Wearing a small cape, 6-year-old Travis Lewis raced his bike down Bayou Road, veered onto North Tonti Street and roared back down Esplanade Avenue, circling Gayarre Place park where his sisters Bre'ianna, 10, and Bre'ale, 6, constructed a small city using large blue blocks provided by the nonprofit Play Build.
All along Esplanade Avenue, from North Claiborne Avenue to North Broad Street, hundreds of people came out Saturday to enjoy the fall weather and take part in a number of activities such as hula hooping and yoga as part of Play Streets Ciclovia, an all-day event presented by the city's Fit NOLA partnership and Bike Easy.
But the focus of the day was bicycling as the city closed off one lane of Esplanade Avenue and transformed it into a giant ciclovia, the Spanish word for bike path, as part of Mayor Mitch Landrieu's[1] continued efforts to become one of the top 10 fittest cities by 2018.
Charlotte Jones, director of programming with Play Build, one of the many organizations that took part in the event, said of the Lewis children, "These kids share a bedroom in a shotgun house so even using this tiny park is a ton of space for them and having the streets opened up is phenomenal. They are so excited when they get more room."
It is the fifth and final Play Streets event with previous ones having taken place at A.L. Davis Park in Central City, the McDonough Playground in Algiers, Conrad Park in Hollygrove and Joe W. Brown Park in eastern New Orleans.
This was the first, however, to place such a heavy emphasis on bicycling and was inspired by a trip Jennifer Ruley, with the Louisiana Public Health Institute, took several years ago to Mexico City to attend one of their weekly ciclovias.
"Since that day, we've been working hard to bring a ciclovia to the streets of New Orleans," Ruley said.
In the past several years, New Orleans has become known as a bike-friendly city, adding more than 65 miles of bike paths since Hurricane Katrina with more coming every month. In 2011, the City Council passed the "complete streets" ordinance that requires the city, when repaving or redesigning a street, to consider all users including bicyclists and pedestrians.
Jayne Nussbaum with the Louisiana Public Health Institute said Saturday's event was a way to "reacquaint people with the streets and how they can use them now that we have these bike paths and safer crosswalks for pedestrians. We want to encourage people to come out with no cars on the streets to get the idea that this is a way they can become more physically active and incorporate that into their daily living," Nussbaum said.
Kendra Lesnar, who works as the school wellness coordinator with LPHI, said bicycling and walking are two of the best ways to help combat childhood obesity.
"Children and teenagers are supposed to get 60 minutes of physical activity everyday and we know that most of them are not because schools are cutting recess and (physical education) and all those opportunities to be active in school," Lesnar said. "So this is a way to encourage them to be active in other aspects of their life."
Play Street Ciclovia also featured a bike rodeo, skateboarding, soccer, art activities, nutritional fitness resources, cooking demonstrations and a second line by the Bone Tone Brass Band.
New Orleans' Health Commissioner Dr. Karen DeSalvo said while the $50,000 grant from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and Partnership for a Healthier America to put on the Play Streets events has ended they have a $1 million grant over the course of three years from Blue Cross Blue Shield to create additional "play opportunities and healthy opportunities" at playgrounds across the city.
"We want to increase awareness about physical and nutritional fitness and change the way we do everything in New Orleans so we enable and support a culture that gets us all fit and gives kids a change to have the healthy life they deserve," DeSalvo said.
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