For this month’s Faces and Places, we talked to Nick Birth and Matthew Blain from SF Urban Riders. Read on to learn how the group came to be, and how they revitalized Laguna Honda’s trail system!
“SF Urban Riders was founded in 2009 as a citywide trails, advocacy, and mountain bike group by the late Dan Schneider. He was also a founder of Sutro Stewards. The organization did work throughout the city, though the project we’re best known for now is Laguna Honda.
Laguna Honda was a really exciting possibility we found from some old trail advocacy that Livable City had done. We started exploring, and eventually, made a proposal to the hospital to revive the trail network there.
It took a lot of work to find a contact to introduce ourselves to, but they were totally welcoming to have somebody improve the property, make it more accessible to neighbors, and a more integrated part of the city.”
We’ve probably done most of the trail work, but we’ll never be done, this is an ongoing trail and habitat forever.
“The major work has been in three phases. We got a CCG grant in 2016 then did the top-most part. The second phase was funded with participatory budgeting. That let us do the next section which went up to the parking lot. Then the third phase was CCG funded.
The current project is a habitat project. We clear out blackberry, but we also plant native plants, often ones that are raised in San Francisco to improve biodiversity.
We’ve probably done most of the trail work, but we’ll never be done, this is an ongoing trail and habitat forever.
Parks Alliance has supported this by letting us focus on the project and not administrative details. Identifying grant opportunities, helping with application processes, and just being there as a supportive partner.
Our advice to others starting their own project? It can seem scary to reach out to an institution like the hospital we were working with, and it took us a few years to work up the courage to do that. Once we did, they were so happy to see it. It made me wish we could’ve been more direct.
The best way for people to get involved is to show up at one of our work days. It’s the second Saturday of every month! The other thing they can do is follow us on social media (@sfurbanriders) and join our newsletter.”