Touring Sacramento's Design Treasures By Bicycle

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Image courtesy of Design Rides on Facebook

This Saturday, May 18, brings Sacramento Modern’s second Mid-Century Modern Homes tour, and with it the chance to take a uniquely historical bike ride by participating in the city’s Design Rides series. As participants of past Design Rides have learned, bicycling and architecture tours go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

The upcoming Design Ride is an organized bike ride that visits the stops on the Mid-Century Modern Homes tour as it winds through neighborhoods and past points of interest for the mid-century modern design aficionado. And while the Mid-Century Modern Homes tour happens May 18 (tickets are still available here), at least two more Design Rides are planned for this summer and fall.

On a bike, “you get to see the community at a human scale at a human speed,” says Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates executive director Jim Brown. Riders get a “low-speed experience of how a house fits into a neighborhood, how neighborhoods fit together, you get a nice strong sense of the fabric of the community.”

For example, the Mid-Century Modern Homes ride winds through William Land Park. “In it is a zoo, a children’s park, and a golf course, all designed around the same era and all with similar architectural features. We’ll be riding past those to put the homes in context,” Brown says.

Plus, architecture rides are fun because they’re social. “It’s a great way to spend an afternoon together with people who share your interest in good design.”

Two more upcoming rides this year include a visit to the GOOD street food and design market on Aug. 4, and an event called Mid-Century Mobile, scheduled for the first weekend in October, that features vintage trailers such as Airstreams along Del Paso Boulevard.

The rides start from the downtown bike shop-cum-pizzeria Hot Italian, where partner Andrea Lepore helps organize them. Information on upcoming events can be found on Design Rides’ Facebook page, but we’ll drop a reminder here as well. Meanwhile, check out this video from the last Design Ride:

Doesn’t that look like fun?