Creative Loafing’s red fox of journalism, Thomas Wheatley, profiles Decatur’s Mike Gerke of Easy Living Pedicabs in its latest issue.

Here’s a sample question…

Red Fox: What was it about Decatur in particular?

Gerke: One of our criteria was it had to be bike friendly, had to be year-round bike climate, and had to have the infrastructure that you could be car-free if you wanted to be. We choose to be car free, but does the city allow it? At the time, it looked like Atlanta had pretty decent mass transit, had buses and trains that allowed bikes. It wasn’t a bike friendly community as a Boulder, Colo., Davis, Calif., or Seattle. But it had everything else. So with our education background we thought it’d be nice to move in Atlanta and help them become more of a bike friendly city. And that’s our passion is to get people riding on bikes. A lot of times we use the pedicab to show people you can ride on Peachtree and Marietta. And if you don’t believe me, jump on the cab I’ll show you.

Yesterday the AJC profiled Decatur’s Easy Living pedicab owner and operator, Mike Gerke, in a larger article about how Decatur is the only place in the metro-region where one can flag down a leg-powered vehicle on your way home from dinner.

In Atlanta, bike taxis seem to run into some pretty entrenched city past-times like poor budgeting and driving.

Atlanta City Councilman Ceasar Mitchell said he likes pedicabs’ credentials as environmentally friendly small businesses that can fill the transportation gaps between buses, taxis and sightseeing vehicles, but it’s tough to make a priority when budgets and public safety occupy officials’ time.

He wants to hear more, too, about how to operate the vehicles safely and effectively in Atlanta’s notoriously heavy traffic.