Week 7 Reflection: Mobility

For a few months I lived with a friend on Pepper Drive. The neighborhood was made up of mostly lower-income families with a few poor students and “struggling artists” scattered here and there. At the time I made a living painting houses and doing lawn care for a friend’s business, while my roommate worked the graveyard shift at a 24 hour coffee shop. We shared one car between us, and generally tried to get by using it as little as possible. 

Within walking distance there was virtually no source of healthy food. We could walk down our street to the convenience store (with the rather misleading name of “Pat’s Supermarket”) on the corner to buy eggs, milk, white bread, and maybe some peanut butter or canned vegetables. They also sold some questionable meat items. Most of the shelves were dedicated to junk food, sodas, and alcohol. There certainly was no lack of liquor stores in the neighborhood. A few blocks down Lake Bradford St. we had the choice between dining at Popeye's, Whataburger, McDonald's, Subway, or Bandido's Burritos (not exactly fast food, but certainly not healthy). I think the healthiest food destination we could walk to was the seafood market about six blocks down, but we rarely went there because fish is expensive even if you’re buying something like catfish or mullet, and it goes off quickly. 

I know that buses were running on Lake Bradford, but the few bus trips I took up to the Publix on Ocala were overly time consuming. I biked to the grocery store occasionally as well, but the area isn’t all that bike-friendly, and after a couple close calls with distracted drivers I gave up on that idea altogether. I looked into other options such as the Bread and Roses Co-op, which was a shorter and safer ride away, but as a non-member the prices were a little high and the selection limited. I once ordered a package from the Red Hills online market that I could pick up from the Bread and Roses hub, but my particular bag turned out to be mostly peppers, and I did not actually have the time and cooking experience to make good use of them, so it felt like a waste. I also made the first few steps to starting a garden in our backyard when I first moved in, but without ready access to tools, materials, or decent soil, and a busy schedule, the project was soon abandoned as too expensive, laborious, and time-consuming. I did notice, however, that there were many vacant, overgrown lots in the area, and I often wondered if a community garden would be a viable option to increase access to healthy foods. No community gardens existed in my time in the area, but I know that there is now at least one within a quarter-mile of my old house. 

Regardless, the fact that we had the availability of a car at least a portion of the time set us apart from some of the other residents in the neighborhood. Although our use of the car was constrained by a tight budget and schedule conflicts, much of the time we were simply choosing not to drive, and many people don’t have the luxury of that choice. Although part of the problem was the lack of healthy, affordable food destinations and glut of fast food restaurants, the experience I had on Pepper really drove home the point that mobility has a huge influence on the quality of a diet, and that if planners wish to work towards food security they cannot ignore the transportation aspect, and there is a lot of room to improve public transportation in Tallahassee.