Posts Tagged ‘biking’
some dude’s transit plan »
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011
I should have no influence in whom you vote for. In fact, most of you aren’t even in Chicago, so it won’t matter, right? Anyway, Rahm Emanuel recently released his transportation plans and it’s notable for a couple reasons.
First, because it’s amazing that anyone is putting any attention toward alternative forms of transportation. The Republicans are complete idiots on this. With the recent bailouts, cars are now patriotic—trains (or, shudder, bikes) are not.
It’s a bold move but the second reason is even broader. The parts specific to biking are sort of awesome. (more…)
complete bedlam »
Saturday, July 17th, 2010
Minneapolis: are you kidding?
It’s the best recreational bicycle city but it’s mediocre for commuters. The mass transit needs vast improvement and outside of the dense center (downtown, uptown), biking with drivers is dangerous.
The light rail should be an icon of a shift to shared transit and green commutes. It’s a symbol of shared mobility and clean travel. (more…)
chicago’s finest, critically »
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
Note: There’s inappropriate language within. I’m sort of annoyed. This never happens.
The fuck? (A video of Chicago police holding down [assaulting?] a man after he photographed another incident of excessive force.)
Dear cops: We’ve had encounters in varying forms and I know most of you are just “doing your jobs” but this sort of thing is abhorrent (sorry… it means, basically, “shitty”). (more…)
anyone up for a bike ride? »
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010
There are a few things we’ll need. Enough food for two meals and a few snacks (nothing crazy but enough to counter roughly seven thousand calories burned). Some pedal shoes, lights and an iPhone or Android with bike maps are helpful. (With 120-some turns, I don’t want you getting us lost.)
We’ll want to get racks and panniers for the supplies. No one wants to be hauling weight over our shoulders for almost ninety miles. Well, maybe you do, but I’m not an idiot. Where are we going, you ask?
The Small City, that’s where. If you’re a huge wuss, maybe we’ll stop at a friend’s place (that’s only eighty miles, weakling) for a break, some water and to slap the crying girl out of you. (His young son would be happy to oblige.) (more…)
so many reasons to hate the suburbs »
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
I get it. We were afraid of brown people, looking for cheap housing and lived in our cars. Why not sprawl, right?
Things are different now and we need to call off this failed social experiment. Its detriment far outweighs its benefit.
The same faux-patriots that hate other cultures, crave war and ignore the poor saturate these once-desirable puddles of white that encircle metropolitan areas. They must be stopped.
I read somewhere that if we all lived with the population density of Brooklyn, the entire nation would fit into New Hampshire. The driving between these vastly separate locations has us dependent on nations we label enemies.
Does that make sense?
Whatever, maybe I’m just fuming over the absurd of yesterday…
HOOOOOOOOOONK!!
At first I think the giant beige (fact: color of evil) SUV is upset because I left the trail for the road after it ended. I’d just come through another intersection, though, so SUV had to hold a grudge.
Stopped at the next light, an interchange with a heavy-traffic local highway, SUV rolled down the window.
She’s about sixty but doesn’t look a day under seventy-two. A thick cake of something meant to conceal them accents her abundant wrinkles. Her eyes —
“Get off the road!” (She doesn’t even let me take in her whole horrifying face before screaming at me.)
It’s a road bike. I’m stunned, so it sounds like a question. Which is stupid because it’s obviously a road bike.
“I don’t care if it’s a road bike! Get off the road!!”
Umm.
I couldn’t do anything but laugh as she sped off to her probably-very-important somethingorother. I sighed, clicked in and went on my way.
… But yeah, that’s maybe why I’m so anti-suburb today. I don’t necessarily feel safe on my bike in Uptown, but I know the people there have seen a bike. Some have maybe even taken a drivers’ test in the last decade and had to answer bicycle-safety questions.
Maybe.
Photo courtesy Streetsblog (also: what the — !?)