Attacked Because He Is A Cyclist?

 These days, when I ride into Manhattan, I am most likely to use the Williamsburg Bridge.  One reason is convenience:  It’s closest to the places on either side of the river from, to or through which I am likely to ride.  Another is habit:  The Brooklyn Bridge bike lane, which opened a couple of years ago, is better than I expected it to be.  But before it became available, the Williamsburg had widest lanes and easiest access of the East River crossings.

Time was, though, when I avoided the Williamsburg.  When I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the Brooklyn was more convenient.  But the neighborhoods on either side of the Williamsburg were, at the time, rough.  I knew a few people who were attacked and their bicycles stolen.

As if such crimes weren’t intimidating enough, a new wave of attacks—like the one I’m about to mention—is targeting cyclists.

Early this morning, a 62-year-old man was riding through Chicago’s South Loop.  For no apparent reason, someone attacked him with a construction sign. Then the perp beat the man with his bicycle.

While the methods and weapons used vary, one thing that the aforementioned incident has in common with others I’ve heard about recently is that police and reporters have said there was “no apparent motive.” I can’t help but to think, however that the man in Chicago, and other cyclists, are being attacked because they are cyclists.

Terror On Two Wheels

 Whitney Gregory turned her son into a menace to society.

No, she didn't teach 12-year-old Jeffrey how to vandalize, steal, assault people or torture puppies and kittens.  She told him to do something done by nearly all boys his age in his milieu--in a different place from where he'd been doing it before.

Susan Garcia felt so threatened by it.  The Homeowners Association member in Santa Ana, California--no doubt motivated by the possible threat to her property value as well as her corporeal security--yelled at the boy and pushed him.

His mother probably taught him not to respond violently.  If that was enough to get Martin Luther King Jr. arrested more times than he could count, it was more than sufficient to escalate Ms. Garcia's ire.

"Please don't touch me," he pleads with her.

She smacked him. "Why did you just hit me?" he asks.

Being a master of the Socratic and Talmudic methods of inquiry, she responded with a question,  "Want me to hit you again?"

Jeffrey's parents came out of their house at that point.  Not surprisingly, given the lessons they taught their boy, they de-escalated the situation and sent Jeffrey into their house.  

So what did his mother tell him to do that so threatened Ms. Garcia?

She told him to ride his bicycle on the sidewalk.

Now, to you, dear reader, and to me, that may seem misguided.  But Ms. Gregory, being the concerned mother she is, told Jeffrey to ride on the sidewalk because when he rode on the street, he almost was hit by a car.  Were I not a cyclist myself, I might do the same for my kid.

I have to wonder, though, about what lessons Jeffrey Gregory has learned from the incident.  Actually, I don't.  You see, even though I have always had an independent spirit (for which I've been praised and scolded), as a kid--even at his age--I obeyed my parents, and most authority figures, to the degree that I could.  And that is why, by that time in my life, I'd learned that at some point, doing what my parents, or some other adult, told me to do could get me into trouble with some other adult.  And, of course, as an adult, you can obey the law and still get arrested or do whatever is expected of you and get into some kind of trouble.

All I can hope is that Jeffrey doesn't give up bicycle riding--and that he's not too emotionally scarred--as a result of an encounter with a woman who saw him as a menace--for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk.

Another Reason Why Bike Lanes Aren't Safer Than The Streets

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I generally avoid the bike lanes here in New York City.  Most of them are poorly conceived, designed and constructed.  Moreover, I see more motorized bikes and scooters than pedaled bicycles on them.  Those vehicles--and the folks who operate them--are, in my experience, far more dangerous than motorcycle, auto or truck traffic.  For one thing, you can't hear the scooters or Vespa-style bikes until they're practically at your elbow.  And the people who drive them tend to be more reckless than anyone else.

But lately I've encountered other reasons not to ride on the marked lanes--even the ones separated from motor traffic by physical barriers. Lately, I've been seeing more broken glass an other debris in them.  Worse still is that the lanes seem to have become magnets for all sorts of haters and their bad behavior.

To wit:  Late yesterday, I rode two blocks down the Crescent Street lane in Astoria.  Along the way, I saw two dude-bros weaving in and out of it.  I don't know whether they were drinking, but even if their motor coordination were somewhat impaired, they could have easily walked along the sidewalk:  Few other people were using it, and there wasn't any construction or other obstructions.  But they chose to weave in and out of the bike lane, playing "chicken" with and shouting obscenities at anyone who happened to be riding by.

About three or four meters ahead of me, a young woman on a Citibike--a tourist, I'm guessing--just barely missed being entangled with them.  "F---in' bike bitch," one of them yelled.  She, and I, managed to dodge them and a delivery worker riding a motorized bike in the opposite direction.  A little further on, she stopped.  I pulled up alongside her.  She told me she was OK and thanked me. 

But I was furious. I turned around, saw the dude-bros doing their pedestrian slalom and rode right into their faces.  "Who are you callin' bike bitch?" I bellowed.

One of them tried to put on his "fight" face.  But he, his buddy and I knew he was bluffing.  "Oh, no.  We were just talking about our friend Mike Rich," the other one claimed.  

I stared at them and intoned, "OK.  Have a nice holiday."

"You do the same."

(Hmm...I guess it might've damaged their sense of themselves to get their asses kicked by a trans woman of a certain age!)

Although the exchange didn't lead to a physical confrontation or worse, I was still upset and worried:  I am seeing, and hearing about more and more aggression against cyclists, especially in bike lanes, and not only from motorists who think we've taken "their" traffic lanes and parking spaces, in this city and elsewhere.  I fear that one of us could ride into something like the attack a 46-year-old Texas cyclist suffered at the hands of a shirtless, pipe-wielding guy:

The cyclist was "shaken" but not seriously injured. Understandably, he doesn't want to ride that lane again.  Even before the attack, he had a "weird feeling" about the path, he said. "[I]t's right next to houses and there's probably a lot of NIMBYs out there."

The attacker might well have been a disgruntled homeowner. But, on seeing him, I thought of the rioters at the US Capitol on 6 January.  Looking  at the comments on the YouTube video of the attack gave me a clue as to why:  Some of those comments compared us, cyclists, to all of the folks Trumpsters love to hate:  the Bidens, Democrats in general and so on. While I'd bet that most of us voted for Biden in the last election, it hardly makes us the threat to their way of life they fancy us to be.  

Oh, I also couldn't help but to notice that one commenter said that we, and all the others they love to hate, "love protecting your pedos."  How is it that all of their fantasies about us seem to lead to pedophilia?  The bike paths in this city should have such clear destinations!