Editor's Note: This article first published in the November/December 2016 print edition of Bicycling. Subscribe today!

It was one of Pope Francis’s more obscure miracles—for one weekend, in Philadelphia’s typically car-clogged Center City, the streets were wide open for bike riding and other types of motor-free gallivanting.

When the news came out that the Secret Service would be closing 4.7 square miles of streets to cars in the so-called Pope Zone for the historic September 2015 visit, local cyclist Alexandra Schneider saw a huge opportunity for bikes. She sent out a call on social media: “The streets will all be closed—let’s have a ride!” Schneider expected to recruit about five to 10 friends to join her on a 10-mile loop. But media outlets picked up on the PopeRide story. Ultimately 3,000 cyclists showed up. Its success gave rise to an Open Streets campaign in Philadelphia, and in July of this year, the city announced that the first Philly Free Streets event would take place September 24.

The Open Streets fervor also attracted the ire of Stu Bykofsky, a Philadelphia Daily News columnist known for his hot takes on bike lanes and scofflaw cyclists, among other things. Schneider, who’d been reading his column for years, says she “fangirled” at being personally called out. “I felt like, ‘I’ve made it!’” she says.

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After Schneider reached out to him via Facebook, Bykofsky—who insists that he’s not anti-cyclist, just anti-bad cyclist behavior—agreed to meet with her. Together with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, they organized Byko’s Safe Bike Ride, an 11-mile, law-abiding group ride through the city that raised $2,000 for an organization that serves homeless women and children. Bykofsky also agreed to stop referring to cyclists as “pedalphiles”—provided that local bike advocates refrained from describing him as “anti-bike.”

Schneider thinks more of that kind of dialogue—and more Open Streets events—has the power to show people that everyday cycling can be the norm.

“A lot of critics are people who still view cycling as an activity for children,” she says. “One of the best ways to engage those people is to present an image of cycling that’s like, ‘Let’s go have a picnic and instead of driving, we’ll ride there—let’s go about our daily lives, but with bikes!’”

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