BikinginLA

Nothing is uglier than racism.

Unless it’s racist kids.

A Black student at UC Irvine was surrounded, harassed, spat at and struck by a small group of ebike-riding teens.

Not to mention subjected to ugly racial slurs.

The fourth-year student headed back to his dorm from the Black Student Union when he was approached by four teenaged boys and a girl on their ebikes.

After he asked to be left alone and tried to walk away, they started to chase him.

According to KNBC-4,

“They were close enough that they were spitting on me, trying to grab at me, trying to do all sorts of heinous things,” he said. “I’m being called ‘monkey,’ ‘blackie,’ completely out of my name. Obviously, this is stuff I never expected to hear.”

During the attack, the victim said he was also called the N-word and was struck on the back of his ankle by an assailant who accelerated their e-bike toward him.

“It was the worst pain I had felt in a very long time,” the victim said.

The campus police offered a description of just two of the five kids.

According to UC Irvine police, one of the assailants was described as a 16 to 17-year-old boy who was about 5-feet-8-inches tall and weighed about 160 to 170 pounds. He had a white T-shirt, black pants, a black helmet and was traveling on a black e-bike at the time of the attack.

A second attacker was described as a 14-year-old boy who was 5-feet-5-inches tall and about 190 pounds. He wore a black shirt, denim gray pants, white Air Force 1 Nike shoes, a black helmet, a blue backpack and was also traveling on a black e-bike, police said.

We can assume the kids are white, but that’s not guaranteed. Because for some bizarre reason, there’s no mention of the teens’ race in their descriptions, which just might help identify them.

There’s also no word on what kind of ebikes the kids were on. But we can probably guess.

Anyone with information is urged to call UC Irvine Police at 949/824-5223.

Photo by Johan Bos from Pexels.

………

As if that wasn’t bad enough, something eerily similar happened to an 11-year old girl in Carlsbad.

Except this time, it was the victim who was on a bike.

A viral video shows a young Black girl was surrounded by students from Aviara Oaks Middle School, both boys and girls, while she was riding at Poinsettia Park on February 26th.

According to People magazine,

Racial slurs can be heard in the video, and at one point a boy says it feels “racist” and, “We’re all ganging up on a Black girl.”

The girl tried to back up on her bike and leave, but was prevented from doing so and then slapped, at which point she fought back and the video ended.

NBC San Diego quotes the girl’s mother, April Amor, saying she’s proud of how her daughter handled the situation.

“I just want to go home,” her daughter says in the video while kids yell racial slurs and other expletives. After about two-and-a-half minutes of tension, she rolled her bike backwards, away from the group. A young boy pulled her bike back in and then 30 seconds later, someone slapped the girl in the face before she got off the bike and fought back.

“She stood her ground,” Amor said. “I told my daughter, you don’t start fights, but you better finish them. And I’m proud. I’m proud of how she conducted herself.”

Amor said she was removing her daughter from the school district, and will be homeschooling her now.

Probably a good choice. Especially if the kids get the discipline they deserve.

Or if they don’t.

………

Police in Santa Ana are looking for a man who was caught on dashcam throwing his bicycle at a car when several driver honked at him for standing in the middle of 1st Street and blocking traffic, for no apparent reason.

The incident happened on February 27th.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Santa Ana Police Investigative Specialist V. Hernandez at 714/245-8372, or VHernandez@santa-ana.org.

………

Apparently, justice delayed isn’t justice denied this time.

According to the VC Star, 33-year old Port Hueneme resident Samuel Rocha has finally gone on trial for murder in the death of 16-year-old bike rider Pedro Valdez five years ago.

Rocha also faces four counts of attempted murder, five counts of assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of battery for a series of assaults, including intentionally plowing his car into a group of seven fixie riders.

Allegedly.

Rocha was reportedly still angry following a series of altercations a few minutes earlier when he encountered the group that included Valdez.

Just 10 minutes before the crash, Rocha is seen on camera at Queen Wash in Oxnard, confronting and then hitting a man and his wife in the laundromat. When another man follows Rocha outside to take a photo of his license plate, Rocha is seen driving his car into the man and knocking him over.

To make matters worse, he seemed proud of it.

Later in the evening, in a video from the back of a police car, Rocha rants about how he didn’t have a house to sleep in, while rich kids pretended to be poor. He said he didn’t care if he went to prison.

“I’m happy I ran over those fools today, dawg,” Rocha said, prompting tears from Pedro’s parents in the audience.

In a recorded police interview, an officer asks him if he took his anger from the laundromat fight out on the bicyclists and intentionally hit them, and Rocha replies, “Yeah.” He said he accelerated toward the bikes and didn’t stop after the impact.

The trial was delayed after Rocha was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial, which seems to be his defense.

Because according to his lawyer, Rocha didn’t mean to slam his Lexus into the kids riding bikes; he just didn’t see them because he was so deeply psychotic and intoxicated.

The paper reports he’s being held without bail while the trial continues, which is expected to take four weeks.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

The National Park Service may be secretly planning to rip out a DC bike lane that’s under their control, without any public comment or written announcement, according to an anonymous whistleblower.

Apparently lacking anything new to stir up outrage against bicyclists, British tabloids dig up an old survey that they twist to suggest half of bike riders “think they’re ‘too cool’ to wear a helmet.” Even though 31% actually said it’s not practical or needed because they’re only riding a short distance, and 13% don’t want to mess up their hair — which still only adds up to 44%. And while I wasn’t a math major, that seems like less than half. But what do I know?

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

A 50-year old British ebiker walked without a single day behind bars, after he was given a 15-month suspended sentence for killing a 91-year old man while illegally riding on the sidewalk; the tabloids celebrated the country’s first manslaughter conviction for riding a bicycle on the sidewalk (or “pavement,” in Brit-speak).

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Local 

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton explains how to read the signs showing where a bike lane or crosswalk was ripped out by the city, putting lives at risk for the convenience of motorists.

Culver City is hosting a public workshop on the Sepulveda Connects Complete Streets project on Wednesday, along with a virtual workshop a week from Saturday.

 

State

The family of fallen San Diego bicyclist Andres Gallardo want answers, after the 43-year old man was killed by a hit-and-run driver while riding in the city’s Clairemont neighborhood March 1st; a crowdfunding campaign to defray funeral expenses and send his ashes to his parents has raised the equivalent of just $144. And no, it doesn’t look like I knew about this one yet; I’ll try to get to it later today.

San Diego is on the verge of becoming the largest California city to crack down on ebikes, including a ban on kids under 12. Although like virtually every other attempt to rein in ebike riders, they continue to conflate ped-assist ebikes with higher speed and more powerful electric motorbikes and dirt bikes.

The San Diego Association of Governments, aka SANDAG, finally broke ground on long-awaited bike lanes on San Diego’s University Ave, which has been in the works since 2012.

Santa Clara has adopted a Vision Zero plan, after 51 people were killed in traffic collisions over a five-year period in the city of just 120,000.

The parents of a four-year old boy are suing the city of Burlingame, as well as 19-year-old driver, her parents, and the parents of an 11-year old boy riding an ebike, after the four-year old was killed as his family exited a restaurant, collateral damage following a collision between the 19-year old driver and the boy on the ebike.

 

National

Toddler-sized Pro Rider bike helmets are being recalled because they may pose a “serious risk of injury or death due to head injury.”

Projects across the country are at risk as President Trump targets hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants for biking and pedestrian projects.

Uh, probably not. After a teenaged Utah girl miraculously survived a traumatic brain injury, her mother said “it would have made the hugest difference” and “she would have had such less trauma” is she had only worn a bike helmet when she crashed her ebike into a retaining wall at 40 mph, then landed head-first after falling 25 feet off a cliff. Even though bike helmets are only designed to protect against impacts up to 12.5 mph. And don’t even get me started on her grammar. 

A Netflix doc about the life and murder of gravel champ Moriah “Mo” Wilson premiered at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas on Thursday, the city where she was fatally shot by a jealous Kaitlin Armstrong, who thought she was involved with her erstwhile boyfriend, pro cyclist Colin Strickland, in 2022.

Huh? A Minnesota legislator wants to amend the state’s Idaho Stop Law to make bicyclists stop at yellow lights, but only if they’re riding in bikeways. And no, I honestly have no idea why going through a yellow light in a bike lane is perceived as more dangerous than doing it without one. 

I want to be like him when I grow up. An 81-year old Michigan man shares the story of how he rode his bike 2,600 miles from the coast of Alabama to the coast of Marquette, Michigan — just two years after becoming the oldest person to ride cross the US.

Good question. An Ohio letter writer wants to know why a cop asked his group of bicyclists to ride single file, when state law explicitly allows people to ride side-by-side.

The Indiana Pacers are inviting fans to join them on a police-escorted bike ride to the team’s final home game.

If you build it, they will come. Cambridge, Massachusetts has recorded a 250% jump in bicycling rates since 2004 after “investing in high-comfort bikeways.”

That’s more like it. A Rhode Island bill would require stop signs for motorists at all bike path crossings.

A North Carolina bike shop offers job training and experience for neurodiverse workers.

Hats off to a 13-year old Alabama boy, who used his bicycle to subdue his 32-year old stepfather who was physically attacking the boy’s mom, leaving the older man banged up and bloodied.

 

International

Once again, a London bobby borrowed a bystander’s bicycle to chase down a thief, who stole baggage from the boot of a black cab. Not bad alliteration by someone who’s barely literate, if I do say so myself. 

British bike sales are up for the first time in five years, after a modest 5% increase last year.

 

Competitive Cycling

Mathieu van der Poel has already won two of the four completed stages of Tirreno-Adriatico, as Mexico’s Isaac del Toro holds the leader’s, points and young rider’s jerseys.

Jonas Vingegaard was roundly ridiculed for a sartorial faux pas when he finished a stage at Paris-Nice wearing his bibs on the outside, explaining the racing was too intense to remove them.

 

Finally…

You can ride your bike to the world’s best movie theater right here in Hollywood, though there’s just a good chance it won’t be there when you get out. Evidently, you can be replaced by a robot — and so can your bike.

And that feeling when bike shops are prime comedy fodder.

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin.