As we speak’s publish shall be transient in remark of Columbus Day:
Sorry, Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Streetsblog needs you to know the WON’T be observing “Columbus Day,” however they WILL be taking the break day, thankyouverymuch:
Additionally they take pains to enumerate Columbus’s many character flaws which embrace being rapacious, being Spanish, and being Jewish:
“A rose by some other title would scent as candy,” goes the oft-quoted line from the distressingly hetero-normative “Romeo and Juliet.” Does the identical not maintain true for federal holidays? Name it no matter you need, in the end you’re simply fucking off from work.
Talking of polarizing topics, the Web was abuzz over the weekend with this video wherein an especially agitated older Fred accosts an especially relaxed youthful motorist over an alleged close-pass:
Alas, between the perspective, the Saab jersey, and the backwards Fred-waddle when he goes to rattle off the driving force’s license plate to the cops, he makes us look dangerous sufficient:
[Pro tip: don’t keep straddling the bike when you’re done riding.]
However then he says the phrase that may guarantee motorists will proceed to hate and harass us for all eternity:
“I’m driving a motorbike, I’ve extra rights than you!”
Whereas I’ve principally given up now, I spent a few years actively preventing the parable that cyclists are nothing however a bunch of entitled elitists, and now right here comes this man and undoes all of it in the middle of a single viral video.
And but I additionally really feel compassion for the bicycle owner, who clearly feels as if the world is out to get him. For instance, he tells the police that he feels extraordinarily unsafe as a result of there’s one other individual on the scene. We then see the opposite individual:
He appears completely terrifying.
And naturally anybody who rides bikes has skilled being handed too intently. Right here in New York folks cross you so intently you don’t even discover until you are feeling it in your arm hairs. Loads of us have additionally been hit this manner; I nonetheless take into consideration the lady who sideswiped me, despatched me sprawling, after which shrugged and mentioned, “I assumed I may get round you.”
Nevertheless, this doesn’t appear to be what occurred right here:
Because the story notes, the video doesn’t present the precise distance of the cross, however it additionally doesn’t appear to convey something even remotely harrowing.
So is the bicycle owner right here the Lycra-clad embodiment of entitlement? Or is he only a man who, like all of us, has been topic to the aggression, indifference, and ineptitude of motorists and eventually had sufficient? In keeping with him it’s the latter:
Although it appears extra like just a little little bit of each.
Both approach, I submit this video as exhibit one billion of why confronting drivers isn’t value it. Overlook the cross–after attempting to detain an entire stranger he’s fortunate to be alive.
