Bike stuff
Please reblog/repost/share this with everyone in Philadelphia, if you know them.
Bike riders of Philly—if I say to you while we’re both riding, “Hey, you know it’s illegal to run a red light/go the wrong way down a one way street/ride on the sidewalk”, don’t look at me with your PBR and coke addled hipster eyes like I’m the fun police and just told you to turn down your garbage Times New Viking album. I’m telling you it because it’s a. true and b. you’re giving the rest of us who ride bikes in the city a poor reputation.
I actually had a pedestrian thank me for stopping at a red light at 10th and Pine this morning. Why? Because so many of you Urban Outfitters-catalog looking jizzwads just zoom through intersections almost smacking into people and cars. And every time you do, you engender ill will toward all of us. The more pedestrians and drivers who hate us, the more likely they are to take their concerns to city officials, who largely could give a fuck about the rights of the types of people whose idea of a job description is “making lint sculptures to sell at the Starlight Ballroom”. The backlash against the bike community, with the way things are going, is a comin’.
I’m singling out hipsters and artsy types because they’re the ones I see flaunting their dislike of the laws most frequently, but it’s more than just them. It’s the guys who pretend they’re riding in the goddamn Tour De France on Spruce Street (Who are you trying to impress? You’re on a bicycle, the preferred mode of transport for virgins, delivery boys, and Asperger-y college professors since 1889; bikes are not cool.), the women who brought grandma’s old Schwinn down from Bucks County and have no idea how to ride in an urban environment, the foreign men for whom the BIKE LANE signage is obviously not a universal symbol, the wannabe metal doofuses who really want a Harley but ride their shitty rusty Fuji and nerdily tell people “You’re riding the wrong way!” (see, look, I can make fun of myself! I’d just rather make fun of you.). We all need to do a better job coexisting with walkers and drivers. A good start would be obeying the damn laws as they’re currently laid out. You can have all the rationale in the world for running stop signs and swerving in and out of traffic, but the fact is you’re fucking yourself—and the rights of all bike riders—over in the long run.
