Hi! I’m Lolly Walsh. I’m a short sleeping schemer, substitute teacher, story listener, sustainability experimenter, room and life rearranger, and brainstormist with BA in history, and a resume as long as a CVS receipt with three returns.
I’ve been car-free for 25 years in cities around the US and worked with nonprofits in San Francisco, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New Orleans to make it easier and safer for everyone to ride bikes in cities.
Since I graduated with that history degree and moved to Chicago to live in a 21 person house where we shared all of our resources, including all of our meals. (It was the best food and living experience EVER. I can also help you plan something similar in your own life / neighborhood / business / community).
Currently based in Saint Paul, Minnesota but will enthusiastically travel for the right assignments.
Seeing the world from Different Perspectives
I’ve always relished seeing things from a different perspective, which I learned early as a tiny child in gymnastics. I spent as much time upside down as I could, hanging from swing sets and monkey bars, standing on my head, hands, and cartwheeling wherever possible.
I cartwheel across bridges when the streets are closed for marathons, or when my job “open streets for people” like when I worked in San Francisco for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Then I trained, recruited, and managed 150 volunteers for an amazing street “closure” every month in San Francisco. I stood on my hands in front of the US Capitol when I met up with the Climate Ride in 2014 and saw Washington, DC in a way most people will never see.
In 2009, I started a blog called “Reimagine an Urban Paradise,” at 2am one night when I lived in Washington, DC, as a way to, uh, “reimagine” cities as a places that could be a type of paradise.
This was a charming idea, in theory, but it came with an unintended consequence. In order to write about things that we could improve, I had to look really closely at problems cities and then come up with ways to improve it.
Once I saw the problems and the solutions, I couldn’t UNSEE them or ever stop thinking about it.
Brains, these days, am I right?
And making changes in cities is NOT FAST. This can maddening, especially when the obvious change could save people’s lives!