Life on the streets
I went for an explore this afternoon, and on the way home I experienced the following:
- On the return leg of the trip I transferred to a different bus downtown, and as it arrived and I made for it there was a woman lying on the sidewalk seizing. People were approaching her so I didn’t stop, and anyway there’s always a heavy police presence in the area because it’s an open air drug den. A block away is the McDonalds where there was a mass shooting a few years ago.
- I sat on the first front-facing seat and a woman sat in front of me in the side-facing seat. She had a paper bag from which she took some fired battered chunks of something, fish or chicken, and a little tub of sauce, and she proceeded to pull some of the batter off each chunk, dip it in the sauce, and eat it, then dip the bits of batter in the sauce and eat those, then lick her fingers. There were quite a few chunks and she ate them all. She was maybe a foot away from me and the smell was nauseating, not to mention the sight.
- I did another transfer at the big stop outside KEXP, just up the block from Climate Pledge Arena. It’s a nice place to transfer because while waiting you can use the rest rooms at KEXP, get some water, get warm or dry or both. I got some water then wandered up the street to the corner and just as I got there a maniac on a bike crossed from the other side at speed, heading right for me. I stopped walking and he gave me a little thank you wave, as if I’d done it to be nice. I’d done it so that he wouldn’t smash my skull on the sidewalk.
- There was a guy in front of one of the bus stop benches leaning over with his face almost on the bench and his butt in the air, with his pants falling off. He was kind of weaving back and forth and making cryptic gestures.
All this was in the space of 20 minutes.
Sometimes big city living is a bit much.
Yeah, I don’t miss living in a city.
I used to commute a lot by bike, so I may have been ‘that guy’ from time to time. Sometimes the wave is to thank you for being g nice (because from the riders point of view you have). Other times it’s acknowledgement that the rider has cut it too fine for whatever reason and is a half arsed apology.
What I didn’t mention is that he was riding on the sidewalk – which is illegal, and he was as I mentioned doing it at speed. I was on the sidewalk. He had no business being any kind of threat to me. (I didn’t stop before stepping into the street, I stopped before walking farther on the sidewalk [pavement].) He was way out of line.
As the son of an elderly mother who is quite frail, that last second-to-last point absolutely infuriates me. If she’s hit by a rider and breaks a major bone, that’s it–she’s dead. The self-absorbed bravado of these urban cyclists is incredible. (It’s illegal for cyclists to be on the sidewalk up here in Bellingham, too.)
It’s not illegal here and it’s a big problem… I had an argument with a former friend (who is probably a troon these days) where he insisted that it was unfair to cyclists because it was too dangerous to use the bike lanes… The bike lanes here are as safe as they can be and yet cyclists ride the sidewalks or even the wrong way down the bike lanes…
It sucks…
It sucks to live in a small city, too. No mass transit. Great big pickup trucks barreling toward you even if you’re in the crosswalk. Trump flags. The only left turn arrow being by Wal Mart. Trump flags. Having to go somewhere else to shop if we don’t want to shop at Wal Mart. Trump flags. People thinking they are superior to big city people because they don’t do any of that stupid thinking stuff. Did I mention Trump flags?
Oh, and nobody in Nebraska knows how to make a left turn.
Ah, yes, well that makes a difference. Generally in NZ riding on footpaths is illegal. There are designated shared paths and the clearly polite thing to do there is to ride at a sensible speed (pedestrians have right of way, but are expected to be aware and considerate as well). Then there are a few weird hybrid paths around. They are generally very wide (3.5 to 6m) and designed to connect multiple cycle/pedestrian/shared paths at either end. They have a marked ‘cycle’ and ‘pedestrian’ lanes but no curbs or barriers. it’s not unknown for pedestrians to blithely wander across or along the cycle lane without thinking. Don’t get me started on e-scooters.
I used to ride to work, then over a three year period they were digging up the roads I used to create cycle lanes (fantastic when finished). The roads became so chaotic I either bussed or drove my car. The extended period of chaos in roadworks has left a mark with many car drivers feeling very bitter and angry at cyclists. People driving at or uncomfortably close to cyclists, even a few instances of deliberately hitting them. Also a lot of stick in the mud resistance to building new cycle lanes.
Where I’ve moved to there are lots of lovely cycleways in some areas, but then to get from one area of town to another I have several kilometres of narrow roads with speed limits of 70 or 100kph. You couldn’t pay me to cycle on those roads. I’ve sold my commuter bike and these days just ride a MTB on trails.
inknlast, I don’t think any country has many people who understand how to safely turn across traffic.
Australian states vary, but at least in SA drivers are required to pass cyclists with 1.5 metre gap, even being permitted to cross double lines to achieve this.
I used to cycle Hagley Park and the paths along Avon and QE2 drive, and would get abused by pedestrians for using my bell to warn of approach.
I get quite a bit of abuse from cyclists who haven’t learned that they need to give wheelchairs quite a wide berth.
I still live in a city, and am glad I do. We have no plans to ever leave. The bicycle laws here are one thing, and the execution is another. Most motorists don’t know that if there isn’t a protected bicycle lane, bicycles are allowed to “take the lane,” and cars are required to switch lanes to pass them. So if you try to do that you will get buzzed repeatedly. That leads to a lot of cyclists (and there’s a wide range, from packs of spandex warriors to sneering fixie trendwhores to bewildered tourists on blue bikes to dads hauling tykes to daycare) preferring the sidewalks in some places, where it is sometimes allowed and sometimes not (all depending on the interpretation of “downtown business district”). So, given the patchwork of narrow and wide roads, narrow and wide sidewalks, and increasingly common bike lanes, bicyclists will hop on and off the sidewalk, in and out of the road, and in and out of the bike lanes. I use a bicycle more than I use a car, and I understand it from both perspectives; you can’t blame someone for doing what makes them safest, but you should also think about what keeps the person next to you safe. Riding on the sidewalk, in a “downtown business district,” when there’s a perfectly good bike lane next to you, now that’s just obnoxious. That said, I’m likely to ride to the pool this morning, and there’s a block of (not “downtown business district”) sidewalk I will use, because the road is one way the wrong way for that block and it would be several blocks out of my way, up a hill, to loop around it.
I’m glad I live in a city too. especially this city. It’s just absurdly beautiful to look at, with an absurdly vast supply of viewpoints looking out over water and mountains, good public transportation, good public libraries, a major university, I could go on.
But it also has a massive homeless problem, and a massive public housing deficit, and the drugs and alcohol issues that go with that (whether cause or effect), and one hell of a lot of ebikes and regular bikes and no enforcement of laws regulating them that I can see.
I damn well can blame a cyclist for “doing what makes them safest” if that’s riding on the sidewalk. A speeding cyclist on a sidewalk is a very real danger to the people on that sidewalk, because of the cycle: it lets them go faster and it’s a heavy object.
@iknklast
When I lived in Texas, and my parents were still alive and in far northern Minnesota, we would meet for weekends there. I actually liked a lot about it, especially the area close to campus, but I would never live there. Later my nephew and his family lived there and I went for a weekend. We did the family thing with the little kids at a pumpkin patch, which was fun, except for the loud gospel music on the speakers. They repeated a lot of gospel Johnny Cash songs, which is the Johnny Cash that I never liked. Fortunately, this was long before people bought 4′ X 8′ Trump flags, but there are enough of those in rural Wisconsin to spoil the view now.
I really like that setup at KEXP, Ophelia. We have a similar format station here in St. Paul, but they don’t have a big coffee shop and lounge like at KEXP. They open up the studio for live shows occasionally, but that’s on rare occasions and usually during the workday.
Minneapolis is a very cycle-friendly city, which means that they know they can do whatever they want including running stop signs. St. Paul is getting like that, too, perhaps in competition, but there’s a battle brewing as there is a call to widen bike lanes on Summit in St. Paul. This causes a conflict, because this is the rich people’s street, or it was in old St. Paul. There are many old mansions that are for sale but have historic preservation rules for remodeling. Along the boulevards are some beautiful old trees that will need to be cut down in order to widen the street for new bicycle lanes, and there are lawsuits pending.
We do not have cyclists on the sidewalks, fortunately.
I really like that KEXP setup too – it’s like a very large public living room. Bonus at this time of year: outside on the side that opens to Seattle Center rather than the bus stop is a courtyard-ish area full of Japanese maples, which right now are an array of gorgeous colors. I had several minutes to wait for the bus yesterday so I went out there to stare at them. A guy was taking multiple photos, including extreme closeups. (This was after encounter with speeding sidewalk bike dude.)
I’m glad to live in a city; I wish it wasn’t this city. Seattle would be nice; Minneapolis; Chicago…or smaller cities with more sanity than where I now live. Since I am retiring in May, this city has seen close to the last of me.
Cities with mass transit are appealing to me. I dislike driving because I can think of 97.8 other things I could be doing that I can’t do with my hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road.
I love buses, despite yesterday’s experiences (I didn’t even mention the very loud guy who talked nonstop on the first, longest leg of the trip home). Now if we could have them red and double-decker…
In Madison, WI, cyclists are as bad as drivers when it comes to treatment of pedestrians.
And mopeds. There was an incident back when I was a graduate student of someone on a moped hitting pedestrians in a crosswalk on campus. It was between classes, crosswalk completely full of pedestrians with the walk light. I heard cries of “Ow!” and “Ouch!” ahead of me. I get up there and a woman on a moped was pushing her way through the pedestrians, hitting them with the moped. Yeah, I intervened. It took yelling at the top of my lungs in her ear to get her attention. Her ‘excuse’? Rightturnonred.
Speaking of right turn on red, drivers do not check for pedestrians with the walk light (I’ve watched them). If they do notice a pedestrian, they expect the pedestrian to yield. Oh, and if you dare call them on it…Oh! the horror!
And what is it with smokers and going upwind? If it’s really about moving away so others don’t have to breathe it as some of them say, go DOWNWIND! Although, most of the time I say something, no matter how nice I am (eg “I call upwind”), I get the usual harrassment and slurs people throw at women.
I recall that decades ago I read a short story in a SF anthology about a dystopian near future in which it was legal to run down pedestrians trying to cross the road. I sometimes think we’re pretty close to that time.
There’s a Ray Bradbury story, “The Pedestrian”. It was made into an episode of his anthology TV series. Two men were pursued as criminals for taking a walk.