BikinginLA

Here’s a truly disgusting story from Miami.

A racist asshole white motorist was arrested for pulling a gun on a group of young black teens riding their bicycles in the city’s Martin Luther King Day Wheels Up, Guns Down protest.

He got out of his expensive Mercedes SUV with the weapon when the woman he was with complained that one of the teens ran over her foot, after she had gotten out to demand that the riders get the hell out of their way.

He then approached them, gun in hand and screaming racist taunts, according to the Miami New Times.

“Get the fuck out of here!” the man yells as he confronts the teens. 

“You fucking losers. You fucking stupid n*****s. You’re all fucking dumb-ass fucking n*****s,” he says while he paces around the group. Even as he finally walks away, he continues to call the kids the N-word…

On Instagram, Miami Commissioner Keon Hardemon said Bartlett should be hit with more serious charges. “Assault with a deadly weapon and calling them n——rs sounds like a hate crime to me,” he wrote. 

Sounds about right to me.

See for yourself.

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Apparently, it only takes an unending series of major natural disasters for Americans to finally accept climate change.

According to a Yale study, 73% of Americans now accept that climate change is real, and 72% say it’s personally important to them.

Unfortunately, our current president remains in the remaining 27%.

And time is rapidly running out.

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In today’s LA edition of He’s One of Us, we look at the age 70+ celebrity contingent rolling on our streets.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger wore a camo jacket and rode a camo fat ebike through Los Angeles in hopes no one would notice him, it didn’t work.

Seriously? A British tabloid zooms in on Harrison Ford’s bike shorts as he goes for a ride in Marina del Rey, and seems surprised to discover he’s a man.

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Local

UCLA’s Daily Bruin looks at LA’s controversial speed limit increases, which allow police to once again use speed guns to enforce them.

LA’s favorite ex-pro cyclist is teaming with the LACBC this Saturday for the 4th Annual Clean Up Mulholland With Phil Gaimon to clear trash from one of the city’s most popular riding routes.

Pasadena is looking for input for their proposed Complete Streets Blueprint Tool to guide the makeover of the city’s streets.

State

A new San Diego company will come out and pick up all those unwanted e-scooters and dockless bikes for free, charging the dockless companies to come pick them up.

San Jose’s mayor talks with a local radio station about his recent “scary” bike wreck. As opposed to all those calm and relaxing bike wrecks, I guess.

Once again, a man has been found dead on the side of the road near his damaged bicycle as the result of an apparent hit-and-run, this time near Covelo in rural Mendocino County. So when the hell will officials finally take this deadly crime seriously, and do something to crack down on the statewide epidemic of drivers who flee the scene of a crash?

National

CityLab considers the great divide in how Americans commute to work, saying the country is cleaving into separate nations where one favors biking, walking and transit, while the other continues to revolve around their cars.

Seattle’s bike hating shock jock says city leaders will pursue congestion pricing and more bike lanes at their peril.

Speaking of Seattle, bike commuting has spiked in the first week of the Seattle Squeeze — the period between the closure of a major coastal highway and before a new tunnel opens in a few weeks. Maybe some of those new bike riders will decide they like it and keep riding. And support for those bike lanes will go up.

Bighearted Las Vegas school police pitched in to buy a boy a new bicycle after his was stolen off his grade school campus.

The overwhelming majority of Minneapolis bike crashes take place on just 3% of the city’s streets.

Life is cheap in Indiana, where a stoned driver got off with just two years behind bars and six years probation for killing an eight-year old boy as he played in his own backyard; she felt the bump as she ran him down, but kept going because she thought it was a bicycle and she might as well finish parking. I would have given her the full eight years for killing the kid, with another eight for fucking stupidity.

New York safe streets advocates rallied outside the studio where The View is shot to protest Whoopie Goldberg’s anti-bike lane comments.

DC gets serious about Vision Zero following a rash of traffic deaths, creating a dedicated Vision Zero office and hiring a new director. Maybe Los Angeles could take the hint and follow their example.

A New Orleans bike rider was critically injured after somehow crashing with a motorcycle cop escorting a funeral.

I want to be like him when I grow up. An 87-year old Pensacola man affectionately known as Bill the Bike Man refurbishes bicycles and gives them to homeless men and women.

International

Good idea. Bike Magazine suggests putting a spare car key on your bike’s multitool. Although a better idea might be just getting rid of your car altogether.

A St. Vincent bike thief swears he just borrowed it and was bringing it back when he got busted. Sure, let’s go with that.

If you build it, they will come. A Toronto newspaper says the city should get moving on expanding a network of separated bike lanes after a pilot program resulted in a tenfold increase in ridership, while collisions dropped 73%. More proof that safe bike lanes work — if they actually connect and form a real network. Even in cities where the average January temperatures are just a tad below LA’s balmy 68°.

On the other hand, Toronto advocates say the city has failed to deliver on its ambitious bike plan. Sort of like a certain SoCal city I could name that adopted an ambitious bike plan back in 2010, then put it on the shelf.

Finishing our trifecta from north of the border, Toronto police cracked down on distracted drivers, writing 670 citations in just two days.

When police in an English city were too busy to help a newspaper editor recover his stolen bike, his staff jumped into action and stole it back for him.

British bike exports rose 16.1% ever the past five years to the equivalent of over $93 million; exports to Asia more than doubled. US exports, not so much.

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on. Especially in the UK, where a bicyclist was lucky to avoid injuries when a jerk in passing a van reached out and pushed him off his bike.

Apparently Britain has a problem keeping elderly drivers off the road, as the 92-year old queen goes for a drive just days after her 97-year old husband rolled his Rover, after cutting off another driver.

The European Parliament decides that EU ebike riders won’t have to carry liability insurance after all.

When bike stunts go wrong. Popular Italian bike collective Dafne Fixed posted their blooper reel.

A bike-riding Pakistani woman writes that the government should have protected women planning a bike rally, and men “need to reflect on their own culpability for making this country so unsafe for women.”

A Ugandan entrepreneur is specializing in building bamboo bikes for just $350 to $450 apiece.

A South African website offers advice on flying with a bike. I’ve flown mine several times, but seldom on purpose. And the landings usually weren’t very pretty.

Competitive Cycling

The BBC offers beautiful photos from the 14th annual Strathpuffer 24-hour mountain bike challenge in the Scottish Highlands.

BMX Freestyle competitions have been axed from the first-ever Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) World Beach Games, set to take place in San Diego this September.

Finally…

The game to play when you have a burning urge to do a backflip off the Eiffel Tower on a tandem bike. No, you can’t just dump a privately owned dockless bikeshare bike in the dump.

And when you’re carrying meth and riding a stolen bike, stop for the damn red light, already. And if you lost a $2,500 bicycle around Santa Monica lately, check with the police.

In a surprising revelation, Metro’s CEO says the transit agency will move forward with plans for congestion pricing on LA freeways.

The fees are intended to ease traffic and get cars off the roads, while providing funding to fast-track transit projects and subsidize free fares on buses and trains.

Although knowing LA drivers, it’s likely congestion pricing to just shift traffic onto already overcrowded surface streets unless steps are taken to mitigate it at the same time.

Meanwhile, Streetsblog’s Joe Linton lists the benefits of congestion pricing.

And New York Streetsblog says a New York columnist is wrong when he calls congestion pricing a scam.

Which is putting it mildly.

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CiclaValley nearly gets right hooked from the left lane, and asks how many other “wrong things” the driver did.

On the other hand, it’s nice to note he’s not the only bike commuter out there, even in today’s rainy weather.

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Evidently, Whoopi Goldberg is no fan of bike lanes.

She took New York’s Mayor de Blasio to task when he appeared on The View to discuss his recent proposals, including Vision Zero.

“It all sounds good, but you know what’s pissing me off?” said Goldberg…

“You built 83 miles of protected bike lanes, and I like people who ride, but I don’t think you understand the impact of taking something like Tenth Avenue, which is six lanes, down to two-and-a-half — particularly when you have a winter storm and you can’t move. None of that movable, so nothing flows,” added Goldberg, referring to the Tenth Avenue dedicated bike lane.

Although she might have been exaggerating slightly, as Gothamist points out.

It’s not clear if Goldberg was referring to the bike lane on Amsterdam Avenue between 72nd and 110th, which the DOT says has not meaningfully affected traffic flow, or the planned bike lane on 10th between 52nd and 72nd, which will only require repurposing one lane of traffic, and will delay traffic by five seconds. 

She was just getting started, though.

“And I am just saying you might want to take a look at all of this because you now have [Gov.] Cuomo coming in talking about congestion pricing and I kind of feel like it’s a set up,” said Goldberg, to loud applause from the audience. “I am upset that you love these bikes, but you don’t tell people to put helmets on,” she added. “We tell children to put helmets on.”

“We have nine-block-long trucks delivering, and they can’t make the turns,” she added. “What feasibility study did y’all do when you decided to put these in? I noticed they are not on Madison Avenue, and they are not on Park Avenue?”

Which sounds like a good argument to put them on Madison and Park Aves to me.

Never mind that she begins by trotting out the inevitable support for people who ride bicycles, as long as they don’t get in the way of her commute from her $2 million New Jersey home.

And don’t get me started on how bike helmets can prevent some head injuries, but aren’t magic talismans to somehow prevent crashes or injuries to any other part of the body.

Gothamist also has this to say about her complaints over congestion pricing.

Studies have shown that congestion pricing is a “scam” if you think charging predominately wealthier New Yorkers to travel into Manhattan is a scam—only 4 percent of New Yorkers who commute into Manhattan take a private car, and more than half of that group are “high income” individuals. Variety has reported that Whoopi Goldberg is paid around $5 to $6 million a year to appear on The View. 

The View tapes at 57 West 66th Street, steps from where cyclist Madison Jane Lyden was killed by a garbage truck driver last year, increasing demands for a two way bike lane along Central Park West. 

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Local

Maybe someone can explain why Los Angeles, with its nearly perfect winter weather — present circumstances not withstanding — continues to ignore Winter Bike to Work Day, which is scheduled for Friday, February 8th.

Just heartbreaking. A speeding hit-and-run driver lost control on Hyperion before slamming into a building. And killed a mother of three who was sorting the trash looking for cans to help pay her daughter’s college tuition — then got out of his car to inspect the damage before driving off.

Things are changing already in Westwood after the breakup of the overly conservative Westwood Neighborhood Council, as the new North Westwood NC votes to support a plan to remove four parking spaces to create a parklet on Glendon Ave.

State

Ebike prices continue to drop, as former fixie maker Aventon introduces a $1,000 model at Del Mar’s CABDA West trade show.

Santa Clara is the latest city to attempt to shove the e-scooter genie back into the bottle, banning the devices until next December.

National

A new white paper from The City Fix suggests three ways cities can harness the benefits of the bikeshare revolution.

Safe Routes to Schools has released their 2019 guide to starting and growing a safe routes to schools program.

If you like to do your cycling inside — which is starting to look better and better here in SoCal — and don’t mind parting with $2,200, CNET says the Peloton Bike is a worthy splurge. Except for the water bottle holders.

After riding 14,000 miles across the US, Alaska, Ghana, Mexico and Cuba, a Washington woman takes a deep dive into the lost history of female bicycle explorers, and shares what she learned.

A cow made a mad dash for freedom from an Alaskan rodeo six months ago, and has continued to evade cowboys and fat bike riders in the frozen wilderness.

Evidently, Lance’s settlement with the feds left him with a few bucks, as Architectural Digest visits his art-filled Aspen home, complete with a new Banksy he bought online.

A Colorado man is back behind bars after making a break from county jail on a bicycle and facing additional charges for the escape; he would have been a free man in less than two weeks with a little more patience.

The University of Colorado offers tips to prevent the #1 crime on campus — bike theft.

Nice guy. After a judge orders a hit-and-run driver to apologize to the ten-year old upstate New York boy he sideswiped, the man responded with a snarky non-apology, saying he’s “very sorry that you rode into the side of the car I was driving.” The judge scheduled a hearing today to reconsider his decision to dismiss the case. Let’s hope that judge finds a deep hole to shove him into.

International

Good question. A Trinidad newspaper wants to know what’s going on with the investigations into three people who were killed while riding their bikes on the island in November and December.

Yet another pedestrian has been injured in a collision with a bike rider in the UK, as Scottish shopkeepers rushed to help a young man who suffered serious head injuries in the crash; no word on whether the rider stopped.

British police are looking for a mountain biker who punched a pedestrian in the face as he rode by, in what appears to be a random attack.

A short video from the BBC asks if popping wheelies can keep kids away from knife crime.

Spanish actor Dani Rovira was lucky to survive a horrifying crash with a distracted driver; the cameras were rolling as he and a companion were riding from Barcelona to Rome to raise awareness for Rett syndrome when the driver plowed into them. As always, be sure you really want to see the crash before you hit play, because you can’t unsee it once you do. Thanks to Victor Bale for the heads-up.

Who says you can’t carry things on a bike? After all his neighbors refused to help because she was from a lower caste, an Indian teenager carries the body of his dead mother up to two and a half miles on his bicycle to be cremated.

Six New Zealand men are proposing what would be an 80-mile mountain bike loop.

A group of bighearted Aussie bicyclists belonging to Bicycles for Humanity shipped forty donated bicycles to help impoverished people in Malawi.

Forget license plates for bicyclists. Shanghai is using facial recognition to bust scofflaw bike and scooter riders who stop in the crosswalk.

Competitive Cycling

Cyclist talks with a domestique about the life of pro cycling’s invisible men.

An American cycling journalist travels to Central America and discovers pura vida at the Vuelta Ciclista a Costa Rica.

British cyclist Jess Varnish lost her employment discrimination and whistle-blower case against British Cycling after she was dropped from the team; the court ruled that she wasn’t an employee in dismissing the case.

Finally…

Repeat after me — when you’ve got an outstanding warrant for assaulting a police officer, don’t ride your bike on the damn sidewalk. Now you, too, can have your very own $140,000, 3D-printed bicycle. Yes, $140,000.

And America’s president thinks if you bike too much, you’ll use up all your energy and drop dead.

No, really.