Rahsaan Bahati talks race and cycling, Gaimon’s tips for new and experienced riders, and DC bike jerk attacks young girl

Just in time for the social justice protest movement roiling the county, VeloNews offers a challenging conversation with LA’s own 10-time national road champ Rahsaan Bahati about race and cycling.

Here’s a small piece of what he has to say.

I’ve been on training rides where I’ve had older adults who didn’t like me because, one, the color of my skin, and two, I was better than them. This is as a kid, having a white guy in his 40s tell me to get off a ride.

You go to Europe and it’s the same level of ignorance and racism. When I was a year out of college, I was fortunate to get a job with Jonathan Vaughters, went over to Europe, my teammates were Danny Pate, Mike Friedman, Tyler Farrar, all those guys. They’d never taken a break to go to school and I had. I remember I had another month left to be there and I remember being in car, overhearing the director or someone saying, ‘he’s no good.’ It’s like, ‘dude, I just spent the last five years at Indiana University.’

Seriously, take a few minutes to read it.

Because Bahati’s not saying anything he hasn’t said for years. The only difference is, people are finally paying attention.

And if you want to make a difference in today’s LA, you could do a lot worse than supporting his work with the nonprofit Bahati Foundation.

Photo from Bahati Foundation website.

………

Former pro Phil Gaimon is back with tips for new bike riders, while telling experienced riders not to screw this up with their obnoxious rules.

And yes, Gaimon’s typically tongue-in-cheek delivery will probably make this the funniest thing you watch today, despite his perfectly serious message.

Gaimon may have never reached the dope-fueled heights Lance Armstrong did.

But he’s become the bike advocate Lance has never been, but should be.

Especially since Lance owes a lot to all of us who bought his lies for so long.

………

The war on cars is a myth, but the war on bikes goes on.

Someone in a white van has been egging several bike riders in Yorkshire, England in recent weeks.

But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

Talk about a jerk. This is about the worst behavior by a bike rider we’ve seen in some time, as a spandex-clad man assaulted a little girl on a DC-area trail, ripping flyers out of her hands demanding justice for killer cops, then ramming his bike into the man who was filming him.

………

Local

Long Beach’s Bixby Knolls neighborhood virtually celebrated eight years of Kidical Mass.

TMZLive host Harvey Levin is one of us. Although he may not be for awhile, after a “pretty bad” knocked him off his bike and off the air.

 

State

No news is good news, right?

 

National

The new transportation bill proposed by House Democrats contains $6.3 billion for biking and walking infrastructure.

A senior Sam Schwartz transportation planner says now is the time to rethink the right of way as the right to social movement.

US bike sales are up 30% over pre-pandemic shutdown levels. But if you can’t get a new bike, you can always fix up an old one.

Bike mechanics are in short supply, too.

A new service founded by a British expat living in Portland delivers tea, roses and handwritten notes or poems by bicycle.

Bike shop owners in Portland are hunting for dozens of bicycles that were stolen by looters during weekend protests. Just like bike shops pretty much everywhere else in the US.

There’s a special place in hell for the bike thieves who targeted a blind bike shop owner in Medford, Oregon, who’s crowdfunding money to stay in business after his shop was hit by thieves multiple times in recent weeks; the campaign has raised over $5,600 in just three days., more than making up for losing $5,000 worth of bicycles.

Ann Arbor, Michigan could soon be home to more protected bike lanes and fewer car lanes, along with more space for pedestrians, as the city responds to the coronavirus crisis. Which is a lot more than a certain SoCal megalopolis we could name is doing right now.

Bicycling profiles a 54-year old Detroit man who lost nearly 200 pounds after getting on his bike and discovering triathlons. And likely saved his own life in the process.

Not even bikes are safe from the NYPD’s aggressive policing, as charging officers indiscriminately confiscated bicycles belonging protesters and reporters alike.

Miami’s elite bike cops formed the front lines of the city’s response to recent protests.

 

International

FloBikes recommends the best bicycling books on the market right now.

Bike Radar offers advice on how to finance a new bike.

British pedicab company PedalMe has dropped their rates in an effort to get more cars off the streets during the pandemic, saying they’re now cheaper than Uber

Thousands of Brits are reaching out to local leaders to demand pop-up bike lanes, as a new survey shows 36% of UK residents would dump their cars if they felt safer biking and walking.

A horrifying X-ray shows a knife embedded in the skull of a 60-year old Spanish man, who was stabbed in the head when he tried to intervene in an argument over a bicycle. Be sure you really want to see that before you click on the link, because that image will stick with you.

A pair of bike advocates in Bengaluru — formerly known as Bangalore, India — are encouraging more people to get out and ride in the post-Covid-19 era. Which hasn’t come yet, and probably won’t for a very long time.

A Kenyan news anchor urged drivers to be more careful after he was hit by one while riding his bike; calling Nairobi one of the world’s most dangerous cities for bicyclists.

Bicycles are helping raise Zambia’s female farmers out of poverty, shaving hours off their journey to get fresh milk to market.

Korean carmaker Kia used to be one of us, beginning as a bike parts maker, and producing the country’s first full-size bicycle in 1951.

Bikes are booming Down Under, too, with a 200% jump in Adelaide alone.

 

Finally…

Your next bike could run on rails. Your next ebike may not stop someone from stealing it, but at least it will tell you if someone does.

And now we know what that weird Turkmenistan World Bicycle Day globe was.

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And wear a mask, already. 

One comment

  1. Racism is arguably a global issue, but I didn’t realize that in this day and age, Europe is among the list where this runs rampant, as suggested by Mssr. Bahati.

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