June 28, 2013

Before we get to the Blog of the Week, we have few other winners to announce! Thanks to all who chimed in this week to Erica Rodefer Winters' yoga post. 

The studio with the most votes for favorite local yoga studio was... Blue Turtle Yoga. It was very nearly a tie with Charleston Power Yoga, but as we learned, apparently Mark Knowles is "the jam?"

The winner of the five-class pass is..... 

Majesta Marie. Her go-to spot is Charleston Community Yoga. Congratulations, Majesta! We'll contact you on Monday via Facebook to get you your free classes.

(above photo: Charleston Community Yoga)

The Blog of the Week is... What's Wrong With America? The CP's Bike Story for Starters... by Claire O'Bryan.

It all started, of course, with Tara Servatius' piece in this week's City Paper in which she seemed to a) urge county officials not to subsidize bike lanes on existing roads and b) urge the rest of us to drive, GOOD GOD PEOPLE... DRIVE! SAVE YOURSELVES BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! 

Sorry, Grit goes overboard on weekends. CP's opinions as a whole are very good. They do a fantastic job of setting up a good battleground for local issues when they're happening, and they do it in a way that doesn't put us all to sleep. This one was a bit more... "rousing" than others.

Here's an excerpt:

"...So wouldn't you expect the government and well-meaning advocacy groups to try to stop Americans from engaging in a risky practice where they are 12 times more likely to die? Wouldn't you expect them to try to stop this behavior which leads to an average of 7,000 deaths in this country over the course of a decade? You certainly wouldn't expect, let's say, the Charleston County Council to be spending $2 million to encourage this risky behavior, but council members are. The fact is you are 12 times more likely to die bicycling to work per kilometer than you are if you drive, according to a study by Rutgers University. It's even worse if you walk to work. You're 23 times more likely to die."

(Insert Grit thought bubble: Has it occurred to Servatius that we're not just a bicycling/walking/upright people, but we're also a thinking people? We don't need the government to hand us our lunch pails in the mornings, help us into our coats and galoshes, and hand us our car keys because our "bikes are locked up for our own good." We sometimes like to decide those matters all on our own. And, when we're feeling especially frisky, we even ride our bikes with no hands.)

From Claire's Blog of the Week:

According to the CDC, more people died in 2010 from intestinal infections and hernias than biking. In 2010, 35,332 people died in car accidents. Hell, 1,600 people died in "water, air, and space and other unspecified transport accidents and their sequelae" in 2010 [as oppposed to 700 per year biking]. I guess we should stop living? Stop moving around so much...?