioned it earlier, too, in terms of influencing people to explore places may be helping them with lifestyle change and behavior change, things of that nature.
Your films in particular, just like Mark's films will frequently be used as educational material and inspiring basically community members taking the video and showing it to a politician or a staff member and saying, see, why can't we do this?
[00:38:39] Clarence: Yeah, it's funny because I always wonder you get feedback from people saying, oh, we shared your film of community meeting.
I used it in a presentation or whatever, but I just wonder like how many there must be. We only must hear one out of every 10 situations where that happens, if that, and then sometimes I find people that illegal use my film and another film or something on YouTube what are you going to do?
I don't do that. But people do that all the time. And if it's helping them get better stuff in your neighborhood, better biking, better walking better. Good for that.
[00:39:11] John: Yeah. When you look back now on all these years and especially looking forward what are some of the things that you're your most appreciative of.
[00:39:21] Clarence: When I started, before I really started getting into video I was an advocate and I was holding press conferences and I was trying to get people more involved and it goes back to like me, my films are not only educating and getting people excited, but honoring the people that are out there doing the work, because without them. What would we have? Here in New York, we have so many motivated groups of people that are doing great work to advocate, to push for things, things that I wouldn't even think of and to make it happen, sometimes it takes years to do these things that's what I'm most appreciative that we do have a huge number, thousands of people in New York city, they're doing their own thing.
They're doing their own thing and their own neighborhood. They're very involved every day. The number of people that want this kind of thing grows. Yeah, I'd say that's what I'm most appreciative of.
[00:40:15] John: We have time for one more video, your choice,
[00:40:18] Clarence: my choice?
[00:40:20] John: Your choice.
[00:40:21] Clarence: Oh boy.
[00:40:23] John: if it happens to be on that top 10 list from the article, I can queue that up really easily,
[00:40:29] Clarence: Why don't we say the Oslo film
[00:40:32] John: so I'll pull it up. You go ahead and start intro to it.
[00:40:37] Clarence: Yeah. I think that this was, I think my last and my top 10 and Oslo decided I think it was in 2016 or 2017.
They decided they were going to have their entire downtown completely car free. And so I was like, wow. After about a year and a half, two years, I was like, somebody needs to go and see if they've been successful. But I think ultimately they've been pretty successful. I don't think they maybe haven't achieved half of that goal. I'm not sure. I haven't heard much since. There is 2015. They declared that. But what I really love about this city is it's so beautiful. just so beautiful. And it's I felt like while I was there, it was one of the few times where I felt like it was making a really good film. Artistic.
[00:41:21] John: Yeah. I was going to say, let me interject real quick and say exactly.
That is what. Viewers are going to notice right away is that you did a little bit more artistic coloring and things of that nature. Talk a little bit about that.
[00:41:35] Clarence: Each film I make, I don't really go in with a preset plan. I'll try to interview important people.
Like I just was in Montreal and really wanted to interview the mayor. And somehow it gets around that. They say they don't have any time for me, but then the last day or two or the last few hours of their, so they'll, you suddenly will be like, the mayor will be in the film and that's that's what's happened.
So that was the mayor of Oslo.
[00:41:58] John: I was going to ask you that too, because it seems like you just have really good luck of getting interviews. Talk a little bit about that because man you have the golden touch in terms of making sure that you get just amazing interiews.
[00:42:11] Clarence: Again, this it's almost like it's many factors. It's really being in the right place at the right time. But if you interview somebody like from the bike program in the city, or somebody at a transit agency, which is what happened here in Oslo, eventually they will go back afterwards and they might watch a Streetfilm. They're like, oh, this film's going to be money.
Like the gentleman I interviewed from route there, they do the transit there eventually. I'll be like, I might even ask I've been trying to get the mayors or any chance you have any pull or anything or somebody important. And a lot of times that's what does it it's just my track record being in the right place at the right time, interviewing a few lower level people at first that are just like this guy's interesting.
Or I, or they know of my work before. And they're just like, I've got to do all I can do to convince such and such to talk to him. And sometimes that works out for the worst. I'll be like, okay, I've interviewed 10 people in three days and I still have to do all the B roll and everything else and make sure I come away with all the footage I need, because I can't fly back here to pick up shots of people getting on a bus or whatever it is.
And sometimes I've had, oh, you need to talk to so-and-so or this person created this, or they did despite program. Or this woman has a walking school bus to school. And it's suddenly you're like, at some point you're like, I have to stop. I can't put 40 people in my film But it really is. That's what it is. It's a lot of being fortunate, having a lot of re a lot of help, a lot of connections and being there at the right place at the right time.
[00:43:40] John: Yeah. That's good stuff. I absolutely adore your, your work. And I've just been so inspired by the fact that so many cities and so many people around the world have discovered them and are using them for inspiration, but also for paving the way to a Future where hopefully more people are able to walk and bike and have more access to public spaces and plazas and open streets.
It just, the list just goes on and on.
[00:44:10] Clarence: Yeah. You've been here in the United States. That's the way we're going. It's taking longer here, but one day our biggest cities, moderately sized cities will look a little bit more like, Europe and the best cities there, but I want.
Tell you that a very happy to be the hundredth guest that you had to have this series and wish you a lot of luck. And like I said, I understand this is, it's not it's labors of love. All of us are doing labors of loving some degree, even if we're being paid a little bit. A lot of people say to me, like, how do you do all this stuff about transportation?
I'm like, make enough money. It's my hobby. It's my exercise. Half the time. That's why I can do all this. Otherwise, if I didn't have that kind of weird hybrid lifestyle, there wouldn't be any Streetfilms.
[00:44:55] John: Yeah. And you have to have that life balance, like you said, too. And the fact that you're a parent now and that integrating all of that into your life is so incredibly important because it doesn't serve anybody if you burn out.
[00:45:08] Clarence: Yeah. Yeah. And it is tiring. I'll be 55 next year. I said, when I hit 50 that I probably was only a, had a few years left. I still feel that way. And then there's other people like, no, you must do another thousand. And I'm like, if I get another 50, I'll be happy 50 to a hundred, but I don't think I'll get that far
[00:45:27] John: Close us out with that because you told me about three years ago, when you hit a thousand, that was it you were going to do something new.
[00:45:33] Clarence: It strangely happened was COVID. I had all these plans to go to Montreal, which I finally got to Paris. All these other places are doing all this great stuff. And I was like 2020 will probably be the final year of Streetfilms. That would have brought me to 1000 films at some point, and COVID happened and I couldn't travel anymore.
And I started doing thank goodness, like 34th avenue open street happened. There were stories to cover here, but it put me back and I felt like I got robbed, and I said, okay, you know what? My life has changed. The world has changed for a lot of people, sadly. And I'm just going to. Wait, I'm going to do some more films and see what happens.
I don't think I never stopped fully doing films, but instead of you doing 20, 30 films a year, whatever I'd end up doing, I'd probably be like just a few year and just really specialized films that I want to do. So we'll see if next year is the last year. I also had planned to write a book, which I have a general outline of what I want to put down, but.
Maybe the book will be in 2022. We'll see. We were actually finally get started this winter.
[00:46:42] John: Yes, exactly. I'm going to put our scroll back up because. Absolutely. And again, we've got to have our
[00:46:51] Clarence: applause.
I got to remember so you can do things I can't do cause oh yeah. You can just pop up a scroller. Celebrating. Active Towns episodes
[00:47:05] John: the podcast by celebrating 100 and a thousand at the same time. Hey Clarence Eckerson, Jr. Thank you so very much for your support, your friendship, your mentorship, and congratulations on a thousand plus Streetfilms
[00:47:20] Clarence: thousand plus, thank you.
Take care of now I gotta go pick up the boy.
[00:47:25] John: That's right.
Thank you all so much for tuning in to episode number 100 of the Active Towns Podcast. I sincerely hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane and are inspired to do what you can. To help make your community safer and more inviting for all ages and abilities. Please be sure to check out the featured videos from this episode, you can access those links in the show notes, and more importantly, on the landing page for this episode at activetowns.org.
That's all she wrote. Folks. Episode number 100 is done and dusted. I'll be off for the next two weeks to take a little breather and work on a couple of video projects, but I'll be right back with you for episode number 1 0 1 on Friday, December 3rd, until then please consider making a donation to Active Towns, spreading the word and subscribing.
Thank you also very much for your support and for tuning in until next time. This is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers!