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Video: Slow Roll helps reconnect Detroit communities to the city

Weekly event brings communities together for a tour of different neighbourhoods each week

Slow Roll is an increasingly popular group ride in Detroi that’s impact goes beyond the bike. A community ride that meets at different locations on Monday nights and takes different routes through the cities neighborhoods has developed into something that brings people together to experience the city in a new way. Now in its sixth season, Slow Roll is the largest weekly bike ride in Michigan.

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Jason Hall, one of the event’s co-founders, says that the ride was a way to reconnect with the city that he loved after moving back from Miami. Detroit’s long economic decline, government corruption, and financial crisis has resulted in sparsely populated neighborhoods and urban decay. Community efforts have been a large part of helping people come together and uplift the city. The Slow Roll represents an amazing way in which the bicycle has been used to give hope and help revitalize the city.

“The energy that connects to a bicycle, and movement, and achievement, and all the other angles just brought me out of this place,” explains Hall on the event which encourages people to get out, be active and appreciate the cities neighbourhoods. “It was really two dudes, sitting around, falling out of love with Detroit. We just needed something to break us out of our regular mold. It wasn’t about starting this massive movement, it was about how can we reconnect with the city that we love.”

The event took some time to get going but now attracts hundreds of people. Now with a police escort which shows how the event has been embraced by the city, the riders of all abilities take to the streets simply to have a good time. “It’s absolutely one of the most unique, fun, exciting bike events I have ever been a part of,” says Ron Faverty of Kryptonite.

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Hall says that despite the event being about bikes, people reach out to him about community activism, getting water to nearby Flint showing how it’s evolved into more than just a bike ride. “It’s not just this thing that seems simple, which is ‘I ride a bike’. It’s what’s the bigger picture of all of this…You can’t deny, what this thing has done for the city of Detroit,” says Hall.

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