In the parking lot of the Linen Building on May 17, the Boise Bike Week Block Party drew more than 100 people together to celebrate one thing: biking. Road bikes, mountain bikes, cruisers, racing bikes, touring bikes, tandems and bike trailers lined nearby fencing and trees.

• Jessica Murri

Walt Sledzieski helped organize this year’s event. He smiled as he looked around and asked, “How can you beat bicycle people?”

The event featured bike-oriented booths from local organizations like Safer Streets and Ride Idaho, a week-long ride across the state that takes place in August. One booth even sold bike art and jewelry.

“This is just a great opportunity to get all kinds of cyclists together to enjoy a great evening in Boise,” Sledzieski said.

MK Nature Center superintendent Dave Cannamela started cycling four years ago and figures he’s reached 10,000 miles since then. He attended the event to enjoy the company of like-minded people and support the bike movement.

“I’ve just broke 3,557.1 miles for the year,” Cannamela said. “Bikes are like fly rods. You can never have too many.”

• Jessica Murri

But Cannamela said Boise isn’t as bike-friendly it reports to be.

“When I go past all those people just sitting in their cars, one person per car, I just think, 'What’s the rest of Boise doing?'” Cannamela said. “They don’t know what they’re missing; they don’t feel the breeze on their faces.”

Cannamela commutes to the MK Nature Center from Southwest Boise, and said the ride gives him more “think-time.”

Sledzieski said this year's Bike Week has been a success. All the events—including classes on bike maintenance and road safety, as well as a ride in silence and a mountain bike skill test—all had good turnout.

BW asked a few Block Party attendees to complete the following sentence, "Because of my bicycle ..." Check out their photos and responses after the jump.

• The missing butterfly has been returned to the Women's and Children's Alliance statue following its theft.

A butterfly stolen from the outstretched palm of a statue outside the Women's and Children's Alliance has officially been returned and restored.

"Well, our statue is whole again," said Beatrice Black, WCA executive director. "She was reinstalled by one of the members of the Boise Sculptors Guild, and we're glad to have it back and restored."

After checking in at the Pioneer Building on Sixth and Main streets, revelers flooded downtown to imbibe for a cause. April 28 marked the third-annual Crawl Around Downtown, a pub crawl designed to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Each locale—Bardenay, Piper Pub, Old Chicago, Falcon Tavern, Flatbread Community Oven, Ha'Penny, Solid and The Taphouse—revealed a sea of white pub crawl T-shirts and wristbands upon entering.

• Crawlers receive wristbands at check-in for Crawl Around Downtown.

Andrea Courtney, her husband and their family started the crawl in honor of their son, who is afflicted with CF. The little tike ran around his family members at the check-in station, where they eagerly passed out energy drinks to keep crawlers active, then joined the tour of seven local bars.

• From left to right, Tyler Scripture, Elisha Colgrove and Brandi Johnson.

Brandi Johnson, Elisha Colgrove and Tyler Scripture were just some of the crawlers that day. The trio sipped Payette Brewing Company's wheat beer at the newly opened Taphouse just after 1 p.m.

"We know the little boy this was created for," said Johnson, a friend of the family. "We tried the Payette beer today; it's good."

• From left to right, Piper Pub staff members Kelsey Romero, MaKenna Bradley, Courtney Jonas and Jen Ludwig.

Over at Solid, just after 2:30 p.m., Courtney confirmed that 225 crawlers had registered for the fundraiser.

Garrett Weaver, a 16-year-old high school student, and his mother Chelsy walked into the Front Street location of George's Cycles on Thursday, April 26, his eyes wide. Before him stood a brand new Specialized SX, a full-suspension downhill mountain bike.

The Florida Kids Wish Network partnered with George's Cycles and Fitness and Specialized Bicycle Components to bring him the new bike as part of their wish-granting program. Garrett could hardly contain a wide grin.

"I want to do a little bit of cross country, a little bit of downhill. My old bike is a single-speed," he said.

Garrett's tiny BMX bike wasn't suited for mountain biking, but despite his six-foot, two-inch frame having outgrown the bike, he displayed a passion for cycling at the Eagle Velodrome.

• Chelsy Weaver and her teenage son Garrett celebrate his new mountain bike.

Garrett suffers from Common Variable Immune Deficiency, a condition that leaves him without a sufficient number of antibodies to fight off illnesses. He deals with painful illnesses, swelling joints and must receive a gamma globulin infusion every month.

"He misses a lot of school," said Chris Housel, his principal at Meridian Technical Charter High School. "But he always makes up the work. He never complains, and he doesn't make excuses. "

Garrett said that when the rainy weather ended, he had plans to bring the bike to the first dry trail he found.

• Despite the rain, Garrett Weaver took his new Specialized SX, a full-suspension downhill mountain bike, out for a spin.

Concerned about the zombie apocalypse? Then you're totally nuts a sober and prudent thinker adhering to the Boy Scout motto "be prepared."

Well, now you can do just that with a handy-dandy new website, mapofthedead.com. It uses Google maps to track danger zones of high population, and plots out the locations of important things like gun stores, pharmacies and liquor stores for you, all in soothing red and black tones that create no sense of dread whatsoever.

Just enter in your area code and, viola, your zombie survival map will appear—for as long as electricity and Internet stay up and running in the wake of a zombie apocalypse, anyhow.

• The zombie survival map for downtown Boise.

The Ignite Boise folks are calling for more submissions for the April 19 Ignite Boise 8. The event is simple: Speakers are given five minutes and 20 slides to present their idea to an audience, commercial-free and without notes.

It's best to submit your idea without considering stage fright, because becoming part of the Ignite alumni of presenters nets you more than a T-shirt, you get a huge community launchpad for your idea. Past topics have included a presentation on giving "the birds and the bees" talk, a tribute to beards, grammar Nazism, and sustainable living in a home the size of a large closet.

The best part about attending an Ignite Boise event is the phone policy: Smartphone use is encouraged because the event ports into Twitter with a hashtag that, when used, puts your message up on the screen. In between presentations by local folks just like you, the event fosters a broader community dialogue by using social media to dish about the presenter's ideas.

Act now for your chance to regale an audience full of Boiseans itching to hear new ideas: igniteboise.com

It began with Think Boise First, followed by its Canyon County counterpart Think Nampa First. Both groups sprung up to support local communities by putting neighborhood businesses in the limelight and using social media to push their products. But now agents provocateur are using social media to take local business support to the next level.

On Feb. 26, Boise Weekly reported on a new trend called cash mobs, which are similar to flash mobs but aimed at putting customers in touch with struggling local shops. At the time, social networking site Reddit had the only deets on a loose plan for a cash mob.

Since then, Facebook groups have sprung up for the Treasure Valley and Boise specifically, each with about a dozen members. The Boise Cash Mob Facebook group celebrated its first restaurant visit on March 3, hitting up Chris' on Broadway for a salad fix.

Now the Treasure Valley Cash Mob folks have created an event to commemorate National Cash Mob Day on Saturday, March 24. The plan is to meet at Meridian's Centennial Park armed with at least $20 and hit up a business within walking distance. Once you're done at the biz, you'll be provided with the name of a local bar for the 21 and over to celebrate their capitalist triumphs.

The new community outreach program encourages students to strive for a 3.0 GPA or better in math and science, and have no absences for that quarter. South Junior High Principal Betty Olson was both appreciative and excited to see HP and the Stampede take an interest in local education.

"We enjoy seeing them as role models. They show the kids that they can be athletes but they still have to go to college," said Olson of the program.

Idaho Stampede shooting guard Willie Jenkins said the program was intended to "set kids up for success in college and life after school."

After the event, players signed autographs and the kids all received free tickets to future Stampede games.

A new trend in social networking is helping struggling local businesses to stay afloat.

“Cash mobs” utilize the methods of the popular flash mob to inundate locally owned stores with cash-flush customers.

As Public Radio International explained in a recent report:

The formula is straightforward: People commit to spending at least $20 each at a local business to help expose and market it, which brings in new customers.

Like flash mobs, cash mobs are organized using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. As their popularity has spread, they have received publicity from conventional media through announcements in the newspaper or on the radio.

In addition to providing a temporary boost to store revenues, cash mobs intend to help cultivate long-term customer relationships with hardworking local businesses.

In just the past year, cash mobs have occurred in 32 states, Canada, and various locations throughout the European Union. A Facebook search yielded zero results for cash mobs in Boise. But a quick search on social networking site Reddit reveals loosely organized plans for a Boise cash mob, with local businesses Video Memories, Fanci Freeze and Basque Market in the discussion.

The House Business Committee of the Idaho Legislature is considering a bill that would change the relationship between cable providers, television affiliates and local communities. Among other things, House Bill 539 would set up a state-level franchise process for cable providers. According to the public-access organization Treasure Valley Community Television, it would remove their capital funding, forcing their channels to go dark.

“It has passed in 20 states, they have enacted statewide franchising. We’ve seen that municipalities have lost money, that franchises have closed. This promise that it would bring competition and bring prices down, instead rates have increased,” said Alex McNish, TVCTV executive director. “I really don’t see any benefit other than to the corporation, and their bottom line.”

McNish also said that this bill’s provision to remove a special Public-Educational-Governmental fee, or PEG fee, would save cable subscribers only a dime per month, or $1.20 per year. Currently, Cable One customers pay an additional 10 cents as a line item on their monthly bill.

“It’s not the free-market approach to television. Our view is, why can’t they go out and get sponsorships?” asked Erik Makrush of Idaho Freedom Foundation before the committee began a hearing on Feb. 21.

McNish testified to the committee in opposition to the bill, stating that the PEG fees make up almost 100 percent of TVCTV's budget, which allows them to provide publicly funded television programming.

“If you have to pass this statewide authority bill, we’re asking that you include the PEG fees,” said McNish.

However, some members of the committee weren’t very sympathetic.

"I don’t know how things work in your community, but in our community when funding is cut, we hold fundraisers," said Wilder Republican Rep. Gayle Batt.

The committee also suggested that the City of Boise make up for the lost PEG funding. Currently, TVCTV broadcasts the Boise City Council meetings live, a service McNish said they "couldn't afford" without the PEG funding.

The committee chose to schedule a vote on the bill for Thursday, Feb. 23, after testimony pushed the Feb. 21 hearing well past 5 p.m.