Day 1 (3/26/23): Peter Arrives in Montgomery

 LOCATION: Montgomery, AL (Peter’s Post)

I arrived on March 25 in Montgomery right on schedule at 3:15 and checked into the hotel and went adventuring to see if I could locate Capitol City Bikes to pick up the bikes, about 1/2 mile away.  What struck me on a Saturday afternoon was how empty the city seemed.  There were no cars on the streets and very few people about.  Montgomery, like every other city its size seems to have been hollowed out by the flight to the suburbs of the residents and then the building of malls, big box stores, etc. that emptied the city of everything except government offices.  Since Montgomery is the state Capitol of Alabama, the government presence is substantial.  

However, as one looks closely and as evening arrived and festivities began (3 big weddings, a baseball group called Savannah Banana (the Harlem globe trotters of baseball, I’m told) was in town, it all came alive.  That’s when I realized how much redevelopment has gone on in downtown Montgomery.  The bars & restaurants filled up, music was in the air, and it got lively.  It’s an amazingly beautiful downtown and waterfront on the Alabama River so it’s good to see a lot of the old buildings renovated and repurposed.  Also, just in the walking around, one couldn’t miss the fact that there are museums, plaques, statues, etc. everywhere that memorialize the civil rights movement. 

I met Jeff the next morning at his bike shop and had a wonderful interchange.  Jeff’s shop, Capitol City Bicycle Repair & Service is co-located with a public house (coffee shop in the a.m. and bar etc. in the evening and gathering place all day long).  It’s located in a small commercial strip at 5 points, right on the Selma-Montgomery march route and is in the redevelopment phase.  Jeff is a former Washingtonian and knows the bike scene in Seattle that I got to know in 1977 when I moved there.  We had lots to catch up on and he filled me in a lot about his history and about Montgomery from a local’s perspective.  Jeff has become my new BFF and our guardian angel for all things bike related in Montgomery.   Probably more to say about Jeff and his mission later.   Bottom line about Montgomery is that I’d like to spend more time there….it’s dripping with history and many people have a personal connection to it and backstories to many of the events that went down here 60-70 years ago.