Thank you everyone for your kind and comforting words about the Corgi.
I apologize if I haven’t been able to get back to you yet, but I truly appreciate everyone who took the time to reach out or leave a comment. It’s brought some real comfort in a difficult time.
The Corgi still has a smile on her face, and you helped put one back on mine.
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Let’s start with a reminder about the Los Angeles Bicycle Coaliton’s Which Way LACBC open house this Saturday, to get your input on what you’re looking for from the county’s leading bike advocacy group.
Streetsblog’s Joe Linton talks with LACBC Executive Director Eli Akira Kaufman about the organizations drift and mismanagement following the departure of former ED Tamika Butler, and the opportunity for reinvention.
Who should come on Saturday?
Everyone. Literally anybody who’s ever been on a bicycle. Anybody who’s ever ridden mass transit, Metro, buses. Anybody who considers themselves a pedestrian. And scooter-ists, as well. And drivers, we want to hear from them, too. It’s an open invitation…
This Saturday’s Which Way L.A.-CBC? is meant to be a bit of a reckoning. There’s a moment in the program where I plan to just speak frankly about how we arrived at this moment.
I’m going to own the fact that I don’t think we are justifying our existence as we stand today. We need the help of basically everyone to become a better resource and a better support to the mission that we are fighting for.
I understand that the stakes are high. This is the moment that we need to turn this thing around. It starts with the input and the thoughtfulness of the people that we need to partner with to get this thing done.
The Which Way L.A.-CBC? community forum will take place from 11 a.m to 3 p.m. this Saturday, July 27, at LACBC headquarters at 634 S. Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it this time; for the foreseeable future, I’ll be home tending to a sick corgi who can’t be left alone more than a few minutes.
But I urge you to attend.
And maybe you could offer my input for me.
- The LACBC should immediately form an associated 501(c)4 allowing it to engage in political activity; we desperately need a strong voice that can force our elected leaders and candidates to take the bicycling community seriously.
- The LACBC should stop being afraid to take action, and be willing to take to the streets to demand real safety and protect the rights of bike riders.
- The LACBC should be willing to back bike riders, and take a stand to support those who step up on their own to demand change, whether or not they’re members of the coalition.
And one more thing.
The LACBC — and the LA bicycling community — needs you now more than ever.
Yes, you.
So take a few minutes to join if you’re not a member, or renew your membership if you are. And make a donation if you can spare the change.
It’s up to you to help the LACBC return to what it was just a few short years ago.
And what we all need it to be again.
Photo shamelessly purloined from LACBC website, via Streetsblog LA.
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This is what happens when you take Vision Zero seriously.
New York mayor and presidential candidate Bill de Blasio announced plans to invest $58.4 million to build 30 miles of protected bike lanes, in the wake of a shocking jump in bicycling deaths.
The city will also crack down on dangerous drivers at crash-prone intersections, as well as drivers who block bike lanes.
Although the NYPD might want to brush up on bike law first. And whether that crackdown on blocking bike lanes applies to the cops themselves remains to be determined.
Meanwhile, an op-ed in the Daily News says bike riders are terrified, and the city must take steps to break the deadly car culture on the streets.
But maybe if LA Mayor Eric Garcetti was still running for president, he might actually feel the pressure to get off his ass and do something about our own deadly streets.
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The late Rutger Hauer was one of us, too.
https://twitter.com/klaasdezwaan/status/1154079033770086400
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Cannondale is recalling 10,000 CAADX Cyclocross Bicycles from the model years 2013 – 2016 after one person died and seven others suffered serious injuries due to a defective carbon fork.
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Sometimes it’s the people on bikes behaving badly.
An American woman living in the UK was slapped by a bike-riding woman for no apparent reason as she crossed a pedestrian bridge, then saw her attacker go on to slap the man walking behind her, as well.
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Local
The LA Explorers Club will take a bicycle tour of ’80s movie sites in the San Gabriel Valley on Saturday; the ride is free, but RSVPs are required.
The third annual Health Fair and Bike Ride will be held in South Central LA on Saturday, August 3rd. Thanks to Sis for the heads-up.
State
Pacific Grove says feel free to ride your ebike on the city’s Rec Trail — as long as you don’t engage the engine.
San Jose bike riders are concerned about a growing homeless encampment affecting a key commuter bike path — a problem affecting cities across the state. However, people without a home have to be somewhere. If we want them off our sidewalks and bikeways, we need to pressure our leaders to help put a roof over their heads, and get them the help they need to rebuild their lives.
San Francisco is finalizing plans to close the city’s iconic Market Street to private motor vehicles. That would be like shutting down Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles — which isn’t a bad idea.
A Chico writer tells the story of her stolen bike, which a police detective said was probably already in pieces across the city hours after it was stolen. And now she’s afraid to ride to the market because she doesn’t want her new, cheaper bike to end up the same way.
National
More Americans have died in car crashes in the past 19 years than were killed in both world wars.
Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss explains why we all should care that fewer kids are riding bikes.
Once again, a bike rider is a hero. A 73-year old Oregon man and his two dogs are alive today after a man riding his bike discovered him nearly unconscious on the side of the road after they became stranded with no food and only a little water.
Bicycling fatalities are up in Colorado, too, as a serious cyclist’s loved ones look for the heartless coward who left him for dead after a crash; the victim is former Bicycling editor Andrew “Bernie” Bernstein, who who was riding home from a velodrome when he was run down.
Life is cheap in Missouri, where a dog owner walks with a warm caress on the wrist for allowing his dogs to run free, and allegedly kill an 85-year old man as he rode by on his bicycle.
Thanks for nothing. After a Texas man found his stolen bike for sale online, a Houston cop told him to just buy it back from the thief.
A Houston man took his girlfriend on a 15 mile bike ride spelling out the words “marry me,” before getting down on one knee at the end to ask for her hand. And the rest of her, presumably.
A Chicago scooter rider was critically injured when he was struck by a driver who pulled over when police tried to stop the scooterist for leaving the scene after crashing into a pedestrian while riding on the sidewalk.
A Chicago bike tour will revisit scenes from the city’s violent past on the 100th anniversary of the 1919 race riots.
Talk about not getting it. A Minnesota letter writer says we don’t need any more bike lanes, because most people just ride their bikes on the sidewalk anyway.
Bike riders in the greater Cleveland area remain wary of sharing the road with motorists.
Something tells me there’s a lot more to this story. An Ohio woman is charged with evidence tampering and falsifying vehicle registration in an attempt to coverup her involvement in a hit-and-run that left a bike-riding woman seriously injured.
The problem with a new Vermont bike lane isn’t the squiggly lines that suggest someone was partaking in the state’s newly legalized cannabis while painting them. It’s the fact that what passes for a bike lane is barely wider than some bike tires in places.
A Long Island community says forget dangerous drivers, the real problem on the streets is teenagers on bikes who block traffic and annoy the people behind the wheel.
Liev Schreiber is one of use, making out with his dog on the streets of New York on his double-seated, wine crate-equipped cargo bike.
Holy exploding ebikes, Batman! A New York bike rider suffered burns on his legs when the lock battery on the dockless Lime Bike he was riding suddenly exploded and burst into flames; a company spokesperson said someone had apparently punctured the battery with sharp object while trying to break the lock, and there’s no need to panic. Honest.
Good luck outrunning these New Jersey bike cops on their new 50 mph ebikes.
Atlanta protesters form a human-protected bike lane to demand safer streets after a bicyclist was killed by a city bus last week.
A woman with eight grandkids was shot and killed while riding her bike in Florida’s Orange County.
International
Turns out bikeshare isn’t just for wealthy hipsters after all; many of the “super users” around the world come from lower income brackets.
Copenhagenize ranks the world’s top 20 bike cities; not surprisingly, given who was doing the ranking, Copenhagen comes out on top. No surprise either, that no American city made the list.
Architecture and Design says the solution to pollution, sprawl and congestion is getting rid of parking spaces.
Forbes takes a long, lingering look at the many iterations of the World Naked Bike Ride, as people around the globe go as bare as they dare to demand safety on our streets.
A Vancouver man plans a one-person protest of a dangerous bike lane, riding up and down the lane all day to call attention to the one-year anniversary of when another rider was fatally doored on the street.
A British Columbia man on a 1,600-mile bike tour through the Yukon says he’s been blown away by the people and beauty he’s found along the way.
A Montreal blogger says it may be the best bike city in North America, but riding there still sucks.
Keep your eye on Britain, where plans are in motion for “genius” CYCLOPS — Cycle Optimized Protected Signals — intersections to maximize opportunities for safe bicycling and walking, without adversely affecting motorists.
A British bike lawyer explains why a bike rider getting sued for crashing into a pedestrian is actually a good thing for bicyclists.
Life is cheap in the UK, where a retired cop walked with a suspended sentence for killing a bike rider while high on meth, which his lawyer claimed was a byproduct of his Parkinson’s medication. At least he was banned from driving for five years.
An Indian general is one of six people from the county’s military to be accepted for this year’s 750-mile Paris-Brest-Paris ride.
An Indian girl holds the world record for the longest bike trip in a single county, riding over 12,000 miles without ever leaving India. Never mind that the “girl” is a 28-year old woman.
Thai officials are rushing to repair an elevated bike path along the Mekong River that collapsed due to erosion on the bank, leaving a gap the length of a football field in the popular tourist attraction.
Competitive Cycling
While Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe continues to wear yellow, seven cyclists still have a chance to win this year’s Tour de France with just three stages left.
The sweat-drenched peloton struggling through the French heatwave provides a lesson in what we can look forward to due to climate change.
Cycling Tips considers the sports brutality and bizarre mythologizing of suffering through the lens of New Zealand cyclist George Bennett, who had two hard crashes on Thursday’s stage of the Tour de France, possibly suffering a concussion, yet still finished 27th.
Finally…
Forget scooters. Now you can cruise the beach on 7 mph, ADA-compliant purple stuffed…uh, thing. Apparently, God does not have an account at Sonic, whether or not you’re on a bike.
And forget the recovery drinks. Just grab yourself an ice cold Sufferfest.
