Driving by Lake Cliff Park this morning, it’s hard to believe that roughly 150 vendors and thousands of people (rough estimates are at 7,500 to 8,0000) were spread out across the grounds yesterday — the park looks as peaceful and clean as ever, save for a few porta-potties still waiting to be picked up.

Event chairman Roger Bolen and the rest of the organizing committee did a fantastic job. No wonder Oak Cliff Earth Day has grown more popular year after year. The only mishap I encountered was an unfortunate chemical spill that had nothing to do with the event — a semi truck across Zang had tried to jump a curb to get out of the parking lot, and managed to run over a gas pump, causing gas to flow into the street. This was made even more unfortunate by the fact that we were celebrating the environment across the street. Luckily, the fire truck for kids to climb on was mere feet away, and the firefighters ran right over to address the problem.

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My only other disappointment was a good problem — so many people stopped by the Advocate booth to sign up for our "a list" enewsletter and spin the prize wheel for T-shirts, koozies and such, that I didn’t have enough time to walk around the entire place and see all of the incredible vendors, many from our neighborhood. I did get to meet a few Back Talk readers, like regular commenter Jake Kurz. We were also situated right next to Bike Friendly Oak Cliff, which was raising money for a cool project; more after the jump:

I chatted briefly with Zac Lytle, who manages the 9th Street Townhome properties and worked the Bike Friendly Oak Cliff booth yesterday. The booth had a large "save the bike racks" sign, and Lytle told me that they were raising money to salvage two old bike racks from Reunion Arena, which hold about 20 bicycles each. It was a two-fold green effort — recycling a used bike rack that would otherwise go to waste, and placing them in our neighborhood to encourage more bike riding.

Jason Roberts’s post about the day includes a great pic with Mayor Tom Leppert holding a Bike Friendly Oak Cliff shirt, and mentions that the mayor "emphatically advocated bringing bike lanes to the city".