Check out the crazy bike lane activism going down in Brooklyn, where a Hassidic Jewish community pressured the city to remove a 14-block bike lane through their neighborhood, in part because they objected to the immodest dress of female cyclists (to be fair, there were also complaints about parking).
After NYC caved to the pressure and blacked out the bike lane, bike activists with cans of white spray paint put it back in place over a weekend:
Two things strike me about this incident from a Portland angle:
1. Our bickering over bike funding and inclusion of minorities pales in comparison to two arch-rival New York rabbis fighting over whether bikes will help or ruin their communities.
2. Would Portland bike activists ever go guerrilla and paint a bike lane where the city’s been slow to respond? Are we Portlanders too complacent/polite to stripe a lane down Killingworth or SE 39th?
“2” Please, do not encourage any more deathwish-share-the-roaders to ride their bikes down 39th ave.
Isn’t there already a bike lane on 39th (south of, say, Woodstock)?
“Share the road” = “Fuck all y’all. It’s my road and we’re all going 10 miles an hour. Dare to try to and get around me and I’ll shake my fist and call you a gashole.”
Also, forget spray-painting the road. Given the recent disposition of our local police force, I’m afraid to even jaywalk on an empty street lest I get gang-tackled and beanbagged.
Does putting a question mark after the suggestion free you of liability? Like when Fox news runs a story asking “Is Obama A Kenyan?” or “Is Sarah Mirk A Stone Fox?” I mean, they’re not implying you ARE, they’re just innocently asking the question, right?
1) Are some douchy bastards douchy enough bastards to completely ignore public process and wishes of a neighborhood with different cultural standards than their own?
2) Would this be as charming if some “hipsters” in a car repainted some no passing lanes into passing ones? I mean, they wanted to pass in those lanes, so why shouldn’t they get a bucket of paint and “protest”?
3) Who wants to bike down 39th again?
Are we too complacent to take the law into our own hands by ignoring process and just doing whatever the fuck we feel is right? Are we too complacent to realize what a great system that represents?
I like your style CC.
FYI Sarah, back in the early ’00s we had critical mass rides that ended with windows allegedly being smashed out of cars, cars being keyed (mine, in particular, while it was parked a block off of Burnside) and a window knocked out of an auto repair shop that I personally witnessed. So yes, Portland cyclists have already proven that they are big enough self-serving douchebags to do whatever the fuck they want, regardless of laws or simple respect for the community. It’s also probably why, despite the collective diaper-wetting of this little high school clique on wheels, bike projects receive so little funding.
Some cyclists are dicks. Therefore, all cyclists are dicks.
Aah, false and patently absurd logic. Welcome back, I’ve missed you.
#2: No. We seem stuck in the mindset of the BTA, who took 2 years to admit that a 12 lane bridge wasn’t in their best interest. We have to hold hearings and make sure that everyone has a seat at the table, we are way too soft to just do something because it is a good idea. We have to look elsewhere for this sort of inspiration, like the last Mayor of Paris. “Look, you are all gonna ride bikes, and you are going to like it. I’m jackhammering up the street right now to put in the bike racks. I don’t care that it is 1am, YOU ARE GONNA RIDE BIKES AND YOU ARE GOING TO LIKE IT!”
Okay, that isn’t entirely true. However, the people who actually had the spines to do this sort of thing, (for instance, Rick Gustafson closing the street in front of his house because he didn’t like the traffic,) have now gotten old and have since retired from the state legislature. I don’t know where the new crop is, which probably means that I should be the new crop myself.
So sorry folks, those weren’t Portland bicyclists acting like total assholes, it was just the bike activists. Happy now, Stu?
I ride 39th all the time. In fact, I go out of my way to ride on 39th. I love angering car drives. Seriously, I really enjoy it.
Wow typica, you are an idiot. I hope you really enjoy getting run over, because that’s what is going to happen. All the insurrection in the world is not going to save you from the grill of a giant SUV whose driver wasn’t paying attention for one second. Trust me, I speak from experience when I tell you that that is a battle you won’t win
And bike riders wonder why car drivers hate them. 1 bad apple gets the whole barrel tainted as rotten. I hope you have a good insurance plan, typica, cause you will probably need it.