It’s a question that bears repeating. So …What’s up with those bike rickshaws?

They seemed to appear out of nowhere this winter, multiplying like bunnies during the inauguration. Tourists seemed to think they’d always been there, a la Central Park East in New York City, but locals knew better. This is DC. We sell tourists “FBI: You Don’t Know Me” T-shirts, scream at them to stand to the right, sell ‘em a half-smoke and send ‘em packing. At best, they can shell out $60 to steer a Segway for an hour while wearing a dorky-looking helmet.

But the bike rickshaws. The rickshaws symbolize sweat, honest hard work, a throwback to far less equitable days, a practical laying down at one’s feet. And frankly, they just seem so cheesy. So … opportunistic. So … New York.

Turns out the bike rickshaws have been here in the District since the summer of 2006, when DC Pedicab opened up shop. In January, Mayor Adrian Fenty declared pedicabs the official vehicle of President Obama’s inauguration. (Weird, we thought it was that sweet, sweet armored Cadillac.) That’s why so many popped up around that time — about 100 were operating in D.C. for the inauguration, but most of those came from out of town. So it may seem like they’ve disappeared again, but we promise they’re still around.

You’ll most likely find them during bar nights in Adams Morgan/Gallery Place/anywhere people tend to drink a lot on the weekends; Verizon Center and RFK Stadium, and obviously the National Mall. It’s OK to take one for transportation instead of a tour. Just never, ever wear an FBI T-shirt.

Copyright NBC Local Media

From Pedicabs to Peddling Cosmetics, Economy Pushes Some to Seek Extra Work

Shelby Shenkelman enjoys working as a pricing analyst for a company that produces airline meals. At 25, she is making more than $50,000 a year.”It should not be a bad salary,” she said. That is, unless you have $30,000 in student loans, a $300 a month car payment, some credit card debt, grocery bills that seem to be going up and rent that definitely is going up. “I can survive on my one paycheck, but it’s very, very difficult. It’s very, very tight,” the Reston resident said. In December, she decided to take a second job. Two nights during the week and on weekend days, she works as a personal shopper at a clothing store, earning $9 an hour plus commission.

With a grim economic outlook for 2009, more Americans are not just cutting costs but are finding ways to make more money by taking part-time or odd jobs, employers and economists said. Many are doing it because their wages have stalled while the cost of living has gone up. Others are picking up extra work to pay off debt or cushion their savings. For others, it’s a backup plan in case they get laid off from their full-time jobs.

In a survey of 1,400 workers by the staffing firm Express Employment Professionals, 42 percent said they were looking for a second job to make ends meet. In a Pew Research Center survey of 2,413 adults, 24 percent said they or someone in their household has taken an extra job because of economic troubles.

Meanwhile, staffing agencies across the country are seeing an uptick in the number of people seeking evening and weekend jobs, even if they are overqualified for them. And traffic is increasing for Web sites such as SnagAJob.com that specialize in hourly work.
“I think a lot more people are open to just doing any kind of job, maybe not specifically in the field they have been trained for,” said Amy Little, branch manager of Manpower Inc., a national staffing agency. “They will just do anything and everything to make ends meet.”

For Nate Chenenko, having two jobs has made traveling on weekends more difficult. “My free time has a much higher opportunity cost now: Taking a weekend trip costs me the price of the trip plus the wages lost from missing work at my part-time job,” he said. On weekdays, Chenenko dons a collared shirt, tie and dress slacks and heads to the Navy Yard where he is a contract specialist for the U.S. Navy.

On Thursday and Friday nights and on weekends, he switches to ski pants and a cap and drives people around the District in a pedicab, or bike taxi. Since he started in October, he’s been making about $19 to $23 an hour pedaling as many as four people at a time to such destinations as Union Station and the White House. It’s a big help, he said, especially considering that he is making about $40,000 a year, and that his grocery and utility bills have gone up.

“Instead of buying or purchasing expensive things, I’m trying to save,” he said. “I took this to build up that safety net.”

Labor experts said you should avoid any conflicts with your primary employers by checking your employee handbook and making sure you are even allowed to take a second job. If a second job is permitted, be honest with your employer about your extracurricular work. And whatever you do, never do work for your second job while at your full-time one. Keeping that primary job should be a priority.

Wes Weisheit vigorously pedaled his bike along North Fourth Avenue, pulling a reporter in the “cab” behind. The gentle bumps during the ride seemed to echo the pulsating beats from the Bose stereo attached to his bike.

This open-air taxi burns no gasoline and provides a leisurely ride to your destination.

Otherwise known as pedicabs, rickshaws or bike taxis, you’ve probably seen them cruising the streets during University of Arizona football games or late night on Fourth Avenue.

The pedicabs are free to ride, but the lively individuals, such as Weisheit, who power them work for tips.

The 46-year-old prefers to call the pedal-powered people-mover a rickshaw.

“It kind of gives it that foreign influence,” said Weisheit, who works most weekends on Fourth Avenue starting about midnight.

He’s pedaled people during pub crawls, UA football games and some basketball games.

And, of course, there’s St. Patrick’s Day. “That’s the best,” said Weisheit, whose usually starts around 3 p.m. on that day.

Riders include anyone from students to bar-goers to senior citizens, depending on the time and where they’re riding.

You often can spot a pedicab along Fourth Avenue or Downtown on weekends from midnight to about 3 a.m.

A pedicab usually is a bench seat on wheels enclosed by arm- and backrests. A bicycle — and its operator — serve as the “engine.”

Larger cities such as Phoenix and tourist towns like Key West, Fla., have an abundance of pedicabs in their downtowns. Tucson has just a few.

Weisheit first worked for Sean Dile, who bought his $4,000 pedicab in November 2007 from Colorado-based Main Street Pedicabs. The two met in December 2007, and Weisheit worked for him for about five months before branching out with his own Main Street pedicab in May. His model is tricked out with a $5,000 Bose stereo and gas-charged Volkswagen shock absorbers.

“The reason I came up with the idea is because I live by The Shanty and I wanted to go to Congress and not have to walk,” said Dile, who works at New Empire Food Market on West Ninth Street and commissions out his pedicab.

Weisheit said he’s logged about 1,500 miles on his rickshaw and probably carried 2,500 passengers.

“I think they do have a place here,” said Matt Zoll, bicycle and pedestrian program manager for the Pima County Department of Transportation. “It would be nice to see a successful one here — they have tremendous capabilities.”

Thom Devrie has hitched rides on a pedicab along Fourth Avenue. He said he likes the convenience of it when he’s on a date.

“Sometimes she’s wearing high heels and it’s hard for her to walk very far,” said the 22-year-old, who has tipped about $5 each time he’s used one. “It gets us to the next place faster and easier.”

Though Dile and Weisheit agree that it would be nice to operate the pedicabs during the day, they said demand tends to be low.

“People are on the Avenue in the daytime, but they tend to be sober and don’t ride,” Weisheit said.

As to how far they’ll ride people around, well, that depends.

“Far is relative to how many people you’ve got,” Weisheit said.

He has crammed six “small” students in his cab, which comfortably seats three to four. He said he’s carried about 800 pounds before, and he estimated that his cab alone weighs 170 pounds.

Weisheit said the average tip runs about $10. Of course, some riders don’t tip. To velvet-tongued pedicab drivers like Weisheit, non-tippers are few and far between. He usually persuades riders to give him something, even if it’s pizza or beer.

The real money is in the advertising on the cab. Dile’s rickshaw has had up to eight ads on it, from Nova Home Loans to Bison Witches Bar and Deli.

Weisheit mainly sticks to area advertisers like Brooklyn Pizza Co. and Ordinary Bike Shop. Depending on the placement of the ad — the back is the best spot — revenue varies, but the ads bring in hundreds a month.

David Tang, the 27-year-old owner of Ordinary Bike Shop, is pleased with the attention his ad brings.

“It’s great — it gives us lots of local exposure,” Tang said. “When members of the community are involved, it’s always great. It does a lot of local outreach.”
Erik Ryberg, self-described Tucson Bike Lawyer, thinks pedicabs are a great idea.

“I had some friends come into town to take the bar exam,” he said. “I wanted to show them old parts of Tucson and El Presidio, so they rode in the back of (Weisheit’s) pedicab.
“It was a great way of showing a couple of friends from Maryland what Tucson is like.”

The critics were out again last week after The Times revealed that, faced with recession, Mr Mason was being forced to slow the store rollout programme. Worried? He hardly looks it. One minute, he’s jumping on to a Fresh & Easy rickshaw for a photo shoot; the next, he’s leading a chorus of Happy Birthday at the head office in Palm Beach, Los Angeles, to mark the chain’s first anniversary.

Asked about the prospect of a looming supermarket price war in America, he jokingly cites the line about amplifiers in This is Spinal Tap, the spoof “rockumentary”: “We’ll do better than the rest,” he says. “Our knobs go up to 11.”

Mr Mason dismisses speculation that Tesco’s most daring foray of the past decade is turning into failure. He wants people to focus on the “exceptional” achievement of the past 12 months.

In the dozen countries where Tesco operates, it has always entered a market by taking over an existing business, Mr Mason says. Fresh & Easy is a new concept, based on the Tesco Express convenience stores In Britain, and from a standing start it operates 100 stores, each of about 10,000 sq ft, across Southern California, Arizona and Nevada.

While Fresh & Easy will not reach its original target of having 200 outlets by February 2009, Mr Mason expects to reach that goal by this time next year — that’s one new store every three or four days.

Whatever doubts analysts may have, they appear not to be shared by two of Tesco’s biggest rivals in America, Wal-Mart and Safeway. It seems that have seen enough and have responded to the threat with small-store formats of their own.

Nearly 600 Tesco staff played some part in setting up the business, including personnel managers flown out for three months last year to help with recruitment. They were easy to spot, coming in every Monday morning bright red from a weekend on the beach.

“Looking at the past year, you have to be deliriously happy,” Mr Mason says. “At the same time, we are absolutely focused on what we need to do for this business to be as absolutely successful as it can be.

“It has taken a bit longer to penetrate catchments around the stores than we thought it would [and] I think the reason is because this is the first mature market, well-served market, that we have opened into, so actually it’s not filling a vacuum and, therefore, has to earn its place. But as we go into the second year, we would expect to see unbelievably good like-for-like growth.”

Mr Mason, chief executive of Tesco’s operation in the United States, believes that one of the biggest problems of the past year has been a failure to make enough of Fresh & Easy’s price credentials. It claims to be 20 per cent cheaper than the average American supermarket, such as Ralphs or Albertsons, but it relies on an everyday low-price model rather than one-off specials, which can grab customers’ attention.

The emphasis on promotions is far stronger now. The array of fresh and chilled American and Hispanic foods, including breakfast burritos, carne asada and shrimp siu mai, still dominate a Fresh & Easy store. However, shoppers are greeted with specials as they walk through the door – After Eights are going for $2.99 a box in Manhattan Beach – as well as weekly offers, such as three apples or three pears for 98 cents. You could be forgiven for thinking that you had walked into an Aldi.

Mr Mason says: “There is a real difference between the way Fresh & Easy loyalists and secondary shoppers perceive us. The loyalists have worked out that Fresh & Easy is incredibly good value for money day-in, day-out. It’s a great deal for 52 weeks of the year. The ones who haven’t used it as much, it’s taken them longer to work that out, so we have got to use communication to accelerate that process and get them up the learning curve faster.”

The need for a change in emphasis stems from a high-profile three-month pause in the store opening programme in March. First revealed in a blog by Simon Uwins, Fresh & Easy’s marketing director, the move was taken as a clear sign that Tesco was struggling to read the market, despite years spent researching American shopping habits. The brake has also been put on a much-heralded move into Northern Californian cities, including San Francisco and Sacramento.

Mike Dennis, retail analyst at Piper Jaffray and a long-time sceptic of the Fresh & Easy story, reacted with a note questioning whether Tesco may decide to “head for the exit” and quit America, writing off £1 billion of losses and capital investment in the process.

Mr Mason reponds: “People can write what the hell they like, but my view is the best thing for us to be is prudent.

“With each of the businesses I’ve been involved in, whether it’s with Express, Extra, dot.com, Tesco Personal Finance, Fresh & Easy, you have a business plan and Tesco has a tendency to set very stretching targets. I don’t think any one of them has at first hit that plan, so what you do is adjust your original plan and adjust your original activities to bring the two back together, so ultimately you generate good returns and good returns for your shareholders.

“When something is going really well, like the store extensions in the UK, which are going phenomenally well, then you go as hard as you can.

“When things are not quite getting there, well, we slowed down our early rollout of dot.com ten years ago until we improved the operating model, as it wasn’t clear to see how you’d make money. Now if you think about how much money most people managed to lose because they didn’t do that, well I think it gives you a great insight into how Tesco manages these things.”

One look at the American media suggests that Mr Mason’s caution could be well-founded. British executives upset about the doom and gloom in newspapers on this side of the Atlantic would have turned pale at news in America last week covering housing foreclosures, credit card charges, airlines cutting routes and the financial perils faced by the country’s carmakers. In one small town east of San Francisco, 90 per cent of homeowners are in negative equity.

Mr Mason says: “The better we do, the faster we will go. If it proves to be hard yards, then we may have to go slower, but we will be opening stores all the time.

“The only difference it will make is that we become the fastest ramp-up in history – instead of absolutely the very, very fastest ramp-up in history.”

Q&A

If you could change one thing in the financial and commercial environment, what would it be?

The economic turmoil is obviously a difficult situation for everyone, but for Fresh & Easy, by offering great value and not compromising on quality, we are in a great place to offer customers a good deal

Who is or was your mentor?

There have been many influential people to me, especially at Tesco, but (Sir) Terry (Leahy), in particular, is a real mentor to me

Does money motivate you?

I’ve got seven kids, so absolutely.

Which business person do you most admire?

Not quite one person, but the Medici family of Florence

What was the most important event in your working life?

It has to be moving to LA, to start Fresh & Easy. It’s proving to be an amazing opportunity. Bringing Clubcard to the UK market comes a close second

What gadget must you have?

My BlackBerry

What does leadership mean to you?

To create a compelling vision and share it. To lead by example, motivate others and create a positive team-based culture where everyone is treated with respect

How do you relax?

Watching my kids play sports, re-learning golf and eating with my family

The bloggers’ view

“I have tried to like it. They just opened a new one in Palm Desert. With their robotic checkout stations … their stupid product selection … their employee-vacant aisles. Hmmmm … I always feel like I’ve entered some food twilight zone. Please don’t make me go back”

Jim Bob H (www.yelp.com)

“I actually like them better than Trader Joe’s. I like their prepared meals, a bit on the expensive side but very convenient. They have nothing but self-checkout, which was weird but it’s the future. At least they had someone to bag my stuff and gave me a $5 off $20 coupon”

Mr Hollywood D (www.yelp.com)

“These Fresh & Easy people are clearly lovers, dreamers, grocery store poets, obviously from Seattle or somewhere, where people still do manifest the almost Emersonian hope of locally grown fresh organic produce at prices your neighbors can afford. With a hint of tarragon”

Sandra Tsing Loh (www.scpr.org)

“The only time I would see myself shopping there is if most of the population was infected by some rage-inducing virus and I was one of few to survive and needed food”

Corazon R (www.yelp.com)