Maintenance staff from the McMenamins company allegedly cut the Tracey Sparling ghost bike from outside the Crystal Ballroom early this morning:
SPARLING BIKE: Photo courtesy of Crystal Ballroom box office staffer Tony Cameron…
Maintenance staffers from McMenamins first started talking about clipping the bike two weeks ago, says Crystal box office staffer Tony Cameron.
“I saw them lingering outside, pointing at the bike, and I asked them what they were doing,” says Cameron. “I said, don’t cut that bike off, dude, we have a young girl’s family to consider, and a bicyclist community.”
“They were a little in disagreement with me,” says Cameron, “and then they said ‘Brian [McMenamin] said “make it gone”‘.”
Cameron decided to call the Mercury because he thinks the move is “morally incorrect and inconsiderate” on the part of McMenamins. “If they can me for this, it’ll be poetic justice, anyway,” he says.
“I don’t know. From a business person’s perspective I can see that it might look like a piece of detritus, but I don’t think it’s McMenamins’ decision, honestly,” says Cameron.
Sparling, 19, was killed on her bike outside the Crystal in a collision with a cement truck driver on October 11, 2007. The District Attorney’s office declined prosecution of the driver in the case.
“We were planning to go up there this weekend and put our Easter decorations on it,” says Sparling’s aunt, Susan Kubota. “I’m going to have to let [Sparling’s mother, Sophie] know that we’re not going to be doing that, now.”
Kubota says the bike gave her comfort, when she drove through the intersection.
“It was a comforting distraction, something to bring flowers to,” says Kubota. “Since I have to drive through that intersection quite frequently, which the first time was extremely painful, the bike at least gave me some kind of focus.”
Sparling is buried in Salem, so Kubota says it was comforting to have a memorial in Portland. “I realized it wouldn’t be able to stay there forever,” she says. “But my sister and I used to regularly clean it up and decorate it and keep it looking nice so that hopefully it could stay there a little longer.”
Kubota had some spring flowers, some artificial garlands, and a wreath with easter eggs on it, ready to place on the bike next weekend. “I guess I won’t be needing them,” she says. “This really is extremely disappointing. It’s surprisingly distressing to learn about.”
Carl Larson placed the ghost bike with his own lock, back in 2007, and is philosophical about it being removed.
“If we had a ghost bike up on every road where every biker was ever killed, you wouldn’t be able to walk down the sidewalk,” he says. “They last as long as they last, and I’m impressed that this one lasted as long as it did.”
Larson admits he’s a “little surprised nobody from McMenamins tried to contact us,” but says the Ghost bikes “serve an immediate value for people.”
“It’s somewhere for people to put their candles and flowers, but they’re part of the streetscape,” says Larson. “And the streetscape changes. They come and go.”
A ghost bike on Interstate for Brett Jarolimek, who died 11 days after Sparling in 2007, was stolen in 2008. Portland recently instituted new green “bike boxes” in an effort to reduce collisions between bicyclists and traffic turning right.
Portland’s other ghost bikes have come and gone, says Larson.
“I’ve thought about taking them down,” Larson continues. “But I really feel like once it’s up, it’s up to the public what to do with them. With this one, it didn’t come down too soon, put it that way.”
“They’re ephemeral by nature,” says Bikeportland editor Jonathan Maus. “But each one of them has their own context. I know that that one is extra important for certain people. I know that [Sparling’s] family kept it up very well and left flowers by it.”
“I think it’s a bad move,” Maus continues. “It’s going to be a bad publicity thing for the business, overall, and I don’t see the harm in having it there. I think it’s a good reminder for folks.”
McMenamins spokesperson Renee Rank is yet to return a call for comment. No managers at the Crystal Ballroom were immediately available for comment.
It’s a ‘makeshift memorial’ that’s been there for two years. The family is now suing the truck company for $2M. Perhaps at some point a permanent memorial could be put up with funds from the biking community and the family.
Surprisingly good article; reads a bit like a S.Mirk piece.
Why not turn the green bike box at that intersection into a memorial? The road crew that does the bike markings could put flowers on the white bike art, which would make it look like a ghost bike.
That’s a pretty cool idea. But I wouldn’t want truck drivers to get distracted by the bike art.
Its been two years, it was the cyclist’s fault, get over it.
I don’t think the point of the ghost bike is to place fault on one side or the other. I think this is a physical reminder we all need to be more observant when we are on the road- bicycle or automobile.
That’s a good idea Ms Sharp. A design with Tracey’s name could be incorporated into the bike box. We should see what her family thinks about this idea and look up the appropriate PBOT people to propose this to.
If you read the story and clicked on the link for Tracey Sparling, it points out that the truck driver got a ticket (ORS 811.050, “Failure to yield to rider on bicycle lane,”) for the incident. But hey, who expected truck drivers to know how to read any better than they know how to drive? Anyone?
the ‘ghost bike’ project is amazing.
i remember when riding around portland for the first time, i was amazed to see the bikes. i was really curious about visceral reaction to these creepishly white bikes that stood out, unlike every other bike i had ever seen. there was no sign. just a feeling of sadness.
after many years in this beautiful city, i came across many other ghost bikes. it was a great feeling to know that someone would care enough to share the awareness of my own death, if something would happen to me while bicycling.
while driving on the highway today in PA, i noticed two wreaths that were placed on crosses on the side of the road where two motorists were killed.
regardless of their tacky garland appearance, these wreathes def. were a demonstration of love for the victims, and provided a physical representation of a life lost, regardless of who was at fault.
ghost bikes, like tracey’s, and the crosses on the sides of the highway, are for the survivors to have a medium in which to demonstrate mourning and awareness.
ghost bikes are portland’s version of a “highway cross”. bikes are a religion here. We use bikes to commute, employ us, celebrate, mourn, and how to remind each other of the fragile relationship between motorists and bicycles.
-dysntori!
Why is Jonathan Maus, a self-proclaimed objective journalist, quoted here advocating something he covers?
Maus is sort of like the FOX News of biking. He’s always protesting that he’s a serious, objective “journalist” but is constantly advocating and out-and-out cheerleading for his agenda. Even when I agree with him on the issues he’s blogging about, I feel like puking when he strikes a pious or rah-rah tone. He actually encouraged people to flood KBOO with calls and e-mails when it looked like the station was going to cut its bike show. And when he wrote about the station changing its mind, he actually signed off with, “Way to go, guys!” There’s that serious journalist that’s he going out of his way to convince people he is, but he isn’t. He’s always catching rides and promoting the agendas of the people with whom he agrees. If there’s a car-bike crash, it’s automatically the car’s fault, regardless of whether the police have released the facts. He’s often pompous, subliminally suggesting that the mainstream press doesn’t get bike issues and his site is the only trusted place for bike news.
Yep, Fox News. Or is it Fixie News?
Although the bike being chained to city property was illegal under city ordinance, it was NOT located on McMenamins property. It meets the definition of “abandoned property” under state law, and state law requires anyone who removes or takes abandoned property to give it to the police. Failure to do so is theft under state law. So, technically speaking, the city exercised its legal right to “selective enforcement” not to remove the bike. McMenamins removed the bike from public property and did not give it to the police thereby violating state abandoned property laws which is considered theft. Given the political clout of the McMenamins chain of taverns, I doubt anything will come of their crime however.
Oregon law is pretty protective of paper boxes chained to poles – free speech. Could be a legal avenue to research. The ghost bikes are much more beautiful and important.
As head of the bikeportland blog, Maus is hardly an objective journalist, he’s an advocate-activist.
Jonathan’s occasional advocacy for an issue does not interfere, as far as I’ve noticed, with the factual objectivity of his writing. I have not ever seen an instance where he’s omitted or distorted facts to spin an article, as Faux News does routinely. He deserves props for presenting each side of any issue on a consistent basis.
Actually, the federal courts have ruled that cities can in fact ban and/or regulate newspaper boxes chained to public property or placement on streets. There is no regulation in the city of Portland that grants newspaper boxes an exemption to Portland city code that bans items from being chained to city property — it is selective enforcement; the city chooses not to act on it. Furthermore, newspaper boxes violate the new Sit/Lie Ordinance that contains a provision that ANY item placed on a sidewalk for more than 2 hours unattended MUST be removed or the owner is fined with the only exemption being licensed sign boards.
Do we even know who cut the lock? This article does not address that, and only states that Cameron said they talked about the issue, then the bike was gone. Proper journalism requires facts, like “the McM’s staff cut the bike off at 1:23pm Thursday” etc. Perhaps they contacted the city and had it removed due to the neccessity of unloading the bands that play at the Crystal…?
I am all for biking around town, which I do frequently, but I am aware of the bike culture feeling that all others (cars, trucks, peds, businesses etc) are just that, the “others”. I also drive frequently, and it always gets me when I see bikers blowing through red lights, stop signs and generally ignoring road safety. I wonder if I as a driver would be vilified in much the same manner if I hit a biker who was blatantly disregarding the law as I was making a legal right turn…