Mellow Johnny Sends A Loud, Clear Message

I love food and music.  So, some of you may find it unfathomable, or even criminal, that I've never been to Austin, Texas.

Perhaps I'll get there one day.  In addition to the sounds and savory stuff, there's another reason to visit.

I mean, even if you don't care about bicycles, how can you not want to check out a place called "Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop?"

Apparently, they're part of a chain in the area, each store with its own management.  So, a policy at Mellow Johnny's in Austin might not prevail at MJ's in, for example, Fort Worth.

Actually, that scenario is not as hypothetical as I made it seem. In fact, the Austin shop has done something that the managers of the Fort Worth store aren't--and don't agree with.

Will Black, the general manager Mellow Johnny's--Austin, has announced, on social media, that the shop won't be selling any more bikes to the city's police department.  "It was a staff-wide store decision," he said, "that we discussed for a pretty good length of time to make sure we were all on the same page and doing the right thing." 

No one incident sparked the decision, he explained.  Rather, he and his employees were concerned that, during Black Lives Matter protests in the city, officers were using the bikes to block Black Lives Matter demonstrators.

On Wednesday, when Black announced the decision, Mellow Johnny's was in the second year of a five-year contract with the police department, which has more than 150 bicycle patrol officers in its downtown area police command.   The shop's action follows similar moves in the industry.  BikeCo, the North American distributor of Fuji bicycles, suspended sales to police forces in June, citing the use of bikes as weapons in protest marches.  That move is significant because Fuji had been one of the major bicycle suppliers to police forces in the United States.

"We are not anti-police," Mellow Johnny's post continued. "We believe our local police will protect us from the threats we are receiving right now" on social media.  Thankfully, there have also been messages of support--which, I suppose, isn't too surprising, given Austin's reputation as a "progressive" community--and the sense of fairness and justice I have seen in cyclists throughout my decades of riding and working in shops.

The First Time Without Her

Around this time last year, I had just returned from my trip to Greece.

And it was my mother's birthday.  Little did I, or anyone, know it would be her last.

Before taking a quick ride out to Flushing Meadow Corona Park (site of the climactic Men In Black scene and the "the valley of ashes in The Great Gatsby), I called my father.  Though he is not religious, he went to church and lit a candle in honor of my mother, who was not terribly religious but attended mass and lit candles.  We agreed that it was strange--and, for him, lonely--to experience her birthday without her.

Of course, I was thinking about those rides I took along the ocean during my visits with her and Dad in Florida and my high school days in New Jersey.  She never rode with me (or anyone, as far as I know) but she never discouraged me from cycling.  She seemed to understand that it was, and always would be, part of who I am.

As she is.

It Wasn't Hiroshima, But....

Seventy-five years ago today, American soldiers dropped the world's first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

I will not try to debate whether the bombing, or the one in Nagaski three days later, was necessary or ethical.  The effect of those blasts was, I believe, best summed up two millenia earlier in a Calgacus speech, as recalled by Tacitus:  Ubi solitudenum facient, pacem appelant (They make a wasteland and call it peace.)

I have seen the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and of various natural disaster.  I cannot, however, pretend to have ever seen devastation resembling anything wrought by those weapons. 

Even what I saw yesterday pales in comparison.

On the day after a not-quite-hurricane struck this area, I went for a ride in the direction of Connecticut.  Along the Pelham Bay Park trail, I had to detour around downed limbs and other parts of trees.  Still, my ride was going relatively smoothly until I crossed into Westchester County:

Less than a mile north of the city/county line, this tree toppled onto Mount Tom Road in Pelham.  So I backed up a bit and took a right, figuring that the road would take me, if in a more roundabout way, the direction of my ride.

Didn't get very far.

On that road, a couple of guys were sitting in their car.  "Be careful out there," the driver yelled.  He explained that his friend had just been out cycling and encountered broken power lines as well as downed trees.

At his suggestion, I cut through the golf course into a residential area of Pelham Manor.  I knew that I would end up at or near Boston Post Road, a.k.a. US 1, where I could re-orient myself.  At worst, I figured, I could ride US 1 for a bit, as it has a decent shoulder--and, I thought, was less likely to contain obstacles and hazards like the ones I'd encountered and been warned about:

So much for that idea, right?  I turned down another road blocked by a tree.  For a moment, I thought perhaps the storm was some cosmic conspiracy that threw down those trees as a "wall" to keep riff-raff like me out of the upper reaches of Westchester County and Connecticut.

Of course, that thought was no more rational than any comparison between what I was seeing and what the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki carried with them.