The Weekend

From the hourly chimes of Big Ben to the annual ball drop in Times Square, humans have a deep need to mark the passage of time. In the Twitter age, that need is satisfied in a rather specific form by @CraigWeekend. Each Friday, the account heralds the arrival of the weekend by tweeting a short clip of actor Daniel Craig during a March 2020 hosting stint on Saturday Night Live in which he introduces the show’s musical guest, the singer/songwriter The Weeknd. The tweet is always the same. It’s never not funny.

Recently, @CraigWeekend was featured in a Los Angeles Times story by Matt Pearce, who deftly describes why so many people feel they can’t begin their weekends until the account’s single weekly tweet flies across their feeds. The story identifies the creator of @CraigWeekend as Miles Riehle, an 18-year-old high school senior from Orange County, California. There isn’t necessarily anything unusual about a teenager concocting a clever social media meme, but what caught our attention was the detail that Miles “normally likes urbanism Twitter.” A click later, we noticed that Miles follows The War on Cars. A DM exchange was born.

Doug spoke with Miles, appropriately enough, on a Friday afternoon.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s about 2:30 your time. Are you about to get your @CraigWeekend tweet out soon?

It's scheduled. I don't remember what time it's scheduled for this week, but it's… [types on computer] here we go. It's scheduled for 4:27.

Is there any magic or logic to choosing the time when it goes out?

Not really. Originally it was at around 6:00 or 7:00 Pacific Time, but as more and more people started to follow I noticed they were from a lot of different places. So I bumped it a little bit earlier so that it would kind of capture more people's time for when they get off of work. So I try to do it between 3:45 and 5:00 typically and I usually do it at sort of a random time. That's why it's 4:27 or whatever, because it kind of makes it seem like it's not scheduled even though most of the time I don't schedule it.

I guess you don’t want people to think it’s a bot.

Yeah, exactly. I want it to have some personality. Also, I mix it up every week because I want to keep people on their toes so you don't know exactly when it's coming.

Right. So it's not like, "It's five o'clock. Time for another @CraigWeekend tweet.”

Exactly.

So tell me about yourself. You're 18. You're a high school senior, correct?

Yes. I'm a high school senior. I just finished school like an hour ago, actually. We're we're fully in person right now. Five days a week. We just switched back to doing that. So I've been doing that every day during the week. I'm not doing very many extracurriculars right now. I played tennis for a while, but stopped doing that.

I'm going to be that terrible middle-aged man and ask a high school senior, "What are you doing next year?" I know it can be an evil question.

Well, last weekend I actually I committed to UC Davis and I'm going to be studying environmental policy analysis and planning and I'm hoping to specialize in city and regional planning. I want to focus on transportation and public transit, because that's kind of my wheelhouse.

How did you find yourself so interested in urban planning, cities and transportation?

If I had to guess, my dad is a civil engineer and so I would think that it probably comes a little bit from just kind of being exposed to that. I'd go to his office and I've always been interested in, like, maps and stuff. And I had these building blocks and these toy cars and I actually built out towns on my floor with the cars. I'd do a lot of detail and make sure it’s accurate, make sure everything is to scale. And every couple of weeks I would build a different city on my floor. And so that was kind of my hobby for a while. And then obviously I've had some experience with with Lego. I have some on my shelf up here. [Miles points to some Lego models — including the Lego Townhouse, Petshop and Café — on a shelf behind him on his bedroom wall.]

You probably saw there's someone in the Netherlands who's trying to get bike lanes added to Lego City sets. What can playing with Lego teach people about how to build better cities?

I've always thought that it's interesting how the set that I have up here is like illegal to build in most American cities. And I always thought that was interesting, that because obviously they're an international company, so they cater to more people, but it's interesting how, like, the kind of sets that they put out are actually not that easy to build in real life.

There aren't a lot of mandatory parking minimums in Lego.

Right.

The LA Times story made a passing reference to NUMTOT. When did you discover discover the Facebook page?

I'm actually not on Facebook.

Oh, right. Facebook is now for the olds.

I was never officially a NUMTOT just because I'm not on the Facebook page. But I have an Instagram account. I have a DSLR camera and I take pictures of trains and buses and whenever and I post it there. And there's kind of a community of people who post transit-related pictures on Instagram and some of those people are also on Twitter. I've had a Twitter account for a long time but recently I followed a bunch of the people that I followed on Instagram and then Twitter started to recommend people with related interests. And so the bubble of people that I that I found kept growing.

The Times mentioned that you're really into urbanism Twitter. I clicked on the link to your account and noticed that you follow The War on Cars. How long have you been listening to the podcast?

The first time I listened to it was towards the beginning of the pandemic because I remember throwing on my headphones, turning on the podcast and then walking laps around my lawn in my backyard just to pass time and get my steps. And that was before we even left the house to go to the park to walk. So that was probably last year around this time.

What other podcasts do you listen to?

I haven't actually listened to a ton of podcasts recently because I used to do a lot more walking and hiking, but I recently got an e-bike and so I ride my bike more often. It's a little bit hard to listen to podcast while you're biking. Sometimes I'll just play music on my speaker and just have it out loud because headphones plus biking isn't very safe because you want to hear your surroundings. So I haven't actually been doing a lot of podcast listening recently, but some of the podcasts that I listened to a lot were This American Life. I usually listen to it every week. And I like 99% Invisible.

I'm a huge fan.

Yeah. And I listen to Today, Explained.

That's a good one too.

And Strong Towns. And I like Radiolab too.

You mentioned the community you found on urbanism Twitter, but are your high school friends also into cities and urbanism, or is that just your thing?

That's just my thing. People other than, like, my pretty close circle of friends don't really know that that's my thing. I'm not super vocal about that. I have some train and bus stickers on my computer, but that's kind of the extent of my showing off of that interest. So the short answer is, I don't really know very many other people in person who share a similar interest. But I also haven't done a lot of trying to find people who have a similar interest either.

Well, that's what the college is for. You'll find people in your major.

Right.

You live in Orange County, California, which is one of the car capitals of the United States. What is it like being an 18-year-old who's really into transit and his new e-bike and walking in a place that’s so car dominated?

Well, I live in a relatively small town and we had a pretty robust system of these, like, tourist trolleys. They are stylized as, like, an antique trolley but they're just basically buses. Given the size of our town, it was actually a very good system. It was only an hourly service, but there were five or six different routes and they all go to different places around the town. And so I used to take that to school every day. I actually was fortunate enough to live in an area where I can commute to school by transit every day. It's a kind of a transit bubble within a car-centric county. It's not super high ridership or anything like that because of the hourly service and some other things. I mean, so many people have a car already where it doesn't really make any sense.

Right.

So there's that and then the county transportation agency, which is OCTA, has two routes that run through my city. Last year especially and my sophomore year after school sometimes I would hop on a bus and then take the train and then take the bus back to my house and do kind of like a loop just to take transit. But other times I have friends who live in surrounding cities and sometimes I'll take the bus to wherever they live. I mentioned I have an e-bike. The trolley system isn't running due to the pandemic so I ride my bike to school most days. Other days I have access to a car because my parents both have a car. So I do drive occasionally. But I recently took my first transit trip since the start of the pandemic last weekend.

How did it feel?

It felt really good to be back. It was kind of surreal at first. Like it felt kind of wrong. But, you know, after after a while I was like, oh yeah, I remember doing this. This is something I enjoy doing.

You're on your way to college next year and you're going to be studying urban planning and transportation planning. What are your career goals? And where do you where do you see yourself living?

Hmmm, I don't really have very many specific laid out plans yet. I want to work in public transportation is my end goal. I don't know exactly what that will look like specifically, but public transportation planning or urban planning have always kind of been the things that I'm interested in. So I hope to do something like that. And I would like to live in kind of a bigger city that's a little bit more accessible with public transportation and just kind of more diverse. I haven't ever really lived in a proper big city, so I might end up hating it, but it's definitely something I want to do at some point. Just to see what it's like. But I don't really have any specific city in mind.

What happens next year with the Twitter account? Will you keep it up every week?

I would like to keep it up. Maybe I'll hand it off to somebody who has fewer things on their plate or I might find some way to automate it a little bit more. But I feel like that kind of takes the fun out of it a little bit, too. I mean, it takes like 10 minutes to schedule it for like three months. It’s not like it's super labor intensive so I'll probably just keep doing it. But I don't know exactly for how long I'll keep doing it. I feel like it's got to lose steam eventually.

It has over 270,000 followers. That's a follower count some people would kill for.

Yeah, that's hilarious, right?

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🎧 The War on Cars Spotify playlist

Need some good summer jams while you’re hanging out on an open street? Got a new bluetooth speaker for your bike? Want some inspiration while you’re waiting for the bus? Check out our new Spotify playlist featuring some of the best songs about walking, cycling and transit… loosely defined. The playlist is a work in progress so let us know if you have any recommendations!

🎬 The Bicycle Film Festival featuring Together We Cycle

No matter where you live, join Transportation Alternatives and Bike New York for a virtual screening of TOGETHER WE CYCLE, premiering May 14 at 6:00pm ET and available to stream May 14 through 31.

Directed by Gertjan Hulster and Arne Gielen, TOGETHER WE CYCLE investigates the critical events that led to the revival of the Dutch cycling culture. For most people, cycling in the Netherlands, appears like a natural phenomenon. However, until the 1970s the development of mobility in the Netherlands followed trends across the globe. The bicycle had had its day, and the future belonged to the car. The only thing that had to be done was to adapt cities to the influx of cars. Then Dutch society took a different turn. Against all odds people kept on cycling. In TOGETHER WE CYCLE, key players tell the story of the bumpy road which led to the current state. Where cycling is an obvious choice for most citizens.

Purchase tickets at sliding scale for $10, $20, or $30. All prices entitle you to the same content, including a selection of short films before the feature presentation. A portion of all ticket sales goes to support the work of Transportation Alternatives and Bike New York.

The War on Cars is a proud promotional partner of this movie event.

🍺 New in the store: pint glasses!

Our coffee mugs have been a big hit, but now that it’s almost summer you might be in the mood for cold brew… or craft brew. Pick up one of our new War on Cars pint glasses in our official online store and say cheers to that new bike lane or pedestrian plaza where you live.

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🌧 25% off Cleverhood rain gear

SPONSORED POST: Cleverhood is a small family-run business out of Providence, Rhode Island that makes stylish gear for people who love to walk, bike and roll around the neighborhood — rain or shine. We’re big fans of the new anorak (pictured above) and Rover rain cape. Listeners of The War on Cars can receive 25% off anything in the Cleverhood store by entering code WARONCARS at checkout.

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