Meet The Streets.mn Board!

What goes into running a non-profit like Streets.mn? Let’s take a moment to hear from the board members who make it all possible!

Episode chapters

00:00 | Intro
00:31 | Stina Neel & Ian R Buck
09:11 | angela olson
13:48 | Ben Zvan
18:23 | Brian Mitchell
22:10 | Erik Noonan
27:11 | Ian Gaida
31:51 | Jeb Rach
36:23 | Jeremy Winter
40:36 | Morgan Radick
45:00 | Parker Seaman
49:52 | NJ Hanson
54:38 | Regina Burstein
58:31 | Outro

Attributions

Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.

This episode was hosted and edited by Ian R Buck with editing assistance from Jeremy Winter, and was transcribed by Stina Neel. Many thanks to all the board members for coming on the show! We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].

Transcript

[00:00:00] Ian B: Welcome to the Streets.mn podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from beautiful uptown Minneapolis, Minnesota, I am your host, Ian R. Buck Have you ever wondered about the people behind the scenes who keep Streets.mn running?

It’s time to meet the board. We’ll go one at a time, and first up, we have a couple that you’re already familiar with, Stina Neel and myself. Stina Neel.

[00:00:32] Stina: Ian Buck.

[00:00:33] Ian B: The reason that we’re here with this episode today is because you and I joined the board fairly recently. I mean, as of recording, it’s been a few months, but we joined during the off-season.

[00:00:43] Stina: We did, yes.

[00:00:44] Ian B: Um, and so Jeremy suggested, “Hey, this would be a great opportunity to have an entire episode where we get to have a little chat with each one of the board members.” Mm-hmm. Uh, and you and I are gonna be the first ones.

[00:00:55] Stina: Wonderful.

[00:00:55] Ian B: So you have been on the board before. Yes. Um, yeah. Why don’t you… W- when, when was your last tenure?

[00:01:02] Stina: Oh, goodness. I should know this. Was it 2023?

[00:01:06] Ian B: Something like that,

[00:01:07] Stina: yeah. 2024. And I was on the board for a half term, and then I found out that I was like, Well, between my job and some other circumstances, I, I just wasn’t giving it my all, and historically, I, I am someone who cannot half do anything. Mm-hmm.

And so it’s either full send or stepping back. And so I did choose to step back, and after a job change and, you know, maybe just chilling out a little bit, I’m back into it.

[00:01:37] Ian B: Nice.

[00:01:37] Stina: And I feel, I feel pretty amazing about it. It feels like a really, really good step.

[00:01:41] Ian B: Awesome. And this is my first time on the board, to a lot of people’s surprise.

I, I have had people, when I’ve told them, like excitedly, like, “I’m joining the board,” and they were like, “You’re… You weren’t already?”

[00:01:52] Stina: Right. Yeah. Same, same. They were like, “Oh, I forgot that you’re not on the board. You’ve been volunteering for so long.” And- Right … and like, you’ve been doing the podcast for how many years?

[00:02:01] Ian B: Um, since we relaunched it in 2023, I wanna say. Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, June of ’23. And, and yeah, that’s the funny thing about Streets.mn, I think, is, is at the beginning in, like 2012, the board was the primary source of content, right? Right. Like, the people who were on the board were the ones who were writing and were- Mm-hmm

very visible. Uh, and nowadays, that isn’t necessarily true. Right. Um, where-

[00:02:28] Stina: We have folks who, who do contribute articles fairly often. Other folks have… are all-star volunteers- Yeah … who have then joined the board.

[00:02:36] Ian B: All about the logistics.

[00:02:36] Stina: Yes. They’re the ones that make the magic happen.

[00:02:38] Ian B: And we’re gonna meet all of those people.

[00:02:40] Stina: Yes.

[00:02:40] Ian B: Uh, but before that, what committees are you on on the board?

[00:02:44] Stina: So I’m on Events committee. I’ve been the Events committee chair or co-chair for three or so years, and I work on the podcast. Um, and then I also am doing a little bit of social media, and I’m getting a little bit more into working on the social media team.

[00:03:02] Ian B: Nice. Yeah. And I am pretty squarely in the, the podcast committee, which recently has also kind of rolled in our approach to video content- Mm-hmm … um, is also being included in that committee. What is it about the committees that you’re on that got you excited about them? Like, why did you join those ones in particular?

Hmm.

[00:03:20] Stina: I don’t wanna say I’m a little bit type A, but I have been called type A many times. But I think that that’s an important skill to be really detail-oriented and time considering and lots of other… Like, I love logistics, and so putting on an event for a large amount of people is a lot of planning, a lot of logistics, and a lot of

It rewards my type A brain. Um, so I started off as a volunteer ’cause I was like, “Well, I have time and energy, and I love to make things on Canva,” and it kinda grew from there. And then podcasting started because, well, I was friends with the host Who invited me on a bike camping trip, and then talking on the microphone, I was like, “Well, I don’t hate this.”

[00:03:59] Ian B: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:00] Stina: I don’t necessarily love listening to myself talk. Like, even editing I’m like, “Ugh. Feel a little cringy.”

[00:04:05] Ian B: It takes a few years.

[00:04:06] Stina: It’s, it’s cringy to hear your own voice talk about things, even if you’re really passionate about them. It’s very silly at first. But then I was like, “Well, I love storytelling, and I love getting other folks to tell their story.”

And then producing and editing is like I’m just fine tuning-

[00:04:21] Ian B: Mm-hmm …

[00:04:21] Stina: their story and packaging it into a way that our listeners will enjoy.

[00:04:25] Ian B: Yeah. Um, and I, I came to this kind of from the podcasting side of things already. Um, I had– I’ve been podcasting since 2012- Ooh … when my friend-

[00:04:35] Stina: One of the OGs.

[00:04:36] Ian B: Yeah.

Well, so that’s the thing about podcasters, right? If you ask anybody, “When did you start podcasting?” Almost everybody will say, “Well, I came to it super late.”

[00:04:44] Stina: Right.

[00:04:44] Ian B: Right? No matter whether they started in 2005- … or 2025. Um, and that’s how I felt for a long time was like- Mm-hmm … “Oh man, I, I knew about all these other podcasts before me.”

[00:04:54] Stina: Right.

[00:04:55] Ian B: But yeah, my friend Ryan got me into this, uh, through, like, technology focused podcasts. Um, and, and I had a video game focused podcast, and then, like, technology news and stuff. There was kind of a disconnect for a while after I got into bike advocacy, and, like, most of my online interactions on social media and everything was focused on, like, the bike advocacy stuff.

Mm-hmm. But my podcast was completely different, and I kept thinking to myself like, “There’s gotta be a way to, like, get these two things closer together.”

[00:05:23] Stina: Right.

[00:05:23] Ian B: Um, and, but, but I was like, “Well, Bill Lindeke has The Streets.mn Podcast. I don’t, you know, that’s our, that niche is already being filled.” Mm-hmm. Um, and then he had a kid, COVID hit, he ran out of steam for being able to dedicate time to the podcast.

And, uh, and so then The Streets.mn board was looking around asking like, “Who can we get to relaunch this thing?”

[00:05:44] Stina: Right.

[00:05:44] Ian B: Um, and a few of our friends on the board reached out to me, uh, to kind of lead that team and, and we’ve– it’s never been like a one man show. Right. We’ve always had like several people. Um, but you know, folks come and go.

[00:05:56] Stina: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:56] Ian B: And I’ve been the one who’s been here the whole time.

[00:05:59] Stina: I mean, the Venn diagram of people who had podcasting experience and people who are like nerds about urbanism-

[00:06:05] Ian B: Mm-hmm …

[00:06:06] Stina: locally, it’s no surprise that your name popped up, right?

[00:06:10] Ian B: Right, right.

[00:06:11] Stina: And like, yes, this is your first, like, urbanism podcast ever, but you already had those skills that you could bring to the table, and then just, you know, the, the vivaciousness that we’ve, we’ve come to love in the podcast, you know?

[00:06:22] Ian B: Yeah. And hopefully we’re, we’re fostering those skills in more and more people, right?

[00:06:26] Stina: Right. It’s honestly, it’s been so helpful to have videos and explanations and guides for how to use a lot of the tools that we use on the podcast because- I, I thought that podcasting was not for me. I was like, “Oh, my voice is not, like, amazing on mic and, and whatever.”

And I was like, “Ugh, you know, like podcasting, that’s a pretty, like, dude-heavy space.” Uh, and I have loved it. It’s been so fun, and so fun to interview folks, and it’s only, it’s only nerve-wracking almost every time. But it’s still- … very, very, very fun. Do we ever get a little starstruck with some of the… Like, we’ve, we’ve interviewed some big names-

[00:07:00] Ian B: That’s true

[00:07:00] Stina: fairly recently.

[00:07:01] Ian B: Yeah, interviewing Cory Doctorow is probably gonna be the highlight of my career for a while. Uh-

[00:07:05] Stina: You were just like heart eyes emoji the whole time.

[00:07:07] Ian B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kept it chill. Yeah, yeah. I kept it chill.

[00:07:11] Stina: So what made you go from, you know, being the podcast guru to wanting to be on the board specifically?

[00:07:19] Ian B: Well, first let me say why I resisted joining the board for so long. Because I was like, listen, I’m already putting in so much volunteer time- Right … I don’t want to be on a board where there’s going to be an expectation of even more volunteer time, ’cause I didn’t have that to give. Um, and then I realized, like, oh, it’s just one meeting a month.

Mm-hmm. And I’m already meeting all of the other, like, volunteer expectations- Right … of a board member. So I was like, cool, I can do that. The, the reason I joined the board was because I was like, there, there’s several things that need to f- puzzle pieces that need to fall into place in order for, like, us to have a streamlined process for videos being published, and either I needed to convince several people on the board to, to take on those steps, or I needed to join the board in order to- Right

have the, like, permission to be able to do those things on my own.

[00:08:08] Stina: That kind of trust and ability is such an honor- Mm-hmm … that the organization really gave you and gave the podcast team, and continues to give the podcast team every, you know, every two weeks, that we get to produce an episode, that we don’t have a ton of red tape.

We have a lot of freedom in what we can cover and- Mm-hmm … the kinds of folks we talk to, and it’s been great. Yeah. It’s been so much fun, and then being on the board-

[00:08:31] Ian B: And, and there usually is at least two people’s ears on something- Right … before it goes out.

[00:08:35] Stina: Right, right.

[00:08:35] Ian B: Um, so we, we do act as kind of like our own editorial team.

[00:08:38] Stina: Yeah.

[00:08:38] Ian B: But yeah.

[00:08:40] Stina: Yeah, being on the board, it’s, it’s a little bit more formal than just, like, making events happen. I love to put on the thing, like a picnic and all that jazz, but I guess we’re all, like, really professional in those spaces, but at the end of the day, we are a bunch of goofs who really love trains and buses and bikes and pedestrians and all that jazz.

Yep.

[00:09:00] Ian B: That’s us.

[00:09:01] Stina: Just a bunch of nerds.

[00:09:02] Ian B: All right. So Stina-

[00:09:03] Stina: Mm-hmm …

[00:09:04] Ian B: shall we hand off the audience to the rest of the board members?

[00:09:07] Stina: Oh, absolutely. Let’s go meet all of our friends.

[00:09:12] Angela: My name is Angela Olson. Sh- I use she/her pronouns, and, um, I’ve been a board member now for just over a year, and I’ve been a member of a couple of different committees, most recently the Anti-Racism Committee.

I’ve also helped with our Minnesota Historical Society grant.

[00:09:29] Ian B: Hmm.

[00:09:30] Angela: And I just try to be a helpful guide when I can. And I’ve done a little bit of writing.

[00:09:35] Ian B: The grant was kind of an unusual thing for, for Streets. Like, we- Mm-hmm … we haven’t had too many grants that are, like, tied to specific types of work. Do you wanna, do you wanna talk about that at all?

Yeah.

[00:09:45] Angela: Streets got this grant before I joined the board, so I don’t know everything, but this was a grant from the Historical Society to, um, hire some journalists to create stories about four major highway projects throughout the state and how they impacted the communities around them. Um, so we worked with four folks who worked on a different story about each location, and we kinda helped foster them through some research.

The publication, um, gave them a budget. We were able to pay them for their time and give them a budget for things like photography, as well as kinda, like, help foster them through the process with editing and, and other support. So it was a, uh… I think it was a big learning curve, but when I joined the board, part of my background is I’ve done a lot of grant work, and so it was a good fit for me to kinda help pick up some of the less glamorous aspects-

like the reporting and that kinda stuff. I was less involved in, like, you know, the- The editorial side … actual work. Yeah, yeah.

[00:10:44] Ian B: Yeah, yeah. But that’s why we have a board, right?

[00:10:46] Angela: And- That’s why we’re here, yeah … and- Streets is really is the board in a way, right? We’re not like w- we only work with one employee- Mm-hmm

and then we work with, uh, lots of different volunteers and sometimes, like through this Historical Society grant, are able to pay people for their time, but really a service-based board membership- Yes … I would say.

[00:11:03] Ian B: Yeah, yeah. A, a working board, as they say.

[00:11:05] Angela: For sure. For sure. Yeah.

[00:11:07] Ian B: Um, so what, what, uh, what kind of work really gets you excited?

[00:11:13] Angela: Well, I am continuously excited about anything related to transportation where we can bring in different people’s experience. The story of how we get around in the world has been dominated by White dudes for a very long time, and when we look at things like even who bikes or who walks the most, you know, um, who feels the most comfortable doing it, right?

A lot of our design and infrastructure and the way we build cities is really designed with a specific group of people in mind.

[00:11:42] Ian B: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:43] Angela: And so many people, once you start talking to them about the role transportation plays in our lives, I think so many people start to realize, like, “Oh my gosh, this actually is affected by and affects almost every part.”

And so I get really excited when we get people from out of the metro, rural communities, um, Black and brown folks, women, trans fem folks. I just, I really get excited when we can support those kind of stories being told. I’m working on the last article in my series of the Aunties of Active Transportation.

Heck yeah. So it’s given me the accountability ’cause now once a month I’m talking to the people who are like, “Where’s your article?” And, you know, as I’ve gotten into the active transportation world, it’s just always fun to be in a group of other nerds who get excited about this because- Yeah, you found your people

it was a revelation to be like, “Holy cow, everything is affected by the way we get around in, in the world, and everything affects the way we get around in the world.” And so I’m really interested in the kind of like social and mobility justice aspect of it, so.

[00:12:40] Ian B: Sweet.

[00:12:41] Angela: All that makes me excited.

[00:12:42] Ian B: Yeah. What’s the article that you haven’t gotten around to yet?

[00:12:46] Angela: I’m really interested in how folks in more rural communities get around. Like, when you talk to folks from my hometown and you talk about biking, they’re like, “What does this have to do with me?” But then so, because so many of them don’t view it as, like, a means for transportation-

[00:13:02] Ian B: Mm-hmm …

[00:13:02] Angela: but are actually doing mode shift out of necessity already.

And so, so I think maybe I would do something like that. Like- But

[00:13:10] Ian B: does… Yeah, does their, like, mode shift look more like carpooling and-

[00:13:14] Angela: Carpooling. You gotta think about school drop-off, but also a lot of people do ride their bikes for fun or along the trail, or folks who lost their license or didn’t have a license, right?

‘Cause we had and still have no public transportation in the small town I grew up in.

[00:13:30] Ian B: Yeah.

[00:13:31] Angela: So it’d be cool to think about, like, what’s a day in a life of a person in a smaller community who doesn’t drive a car?

[00:13:37] Ian B: That sounds awesome. Um, well, Angela, uh, that is about all the time that we have, so thank you for coming on the show.

[00:13:44] Angela: Great. Thank you. My pleasure. Always happy to come and chat.

[00:13:49] Ian B: Here we are chatting with Ben Zvan. Ben, can you tell everybody, like, what committees you’re on?

[00:13:55] Ben: Yeah, sure. Um, I am on the tech committee, and I’m on the anti-racism committee. I’ve been thinking about joining a nonprofit, um, on a, as a board member for quite a while, and my wife actually pointed out, “Hey, Streets.mn is looking for board members,” and so I went and looked at it and said, “Hey, that, that aligns with my values and, uh, it’s something I’d like to get involved with.”

Neither one of us had heard of Streets.mn. Um, I’m not even sure how she saw that there was a call for applications for board member, but I’m glad she did.

[00:14:24] Ian B: There’s like a whole hidden infrastructure of, like, nonprofit organizations, you know, looking for staff members, looking for board members, uh, the –

[00:14:35] Ben: That, yeah, that is true.

She’s on more than one nonprofit board, so it certainly could have been through that network.

[00:14:40] Ian B: There you go. There you go.

[00:14:42] Ben: Yeah.

[00:14:42] Ian B: What about the tech committee and the anti-racism committee do you want people to know about? Like, what is … What’s the work that goes into those?

[00:14:50] Ben: The tech committee, basically it, when you go to the website, um, all that’s hosted by the tech committee, manages all the internal tools.

This Google Meet that we’re meeting on right now is part of that. All the documentation and stuff that we have internally is, is maintained by the tech committee. So, um, right now we’re looking at the website. Uh, we’re considering, you know, what’s, what’s the next thing that we’re going to do on it? How are we gonna change it to, to update it?

That kind of thing. Keep it fresh. For the anti-racism committee, uh, last year we put out a survey for both the board and, uh, our readership and listenership to kinda get a baseline of what the current audience is for Streets.MN. Unsurprisingly, it’s overwhelmingly white. It’s overwhelmingly white. It’s overwhelmingly straight.

Streets.MN has a strong desire to appeal to a more broad audience and to celebrate the voices of a more broad audience. Because I, you know, as a middle-aged, cisgender, heterosexual white man, I feel like my voice is out there enough. You know? I, if I wanna go and listen to myself talk, I can do that at literally any conference or any, any venue I want to.

Mm-hmm. So, um- Any podcast. Yeah, any podcast. I think we do have, uh, through another committee, we do have, uh, through editorial be- I believe it is, we have, um, some money, uh, to pay people who are from historically excluded groups to contribute. A lot of the time our contributors are, are volunteers, uh, but we are trying to expand that by, uh, making it worthwhile because when it comes down to it, uh, and I’ve, I see this, I’m in, I’m in tech as a day job, and I see this a lot of times, the people who are historically excluded are the ones who are responsible for doing the work of not being historically excluded, and they’re typically not compensated for that.

Uh, so that is, that is something that we’re working on. Right now we’re kind of on hiatus, um, just because we don’t have the, the staff on the board to, to really keep it moving.

[00:16:52] Ian B: I, I’m gonna go ahead and, and use that as like a call to action for listeners. If there’s anybody, you know, in the audience who feels strongly about the anti-racism, uh, work that we need to be doing, like apply for the board, uh, you know, next year when we, when we put out a call for board members.

Um, ’cause-

[00:17:11] Ben: Yeah, absolutely …

[00:17:12] Ian B: there’s, there’s a committee right there.

[00:17:13] Ben: Yeah, that should be coming up. Yeah, that should be coming up this fall. Our, our new board, uh, session starts in January, so we’ll be looking probably, uh, November, December. Um, also we have a volunteer, we have a, a group of volunteers. Uh, you don’t have to be on the board to contribute.

So if you wanna volunteer at an Open Streets or maybe one of the bus openings, we have tables. Um, you know, even, even just being a volunteer who occasionally says, “Hey, there’s this event in North Minneapolis that I think you guys should go to,” that would be super helpful.

[00:17:46] Ian B: Yeah. Um, Ben, what is an article or any piece for, for Streets Out of Men that you’ve been, like, meaning to write for a while?

[00:17:53] Ben: I had a pun name for this. Infrastructour.

[00:17:57] Ian B: Ah,

[00:17:58] Ben: okay. And I’d like to do, like, a, a series of articles about various pieces of infrastructure. You know, things like that bridge to nowhere that goes over the freeway. Um, I think it’s on 494. But, you know, why is that there? Mm. Why, what’s… You know, put up a QR code nearby so you can go and read the article.

[00:18:17] Ian B: There you go. Awesome. Ben, thanks for coming on the show.

[00:18:20] Ben: Yeah, thank you. Happy to be here.

[00:18:24] Ian B: Brian Mitchell, tell everybody what roles you have on the board right now.

[00:18:29] Brian: I’ve been on the board, uh, this is– I’m kinda in the middle of my fifth year. Yeah, I’m, uh, serving as secretary this year on the executive board, um, and I’ve been chairing the technology committee since I started in the beginning of 2022.

Nice. So those are kinda my two main roles this year.

[00:18:44] Ian B: What was your earliest post?

[00:18:47] Brian: My first post I wrote, I think I published it in April of 2022-

[00:18:52] Ian B: Yes …

[00:18:53] Brian: about selling my car. I think I called it “Pandemic for Good, How I Was Able to Sell My Car,” something like that.

[00:18:57] Ian B: Wow, you nailed it. I’m looking at it right now, and you got it in one.

[00:19:01] Brian: I’ve referred to it in the past. It, it’s– In the past when I’ve worked on website redesigns, uh, it’s kind of my test post of-

[00:19:07] Ian B: Ah.

[00:19:07] Brian: I’m gonna mess this post up. It’s my own. Then I revert it back later.

[00:19:11] Ian B: So in your time on the board, like, what, what have your goals been for, you know, taking Streets.mn forward?

Like, what have you been focusing on?

[00:19:20] Brian: It’s changed a little bit over the years. Um, in my first couple of years I was– I felt much more new and not, you know, figuring out I didn’t wanna step on anyone’s toes, not really emboldened to do quite as much, except in my little niche area. I really focused on tech for the first few years.

And so some things that, uh, I did there, again, shout out to Glen, helped to really, um, secure up our Google Workspace and start moving things into it and, and creating more policies around document use and kind of legitimizing us from a tech perspective.

[00:19:49] Parker: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:49] Brian: And then I kind of focused in 2023 on kind of website redesign.

I got much more familiar with our WordPress CMS and how to customize our theme and things like that. Then, uh, you know, helped launch ads a couple of years ago, um, which if you donate, we’d like to remove them. Right now I’m working on small volunteer effort to do another redesign of the website, a much more kind of robust to the core redesign, unlike the last theme, which was kind of a take what we currently had and do some uplift on the current theme.

You know, this year I’m on the exec board as secretary, so I’m playing kind of a different role at the same time, doing things like trying to, to grow our editorial committee and work with Cirien, our managing editor, who started, uh, last fall, so.

[00:20:30] Ian B: What’s the Streets.mn article that you’ve wanted to write for years but haven’t gotten around to it?

[00:20:36] Brian: I’m gonna just keep plugging my, my niche interests of the Midtown Greenway history and bridges and things like that. I’d love to see some images and a history article more into the history of building that, even than I went in my article I wrote about a year ago. Supposedly, there was a, a roughly two-block stretch of elevated rail over Fifth Ave on the Midtown Greenway when it was the railroad tracks, before they dug the trench.

And then when they dug the trench, they kinda inverted it, and they put most of the streets over the tracks. I don’t think any photo exists of that that I’ve seen, but maybe there does. I’d love to be like, “Look at this.” Also with, with Streets, I love seeing the, uh, as part of our core values is, uh, delight cultivating.

And so I love the, the whimsy, fun things that people are doing around the state and the Twin Cities. Find a series is what I think of for delight cultivating, which is just like what’s the weirdest things you’re transporting by bike on a greenway? Yeah. I think we have a bookshelf, a mattress, a, a tall, like, floor lamp.

You know, that, that kind of things. Mm-hmm. I, I really like that.

[00:21:33] Ian B: I enjoyed that, um, old, the classic article that you found about all of the emoji, the transportation emoji. Um, and we were talking about that that’s, that’s the style of humor that, that you would love to see, like, more of on the site again.

[00:21:48] Brian: Yeah. Uh, it was, uh, analyzing emoji from a transportation perspective. Uh, but it’s an article from 2014, uh, Nick Magrino wrote it, and so it’s extremely dated at the same time in terms of visuals of what the emojis look like and how many are available. But I think that’s kinda fun. It’d be cool to see a, a follow-up on that too.

[00:22:06] Ian B: Mm-hmm. Thanks for coming on the show, Brian.

[00:22:08] Brian: Thanks for having me.

[00:22:12] Erik: Uh, my name’s Erik Noonan. I am the, uh, one of the co-chairs of StreetsMN, and been involved with, uh, social media, I’ve been involved with editorial, I’ve been involved with fundraising. For the time being, I’m mostly just focused on, uh, the administrative stuff- Sure, behind the scenes.

[00:22:27] Ian B: Having that broad background of different things probably helps with the big picture that you gotta deal with as the co-chair. How did you come to the urbanist world and Streets.mn?

[00:22:38] Erik: Probably around 2015 I saw two maps in close proximity. One was a map of the, uh, historic trolley lines that used to run from, uh, Victoria in the west suburbs, which is like a fifth ring suburb, um, all the way to Stillwater, and that kinda blew my mind.

And, uh, about a week later I saw a map that was like a population density and kind of economic productivity map, and it was, it was the same map. Every map is the same map, but these, these two were especially the same. And it was, kinda blew my mind that 70 years after the system had been completely taken out, that it still had that overlap.

It was still, the density was still there, the, the economic vitality was still there. So I, I kind of started, uh, doing a deep dive in online communities, strong towns, and such, and I ended up finding, um, Streets MN. Really enjoyed it.

[00:23:21] Ian B: Yeah. And I, I remember, I think when we first met, I thought of you as, like, Mr. Rochester.

[00:23:26] Erik: So I’m from the Twin Cities originally. I spent some time down in Texas, and I moved back to Minnesota in 21, and I got involved with, uh, We Bike Rochester, uh, which is a chapter of BikeMN. Uh, it’s actually, it was the first chapter. It became a chapter- Oh, nice … in 2014, I believe. So well before my time there.

Like a lot of other non-profits at the time it, uh, had, uh, really had a challenging time during COVID. And I, um, I played a role in kind of rebuilding that and, uh, and really expanding how it viewed itself as an organization, uh, well beyond the, uh, j- just kind of focusing on bicycles. Uh, so now it, it, uh, really is, is focused on multi-modality and that holistic picture of what land use looks like.

Uh, and it’s, it’s, uh, pretty relevant during a time in Rochester’s history now, where there’s, uh, just, uh, inordinate, ungodly amounts of development and funding and, uh, construction.

[00:24:17] Ian B: At Streets specifically, like, what kinds of stuff are you working on in the organization that, that, you know, gets you the most excited about the future of Streets?

[00:24:25] Erik: We had a transition of who our managing… Our one employee, our managing editor, um, Amy Gage, who had really– And I, I once described, uh, uh, Streets as being the house that, uh, Amy built. She transitioned away from the organization last year, and we brought on, um, Serene, uh, who’s just incredible and has a really impactful, um, equity lens, and I’m hoping that we can continue to lean into that.

Obviously, we’ve, we’ve gone through some, some interesting things here in the Twin Cities especially, um, this year that have relevance to, to the, the spaces that we all inhabit, our streets. Uh, which is theoretically the, you know, the- these streets are meant beat. So I’m really kind of excited for what that looks like.

We are really, uh, we’re working hard to bring in new voices who haven’t historically been a part of the, the Streets, uh, landscape of, um, uh, contributors. And we’re also focusing on, on, uh, you know, leveraging some partnerships, including the one, um, with the Bicycle Alliance, uh, to bring in voices of, uh, people who live in different parts of the state that, you know, they share all of the same values we do.

They understand that, uh, um, the way we move around our spaces, um, impacts the way that, um, you know, how, how vital and how, um, enjoyable those spaces are to live in.

[00:25:31] Ian B: Yeah. Now, you, uh, are an employee at the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota. These are two organizations that are frequently working together, and so you are having to think about, like, the, you know, the benefit and the cost to both of those, uh, entities whenever we’re, like, partnering on stuff.

[00:25:48] Erik: The interplay between the Bicycle Alliance and, uh, Streets MN is, is what I hope it will be with all of the organizations that are kind of in this and serve in this space. Everybody benefits from more people talking about this subject and more people understanding it, um, in, in a more impactful way than, than we generally get from kind of, uh, the mainstream media.

That lens and being able to build the greater community around these intersectionalities between these, these different groups that have kind of specialized on be it transit or, uh, micro mobility or land use or, uh, highway removal, this is an ecosystem, and I think that, that Streets MN is really kind of the, at the center of it and, uh, hopefully is, is allowing the whole thing to function better.

Streets historically, it’s been many things. I think that it really came from a place of, uh, somewhat kind of wonky dorks, and I, I say that, um, lovingly as, as one of them. But I think that my hope for what the future of Streets is, is that it is both that, but that it’s also kind of talking again about it’s, it’s the pairing the quantitative with the qualitative and talking about, you know, “I like this space better with the bike lanes or with kind of a, you know, mixed use multi-generational housing because that feels better.

That’s the kind of place that I wanna live in. That’s the kind of place that I want my kids to grow up in.” And, um, that’s the kind of, uh, storytelling that I hope that we can be, be continuing to move into as, as an organization.

[00:27:06] Ian B: Awesome. Eric, thanks for coming on the show.

[00:27:09] Erik: Thanks for having me.

[00:27:13] Ian G: My name is Ian Gaida, pronouns he/him.

Uh, right now my main responsibility on the board is, uh, heading the volunteer committee. So if you want to volunteer for StreetsMN, don’t figure yourself a writer or videographer or podcaster, but wanna help out in other ways, uh, reach out, see what we can come up with.

[00:27:31] Ian B: Yeah. Can you, can you give some examples of like what, uh, volunteer roles other people have, have slotted into?

[00:27:39] Ian G: Uh, yeah. A lot… Mostly, uh, like the events committee, you know, always looking for people to help set up, take down when we host like our bonfires or our office hours and whatnot. Uh, as well as social media or technology committees, if you think you can slot in there. If you’re good at graphic design or good at programming.

Uh, just, you know, my role is kind of a guiding role, making sure people end up where they want to be in the organization.

[00:28:04] Ian B: Sweet.

[00:28:05] Ian G: Making sure people feel welcome too.

[00:28:08] Ian B: And, um, how did you discover Streets.mn? How did you come to like the urbanism, uh, community?

[00:28:15] Ian G: Oh, gosh. That’s a way long time ago now. Um, I think how I found StreetsMN specifically was, uh, my first few articles were actually adapted from like a semester-long project I wrote for, uh, a class I had in college called Technical Communications 2.

[00:28:33] Ian B: Mm.

[00:28:33] Ian G: Uh, we could ch- we had like this big project about, uh… The short version of it was save the world. You know, pick some cause or something. And I think just like doing research for that, ’cause my project, uh, was all about like expanding passenger rail, uh, in Minnesota and the Dakotas. I was living in Rapid City, South Dakota at the time.

And, you know, wouldn’t it be nice if I had a train between those two cities and didn’t have to drive all the time? That was kind of the impetus of, of it, and it kinda spiraled from there into, uh, now I have a YouTube channel, and, you know, I’ve written over a dozen articles for Streets, and show up for all these, uh, events and advocacy things.

[00:29:17] Ian B: And eventually, you know, it be- joining the board just seems like the natural thing to do. Um, so where, um, like where are you excited for Streets to head in the future? What, uh, like what work are you doing on the board that, that you’re excited about, you know, the next steps?

[00:29:35] Ian G: Uh, website redesign’s exciting.

I’m not overly involved with that. That’s another tech committee thing, but that’s probably like the biggest change we’ve made as an organization in a long time. Uh, I’ve been helping out with some video stuff. Uh, you know, pivot through video comes for us all. Um, but yeah, just sort of getting the process down for that and making that more, you know, supplemental to what we do, of course.

It’s not going to replace the writing, but, you know, if we get to something like the podcast where maybe like once or twice a month we get in a rhythm where we’re putting a video out.

[00:30:06] Ian B: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’m definitely excited about that as well. A dozen articles aside, what’s, what’s the article that you have been wanting to write for a long time but haven’t, haven’t gotten the time to do it yet?

[00:30:18] Ian G: Everything in my drafts folder.

[00:30:21] Ian B: I would like to note for the audience that you are one of the few people who, who writes, like, your entire article drafts in the WordPress CMS. Yes. Most people, most people write a document and then send that to Cirien.

[00:30:36] Ian G: Yeah. No, I… My thought is like, well, it’s gonna end up in there anyways.

So yeah, I, I’ve got… Let me look. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight- … nine, 10, 11. Yeah, 11 articles in the drafts. About half of them are for like the nuclear power series, which I haven’t had time to work on in a long time.

[00:30:56] Ian B: Sure.

[00:30:56] Ian G: Uh, I’ll get back to that. Uh, a few of them I’ll probably just end up scrapping at some point.

And one that I started writing ages and ages ago and just kinda got back to is called, uh, On the Motorized Tourist, and how, you know, how like we go… You and I have gone and explored the outdoors car-free.

[00:31:12] Ian B: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:13] Ian G: Like to to Winter Park or down to Buck Hill or whatever, and kind of focusing on that idea more.

I feel like that kind of gets lost in, uh, urbanist discourse. You know, we talk about saving the environment and, you know, better land use and whatnot, and well, what’s next? And meeting,

[00:31:28] Ian B: meeting people’s necessities, but not the recreation side gets lost.

[00:31:33] Ian G: Right. Or if it… You know, we do talk about the recreation side, it’s still in the context of ur- urban living.

Like-

[00:31:38] Ian B: Mm-hmm …

[00:31:39] Ian G: people should go see what it is we’re trying to preserve, right? And they should have the means to do that without an automobile.

[00:31:46] Ian B: All right, Ian, thank you for coming on the show.

[00:31:49] Ian G: Yeah, of course. Thank you.

[00:31:52] Ian B: Right now we’re gonna chat with Jeb Rach, who is, uh, you’re the treasurer on the board. Yeah.

Um, and any other significant roles?

[00:32:00] Jeb: Been involved with the event committee for a number of years, former chair. Yeah, other than that, basically treasurer, fundraising, all that sort of stuff.

[00:32:07] Ian B: Awesome. What brought you to urbanism, and like how did you discover Streets?

[00:32:12] Jeb: I was in college, and I didn’t wanna pay for downtown parking on a college budget.

And I saw that Metro Transit had park and rides, so I could park and then take the train in, and it was cheap.

[00:32:25] Ian B: Nice.

[00:32:25] Jeb: Um, and so that started a very long and winding path to Streets.mn. And I think I first started by volunteering on the events committee about a year or two after I moved to the Twin Cities.

[00:32:38] Ian B: Mm.

[00:32:39] Jeb: 2017-ish. 2017,

[00:32:41] Ian B: I think, yeah, is about the era when I started reading Streets and, and you know, the first time that I saw a post that was like, “We’re gonna have our annual potluck.” And I was like, “Oh my God, there’s a potluck? Like I could meet the other people- … who write on this website? Like, that’s so cool.”

[00:32:59] Jeb: You can meet these other nerds who nerd about the exact same thing I do?

[00:33:02] Ian B: I, it was, it felt very intimidating to me at the time. Like, you know, meeting all these people who I looked up to. Yeah.

[00:33:09] Jeb: Yeah.

[00:33:10] Ian B: What’s your philosophy on like what makes a good event?

[00:33:13] Jeb: Obviously the goals are gonna be a little bit different for each one.

Mm-hmm. Um, but in general I think making them accessible to as many people as possible, and as welcoming as we possibly can to welcome anyone who’s interested and aligned with our vision to be able to attend these events, meet other people, and build community around it.

[00:33:32] Ian B: On the treasurer side, f- you know, fundraising, uh, aside from, you know, please, uh, be a sustaining donor, like what-

what should people know about the fundraising side of, of, uh, Streets.mn?

[00:33:43] Jeb: It’s much easier to budget monthly reoccurring donations than it is one-time donations. Make sure that you’re donating only what you can afford, but if you know that you’ve got an extra 10 bucks a month because you’re no longer putting gas in the car as often because we’ve motivated you to bike or take the bus, we’ll take that money.

And kind of on the technical side of things, there’s a fair bit of paperwork that goes into just keeping an organization, especially with the 501[c][3]. They do make it relatively simple for a small organization like us. On the federal side it’s maybe 10 minutes a year where I have to just attest that we still exist.

So since we now are actually paying a person, the state of Minnesota requires us to give them a more detailed, like revenue minus expenses is the correct way of phrasing that. Yeah, yeah,

[00:34:26] Ian B: yeah.

[00:34:27] Jeb: But the only pa- person that is paid by Streets is our managing editor, which we value and we want to put out a good product, which is why we have a managing editor that is paid.

[00:34:40] Ian B: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:41] Jeb: All the other work that you see b- behind the scenes- is all volunteer run. Our entire board volunteer. We are extremely intentional with how we spend our money, and we only spend it on the things that we believe are the most valuable, which right now is keeping our website up and having a managing editor to make sure w- we put out, we have the best content that we possibly can from our writers.

[00:35:06] Ian B: What’s the article that you’ve been thinking about writing for a long time, but haven’t gotten around to?

[00:35:11] Jeb: I want to start, basically do a photo journal of different metro transit routes or different transit routes- Mm … throughout the metro.

[00:35:20] Ian B: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:20] Jeb: Basically, just, like, ride them, take a f- take a few pictures at different locations on, on the route of, like, interesting things I find or just, they might not be the biggest or most important landmark, but they’re like, “Oh, that seems kind of neat.”

[00:35:33] Ian B: Yeah.

[00:35:34] Jeb: Just kind of spark joy and maybe encourage some people to get out and explore a route that they haven’t tried before. I mean, maybe it’s kind of a s- I wouldn’t say spiritual successor, but kind of in the same, like, brainstorm as what started the Where Does This Bus Go?

[00:35:51] Ian B: Ah, yeah.

[00:35:51] Jeb: Like-

[00:35:51] Ian B: Yeah, yeah,

[00:35:52] Jeb: yeah

yeah, from Tane Danger back in, it’s been a while since there’s been a new one of those. But just kind of, like, that same thought process of like, “Hey, where can you go on a ran- on the, on a random bus route in the Twin Cities?”

[00:36:03] Ian B: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you want, you wanna make, like, a, the, the Rick Steves guide to the E line.

[00:36:09] Jeb: Yeah. Oh, I would say more niche than that. The Rick Steves guide to the 225.

[00:36:15] Ian B: Yeah, sure. Awesome. Uh, Jeb, thanks for coming on the show.

[00:36:22] Jeb: Thank you

[00:36:25] Ian B: All right, here we are sitting down with Jeremy Winter. Uh, Jeremy, what is your role on the Streets.mn board?

[00:36:31] Jeremy: I am the co-chair of Streets.mn.

[00:36:34] Ian B: Nice. So that puts you automatically on the executive committee.

[00:36:38] Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:38] Ian B: Uh, you’re also involved in the podcast committee. You’ve been there for a while.

[00:36:41] Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:42] Ian B: So what brought you to Streets.mn? How did you discover, like, the urbanist space?

[00:36:47] Jeremy: I’ve used public transit my entire life. I am from the New York City Metro Area in a suburban town called Glen Rock in northeastern New Jersey.

And so my hometown had two train stations to New York City, um, as well as being the final stop on the commuter express bus to Manhattan. Mm. Which is huge because that bus literally had half the travel time of the non-express variant. As a kid, I had a brief stint as a child actor.

[00:37:18] NJ: Okay.

[00:37:19] Jeremy: Um, so my mom and I would take the, the bus in because, you know, only two people, that, that doesn’t make any sense to drive.

Yeah. Um, but, but for people like that who go sem- infrequently, maybe just for museums or things like that, or a Broadway show, they’re probably going to drive in. But it is very normalized to ride transit specifically for w- that exact purpose, that one purpose of going to New York City. Yeah. Like, for the most part, driving to New York is seen as, like, a you got, y- you’ve got guts-

to do that. Like, what? Like, no one would look at it that way in Minneapolis. Like, driving to Minneapolis is a very normal thing to do.

[00:37:51] Ian B: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:52] Jeremy: But, like, you gotta have a good reason to drive to New York City.

[00:37:54] Ian B: Yeah, unless you know that there’s like, oh, it is a Taylor Swift concert. Mm. There’s absolutely no way that I’m gonna drive into downtown- Right

when everybody else is trying to do that.

[00:38:03] Jeremy: For sure. That’s true. Very specific events. It’s that logic, but all the time- Yeah … with New York. So it’s a very car-dependent place for 99% of things. Anything you do in New Jersey, wholly car dependent. Mm. Um, and in, not in a good way because we don’t have any grid layouts.

It’s just all the roads are old and go in this weird mishmash of shapes that make no logical sense. Mm-hmm. So it’s not even nice to drive. It’s just a terrible transportation system all around.

[00:38:27] Ian B: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:27] Jeremy: When I moved to Minnesota, in 2019 I lived in the suburb of North Saint Paul, and I was just very isolated, living alone.

I didn’t really have a lot of friends. I didn’t know many people. But I started just driving into Minneapolis every now and again, um, made some friends there, started hanging out. And I, I think I sort of got into urbanism in part because of my anger at be- … being stuck in North Saint Paul and being a little miserable.

Since then I’ve moved to Minneapolis and I h- I can confirm I’m much happier since then. And-

[00:38:55] Ian B: It’s solved all your problems.

[00:38:56] Jeremy: Yes. Perfect life here in Minneapolis. Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. Especially not in Uptown. Everything’s great. What really got me involved was the, um, Move Minnesota Livable Lyndale campaign in 2023.

Mm. Doing volunteer work with that campaign. But they had me write an article for Streets. Uh, Move MN had me do it.

[00:39:15] Stina: Oh.

[00:39:15] Jeremy: Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay They, they enlisted me. They’re like, “We want an article for Streets. Uh, you seem like you’d be good,” and I wrote the article. They didn’t actually do anything.

They’re just like, “You, please do this.” Yeah. And I’m like, “Okay.”

[00:39:24] Ian B: You got volun-told.

[00:39:25] Jeremy: Yeah, basically. And that was cool, and I, I thought it was a fun process, you know, working with our then editor, Amy. It was really awesome because I was a little unsure about our writing. I felt shaky. I was like, “I don’t know. I feel like I’m too angry.

No one’s gonna wanna hear from this angry guy.” But Amy made me sound so cool and calm and collected. It was, it was wonderful. It was like magic.

[00:39:44] Ian B: Nice. We, we know what your first article was. Mm. Um, but what is the article that you have been wanting to write for a long time and you just haven’t gotten around to it yet?

[00:39:53] Jeremy: One thing I’d like to do is a deeper investigation into the death of Nice Ride. I’d like to compare- Mm … how it was when it ended with, uh, modern contemporary bike share systems around the world and what a modern Nice Ride could be for the Twin Cities, what its ideal features would have- Mm … how it would be well-integrated, maybe some concepts for s- different, uh, stops, you know, racks and locations, integration with the transit system.

I think there’s a lot of potential there to, to imagine a better future. It, it’s a shame it died so silently. I think a article that, like, gave people hope for a future Nice Ride might kind of reignite-

[00:40:28] Ian B: Mm-hmm …

[00:40:28] Jeremy: that flame- Mm-hmm … in people’s hearts to get it back.

[00:40:31] Ian B: Cool. Well, Jeremy, thank you for coming on the show.

[00:40:34] Jeremy: Thank you so much, Ian.

[00:40:37] Ian B: All right, so now we’re chatting with M- Morgan Radick, uh, who is on the Streets.mn board. Morgan, what, like, committees, what are you involved with on the Streets board?

[00:40:46] Morgan: Yeah, so, um, I recently joined the board this year, and so far I’ve been involved with the fundraising side and, um, a little bit of the social media.

[00:40:55] Ian B: Sweet. And how did you discover, like, Streets.mn and the, the urbanist movement in general?

[00:41:03] Morgan: So I discovered Streets.mn shortly after I moved here, which was last summer. From Phoenix, Arizona. Oh, there you go. Um, so pretty big, pretty big change. Um, we moved here for a variety of reasons. Having seasons and better weather, um, but also because we’d heard a lot about, like, the bike infrastructure in the Twin Cities, and so I was super excited about that.

And I got a cargo bike when we moved here, um, and I bike my eldest to school, and I take, um, Summit Avenue. So while I was biking on Summit Avenue, I saw a lot of street signs about, like, SOS, Save Our Streets. Um, looked that up, found my way to Streets.mn and the reporting on that whole movement, learned about, like, the proposed bike lane changes on Summit Avenue.

Since then, Streets.mn has been my source of, like, hyper-local news on transit. And I guess like-

[00:41:53] Ian B: I love that the opposition brought you to us somehow.

[00:41:57] Morgan: Yeah. It was, like, the only place I could find, like, infor- the information I was looking for. Mm. Um, like, the, the amount of reporting and stuff that I wanted to find on that topic.

Um, so yeah, I went down a rabbit hole and was happy to find Streets.mn. Um, but I guess, like, my interest in kind of urbanism has come about just from… I moved around a lot growing up, so I’ve lived in a lot of different cities, and I’ve always appreciated and enjoyed seeing different types of transit and how cities were designed.

Lived in Washington, DC, and I learned more about urbanism there, um, just by the fact that, like, I never had to use a car, uh, which was really great. Um, so yeah, I’ve always kind of been interested in that type of stuff.

[00:42:36] Ian B: Yeah, I, as somebody who, for the most part, has only lived in the Twin Cities, I can imagine that the experience of, like, having drastically different built forms around you, and y- you really notice, like, the, okay, I’m in this particular city.

I am being, it, I do not have the incentives to own a car and- Yeah … drive around every single day, versus, you know, um, I assume that Phoenix, Arizona is, uh, on the other end of the spectrum.

[00:43:04] Morgan: Yeah, incredibly car dependent. I was driving, like, three hours a day just commuting, doing school drop off. Um, yeah, it was- Yeesh

and, and, like, our neighborhood, even though it was residential, it wasn’t really even walkable just because we had really fast, busy, several lane streets, like, you know, running through the neighborhood. So it’s been nice to be here and have it be a much quieter area where we’re living.

[00:43:27] Ian B: Excellent. Um, and, uh, actually, you know what?

I wanna go back to, uh, the, the icebreaker question that Jeremy used at our last board meeting. Um, what’s, what’s the Streets.mn article that you wanna write but you haven’t gotten around to it yet?

[00:43:44] Morgan: Yeah, so I have family in Kansas City, um, so I make the drive down there from here m- more than I, I guess, thought I would, but it’s nice to be within driving distance of them now.

Um, but I learned that there’s, like, a proposed or an idea for a, a train line from St. Paul down to Kansas City, so I would really like to, like, learn more about that.

[00:44:07] Ian B: And, uh, where w- where are you excited for Streets to go in the near future? Where, what, what work on, do you wanna be doing on the board to, like, take us forward into the next chapter?

[00:44:17] Morgan: Um, well, I’ve really enjoyed f- reading the articles that are coming from, like, other places around Minnesota, um, that are kind of outside of the Twin Cities area just because as a new person to the, to the state, you know, the Twin Cities is what I’m familiar with, but I really like hearing about transit and urbanism from, like, other parts of the state.

So yeah, I guess just, like, supporting that type of, um, reporting. I think it’s really cool that anyone can write for Streets.mn and submit article ideas. So yeah, just supporting that side of it.

[00:44:54] Ian B: Sweet. All right, Morgan, thank you for coming on the show.

[00:44:57] Morgan: Thank you.

[00:45:00] Parker: Hi, I’m Parker. I’ve been with the, on the board for Streets.mn for a couple years now.

Main things I do is podcast, volunteer committee, and try to, try to do stuff with the tech committee, though I think I’m stretching myself thin a little bit. So as much as I wanna be more involved with the other sort of stuff, those are the kind of the three main things that I try to put my focus on.

[00:45:18] Ian B: Yeah. Yeah. I remember the first time that we met was Jeremy introduced us, “This guy is interested in podcast editing and learning more about audio stuff. We should bring him onto the podcast team.” And I was like, “Okay, who’s this guy?”

[00:45:34] Parker: Yeah. And I quickly learned that the, you are far more experienced and skilled in podcasting stuff than I am, because my experience was I would record my friend and I talking on a phone for about an hour, and then I’d use that to practice using Audacity with.

[00:45:52] Ian B: I feel like you know more about some of the effects and tools that are in Audacity than I do. Like, you introduced me to the Paulstretch.

[00:46:00] Parker: Oh, yeah. In high school, I had a computer that had the Adobe Suite and, uh, Audacity and other sort of, like, media tools that were, like, part of the school stuff, and no friends.

So I- … spent a lot of time, like, teaching myself how to edit. But it would be, like, doing the most extreme sorta stuff. It was, it was basically the audio form of a YouTube Poop. Yeah. Which if you upload that to SoundCloud, I believe people call that a SoundClown.

[00:46:27] Ian B: Of course they do.

[00:46:28] Parker: But it, it is a decent way to learn this stuff because you learn, okay, what does this effect do?

And then you do it to the extreme and go, “Oh, okay, that’s how it manipulates the audio-” Oh, yeah … or whatever.

[00:46:36] Ian B: Yeah, I, I’ve had students in some, like, podcasting classes who, like, intentionally just try to break my ears. How can we just push Mr. Buck to the edge of sanity? All right. So how did you, like, discover the urbanism movement and, and Streets.mn specifically?

[00:46:55] Parker: I pretty much think it was, like, that meeting with you and Jeremy because he’s the one I believe also that introduced me to Move Minnesota, and that’s how I got involved with the actual- Right … activism part of it. Though I think the seeds were kind of already there in that I liked biking in general. I…

When I went to my college town, that was like the first town I lived in where you could feasibly walk from, like, where you live to a McDonald’s or a gas station- Hmm … or something. Like, I enjoyed that part of it, and then I moved here and like, wow, I can st- I can do that with far more things to do. So it just leaned into something I already liked but finally gave me the opportunity to, like, really explore it.

[00:47:33] Ian B: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:34] Parker: I started to bike to work and kinda set myself a challenge for, oh, it’s starting to snow. Well, let’s see at what point the snow becomes too much, and then I don’t wanna bike to work anymore. And then that never happened.

[00:47:47] Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:47] Parker: Kinda s- just kept spinning out from there of just, this is fun. Oh, there’s friends here too.

Oh, there’s friends, and it’s fun, and so on and so on. Having grown up in a really small town, I would want to try to find ways to write about, you know, transportation or city design or, you know, how we make the spaces work for us, or, you know, what’s, what’s missing about it for the, you know, hundreds of small towns that are all across Minnesota.

People live there. People have lives and thoughts and, and wants and all these sort of things. So, like, I don’t want to tell them, “Yeah, you need to, you know, be really dense and, and urbanized,” because, like, if you did that for a town of the size that I’m thinking of, you would fit everybody into, in a single apartment building.

And I don’t want to say, like, you have to do that. No. You can, you can have a small town with the experience that’s there and also have it be bikeable or have a, like a, a, a bus s- system that goes through these small towns or something like that. Yeah, I’d wanna write about those towns and what it’s like there, what can be done to help support them better.

[00:48:50] Ian B: Nice. And then, uh, last question. What, what work on the board are you, like, excited to help bring Streets.mn into, into its next chapter?

[00:49:02] Parker: Uh, a lot of the podcast focus that I’ve had has been trying to work with content creators in the similar sort of space who don’t necessarily focus in Minnesota, but have, you know, relevant thoughts that can apply back to here.

But I want to try to connect with those larger creators, pull them into the Minnesota space for a bit so that the people in Minnesota who watch them circle back to Minnesota content. And then as part of that, start to grow more of the, uh, video space, start to connect with other projects like, uh, OpenStreetMap, uh, Panoramax, and stuff like that.

[00:49:39] Ian B: Streets.mn is kind of the thing that ties all of those different venues together.

[00:49:45] Parker: Yeah.

[00:49:46] Ian B: Awesome.

[00:49:46] Parker: Thank you for your questions, Ian.

[00:49:47] Ian B: Thanks for coming on the show, Parker. All right, here we are with NJ Hanson. So, NJ, I don’t think that I had met you before you joined the board and joined the podcast committee.

So tell everybody a little bit about yourself.

[00:50:02] NJ: I’m NJ, pronouns he, they. First came onto Streets actually as a board member when I applied because none of the events, I always wanted to go to them, but none of them were on my timeline basically. And this was the absolute way I could, like, get involved on Streets, like, the easiest possible.

It’s like you’re also, like, forced to go in there. Um, but I first encountered Streets about three years ago when I was living in Iowa. I was working for a state senator for a couple years down there. I was a suburban commuter, and right before that I was in college living in this beautiful walkable community in Iowa City, and I loved that.

And at the same time on YouTube I started getting, like, recommendations for, of course, Not Just Bikes, but also City Nerd. Ray is probably my favorite urbanist YouTuber right now. So anyway, I was, like, looking up all this stuff about Minnesota at the time because the DFL had the trifecta. I was like, “Wow, this is so amazing that they can have all these fantastic programs.”

Whereas in Iowa we are trapped by the devil basically. And we were all jealous. I had a friend who was moving up there, and I was like, “You know what? I think I’ll just bite the bullet and move up.” And I’ve not regretted it at all, and Streets was in that mix. It helped me learn a lot of nerdy stuff that I do not regret, uh, spending time on.

[00:51:20] Ian B: I think listeners are gonna be interested in knowing that you are a Metro Transit light rail operator. That wasn’t the start of your career, right? You have driven buses in other towns as well.

[00:51:30] NJ: Correct. So the way it worked in my college town was that the students could drive the buses, which is… it’s certainly unique.

Um-

[00:51:38] Ian B: It’s a way of doing things.

[00:51:40] NJ: It- yeah, it’s certainly a way of doing things, uh, because it’s students, and you know how students are.

[00:51:45] Ian B: Yeah.

[00:51:45] NJ: But the CDL, the common joke is for people who have had the same experience as me, is the most valuable thing we got out of college. Because it has paid us the most- par none compared to any career job we’ve tried to enter to.

For example, like when I worked at the State House, I made 14 bucks an hour. In driving a bus in Iowa City, I made 18.

[00:52:06] Ian B: Mm.

[00:52:07] NJ: And so I had to have two jobs at the time, even though working at the state house was a full-time 40-hour job.

[00:52:12] Ian B: Mm.

[00:52:13] NJ: And so I moved up here, was initially wanting to get involved in political stuff, but politics is pretty much the same everywhere.

If you don’t have the connections, you can’t get in.

[00:52:22] Ian B: Right.

[00:52:23] NJ: And so I was like, “Okay, let’s try transit again.” Initially, I had, like, a little job working at the Wedge in the Linden Hills location, being a grocery stocker, living that childhood nostalgia ’cause I worked in grocery stores when I was a kid.

[00:52:37] Ian B: Oh.

[00:52:38] NJ: And I was like, “Yeah, I need a lot of money to afford the place I live. I don’t have a car, so that saves me a lot of money.” Especially now, ’cause I bike everywhere and I love that. So the place I live, I am comfortable paying more to have, like, less stress in my life, and that is, like, the peak urbanist experience in my opinion.

So yeah, training took, like, four months. I applied all the way back in August right after I moved up here in 2024, I think it was, and I didn’t start training until the next June. I’ve been a light rail operator for about nine months now, and it is a stressful but very fun and very unique job that I very much love.

[00:53:18] Ian B: Nice. So what all are your roles on the Streets.mn board? Obviously, you’re on the podcast committee. Folks have heard your voice on the April Fools’ Day episode, and you’ve been behind the scenes- Yes … doing editing and, uh, and transcribing occasionally. But what else are you doing?

[00:53:33] NJ: So there’s podcast. I also dabble a little bit into events.

Not so much recently due to some personal time constraints. But I also am helping rebuild the editorial council as, uh, the brand new content manager.

[00:53:44] Ian B: Awesome. That seems like probably the most impactful role out of all of those. What are you, like, excited to, to carry forward in that role?

[00:53:54] NJ: I’m excited to get basically the internal workings to, like, fully work together.

I really wanna see us collaborate a lot more between our separate committees. ‘Cause when I was in a student organization in college, I, uh, was in leadership. And the way I carried myself, I was, like, very much wanting a collaborative and engaged mindset when I was taking on that role. So that’s why… what I would like to bring to Streets.

[00:54:19] Ian B: Awesome. Anything else you wanna say to the audience before we say goodbye?

[00:54:24] NJ: If you request me to honk my horn for you when I’m driving the train, I will do it. So if you see a blonde guy with glasses driving the train, that’s probably me.

[00:54:34] Ian B: Awesome. NJ, thanks for coming on the show.

[00:54:36] NJ: Of course.

[00:54:38] Ian B: All righty. Here we are chatting with Regina Bernstein.

Go ahead and introduce yourself and tell everybody, like, what your roles are on the Streets.mn board.

[00:54:47] Regina: Yeah, hi. I am Regina. I am a transportation planner. I am on the events committee, and I am also on the editorial committee, which is paused sort of, finding its new structure, I guess. A few board members left last year and, uh, who were leading it more or less.

So now we’re figuring out how to restart it.

[00:55:12] Ian B: There we go. So professional life of being a transportation planner and then also, like, doing this volunteer board member stuff in a transportation and land use related, like, publication. Yeah, talk about, like, that balance.

[00:55:26] Regina: I try not to write about or talk about too much the state projects that are going on.

Like, um, Rethinking I-94 is one that obviously my employer is working on. There’s plenty of other projects that need advocacy, that need my time and my, my attention, so I’ve been working a lot on like the Lyndale Avenue project, which is a Hennepin County project. The knowledge of a transportation planner is really helpful in being a part of Streets MN.

Knowing how things work behind the scenes, I guess, is really helpful.

[00:56:00] Ian B: I remember when, I think it was Our Streets, uh, had like a social media post that said something along the lines of like, uh, “Bully your local transportation planner,” or something like that. Yeah. And a lot of our friends were like, “Hey, that’s not really the vibe.”

[00:56:16] Regina: Yeah. There’s a lot of… I work with a lot of wonderful planners who understand that our transportation system is not working well for anyone, and who are trying to change things within the system. And, and so when you’re bullying your local transportation planner, those are the people on the other side.

And, and I think, um, it’s really easy to say, “Oh, MnDOT is this big, horrible organization,” and, like, historically, it kind of has been, so that’s fair, but now it is a lot of really great people working to change things from the inside. And so maybe unfair a little bit. It is really difficult to change the trajectory of such a big bureaucracy, and I think that’s one of the main struggles of improving the way that we do projects, is just streng- uh, changing the processes that are so ingrained in these big bureaucracies.

[00:57:08] Ian B: Right. What work on the Streets.MN board really excites you?

[00:57:12] Regina: Restarting the winter gala. That’ll be really cool. Adding a new, not a new event, but an event that Streets used to do, um, to try to get a little more funding, but, but more than that, a little more engagement, I think. We have a lot of great board members, and we have a lot of great content, but I don’t think we are necessarily reaching all the people that we could be reaching, and I think restarting this event might be a good way to bring in more diverse audiences maybe.

Just more people around the Twin Cities that don’t know who we are. I know there’s a lot of people moving here right now from other states. Mm. Uh, particularly like Florida and Texas seem to be the big ones based on, you know, trying to escape bad politics, and a lot of those people would be really supportive of the Streets ethos.

Broadening our, our reach and our, getting our message across further.

[00:58:02] Ian B: What’s the one article that you have been wanting to write but you haven’t gotten around to it yet?

[00:58:07] Regina: The Soo Line Garden. Mm. An update about that, since I live right next to it, um, and I see all the things that have been going on. Soo Line Garden is one that I have a draft of and I’ve been trying to get back to for a long time.

[00:58:21] Ian B: There you go. That’s a, that’s a very good sign. Yeah. Um, awesome. Regina, thank you for coming on the show.

[00:58:29] Regina: Yeah, thank you so much.

[00:58:31] Ian B: And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Streets.mn podcast. The show is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, non-derivative license, so feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it and you are not profiting from it.

The music in this episode is by Eric Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was hosted and edited by me, Ian R. Buck, with editing assistance from Jeremy Winter, and was transcribed by Stina Neel. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.mn podcast, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].

Streets.mn is a community publication and relies on contributions from audience members like you. If you can make a one-time or recurring donation, you can find more information about doing so at streets.mn/donate. Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag StreetsMNPodcast.

Until next time, take care

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