Streetsie

This is both my favorite and least favorite column to write.  On one hand, it's amazing to reflect on all of the people that make up the movement that will change Los Angeles.  On the other hand, trying to decide a "person of the year" from all of those same people is kind of difficult.  To make my life a little easier, this year we have four people of the year.  Just a reminder, one cannot win a "person of the year" award two years in a row:

In many ways, 2010 was just business as usual for the all-dominating car-culture.  Politicians and the police continue to say stupid things.  Cyclists and pedestrians are still getting run down in the street with near impunity.  The Metro Board of Directors still manages to muck things up, even when the whole county overwhelmingly backed a transit tax just two years ago.  2010: It was the Worst of Times

If someone had told me a year ago that we would be celebrating a Bike Plan that the cycling community loved, that Metro would have already received some 30/10 money from the federal government and that the LAPD was being praised for its bike-friendly efforts at the end of the year I wouldn't have thought them crazy.  I just would have ignored them.  Heck, even CicLAvia seemed like a pipe dream at the start of the year because the Mayor's Office wasn't on board.  Now I have contacts in City Hall joke that we're the only people that still like him.

Every year between Christmas and New Years, Streetsblog celebrates the year that was by handing out our Streetsie awards celebrating the best, and remembering the worst, of the  year that was.  This year, we're going to have a few fewer awards than last year, but also a chance for you to give out your own Streetsies by voting on your own winners for each category.  Today we'll be looking at the best of Streetsblog and the best of the web.  Tomorrow we'll get in to the people and events that made 2010 such a banner year.

It's become something of a Streetsblog tradition to take the week off between Christmas and New Year's and partially fill the space with our Streetsie Awards.  Like the name implies, it allows us to focus on some of the best, and worst, stories from the previous year.