The scene outside Aladdin Theater Tuesday night. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
How do you go from an engineering consultant to a celebrity that can pack a theater with 600 people on a weeknight in Portland in just a few short years? Upload consistently excellent videos about city planning to YouTube.
That’s the path Ray Delahanty took to become what the host of last night’s event, Lilian Karabaic, called a “YouTube celebrity for deadpan urbanist humor.”
Delahanty was chosen as the special guest speaker for the Portland State University Transportation Research and Education Center’s Ann Niles Active Transportation Lecture. Niles, who died in 2011, was a Reed College graduate who moved to Portland with her husband Phil Niles (who was in the crowd last night) after a career in academia. In Portland, Ann Niles became a dedicated transportation and urban planning volunteer and advocate who worked in support of projects like the streetcar, MAX light rail, bike lanes, sidewalks and more.
Niles would have likely been annoyed if she showed up to the theater last night on her bike, only to find almost no bike parking. The lack of spots meant folks had to walk several blocks to find a place secure enough to store their bikes during the show. Once everyone got inside, all was right with the world as they were treated to a fun, casual and free-flowing conversation between Karabaic and Delahanty.