Why do we need stories like this?

I have a New York Times alert for things about bikes because I'm a dork. Lately, it's about been about a bike race in France. For awhile, it was about the crack down in New York and how evil Janette Sadik-Khan is.

Today, I see this:

U.S.: Bike Lane Plans Move to San Francisco's Fell and Oak
Streets
By SCOTT JAMES
Plans to provide bike lanes on Fell and Oak Streets in San
Francisco, two rare east-west thoroughfares, could result

in traffic backups or eliminate parking.

Now, they've gone all the way to San Francisco to write about what a terrible idea bike lanes are there. I've only been to San Francisco twice. It has a lot of traffic and not that many bike lanes. I've been in cars, on a bike, in public transportation and foot there. Car was the most difficult. I think it's safe to say that the traffic will remain status quo.

Read more!

biker bars in san fran

I was lucky enough to be able to visit a few friends in Oakland and San Francisco last month and get some good drinking done. Two of the great bars we went to had bicycle parking. Both also had German names. hmmm..... I thought i should share them here, if you are ever in the Mission area, check them out!

The Gestalt Haus in the Mission.....one liter mugs of local brews and indoor bike parking!!!

This spot was the west coast version of Vegas Blvd with liters of beer and a pool table; but Gestalt also has indoor, double decker bicycle parking. sweeeet! The friday night we went was super crowded, but friendly and lots of fun. Lots of great beers and liters, sweet, heavy, never ending liters of frothy goodness.


a sexy shot of the rack and derrick's right side

Zeitgeist and part of thier MASSIVE back patio.

Walk in from the sidewalk and find yerself inside a great bar with lots of interesting crap on the walls and lots of beer to choose from. Then, continue on to the back patio which is crammed full of picnic tables, Octoberfest style. There's a rack to hang atleast a dozen bicycles and of course porta-pottys since we are drinking outside. The beer was good and the atmosphere chill enough to just roll one up, light it and pass it! They also have some slammin' BBQ including veggie options, all grilled outside! yummy! I feel the need to mention the BBQ again. It smells great there



check the crazy elephant with the beer behind pond. 

ps, there's not really more to read! Read more!

Critical Mass. San Francisco. Nov 2008

The big one! The OG ride. Wow!

After traveling, camping, exploring, and enjoying abundant sunshine and redwoods in northern Cali for two months, but missing bicycles; I have returned to civilization! I actually returned just in time to meet up with shoup in Oakland, borrow a bike and get our butts to SF to ride critmass with a few hundred new friends. Its great to be back and posting again. And great to be on a bike again. I'll be back in hartford this week and i guess i'll also be wearing gloves and more clothes due to this thing in the beat we call...wintery mix! burrrrrrrr! Cali has certainly spoiled me!

The ride begins @ Justin Herman Plaza at 6pm, and just like hartford, the ride began a bit later. I think there were about 150-200 to start, but later on, a half hour into the ride, the mass swelled to 300-400 riders. Wow. This was my first CM at night, and lots of people had outfits, glowsticks and all kinds of colorful lights for night ride parties. Nice! The vibe was awesome with music, lights, yelling, smiling and people in crazy outfits and custom bike wierdness.

There were two bikes with boomin' sound systems. This was the louder one, and it was LOUD! But the other had disco lights and a disco ball lighting up the streets and more danceable beats, but they both kept us keepin' us smilin' and hollerin'. We need more of this in the beat!


shoup bobbin' and weavin' through people, cops, busses and trolleys in Union Square

Union square was a mess! thousands of shoppers and gridlocked traffic...before we arrived. Add in hundreds of cyclists and dozens of motorcycle cops and you got anarchy! Woo-haa!


We had to regroup after that whole mess and did so in the middle of an intersection for 10 or 15 minutes, obnoxiously blocking all traffic. The cops just sat there, watched, and kept the cars in check. I couldn't believe it was happening, but it was certainly acceptable. The police, lots of police, were escorting the ride mostly on motorcycles. We led and sometimes corked, but the popo's were blocking many intersections and yelling at cars that tried to go through green lights and into the mass. Yes! Any time a car tried to run a green light, cops would sound horns and sirens and make them stop and wait. The police seemed to just be keeping cars out of the ride. Strange! It was kinda nice, but I also kinda wished they weren't there at all, and we just looked after eachother.

>
We rode up through the Stockton Tunnel, hopped the center curb and rode back down the otherside. That's the bubble lady. She had an automatic bubble blower hooked up to her bicycle and mad lights! Yeah bubble lady!


The ride returned to Herman Plaza and half the riders stopped and the other half of the mass continued on towards the Mission. This group slowly shrunk until Shoup, Jeff and I were leading a dwindling mass of a few dozen people down Mission Street, with more than a dozen motorcycle cops behind us!! When we finally pulled over to get beer for the park at a corner store, the remaining riders and cops scattered even more. The police motorcycles outnumbered the bicycles at this point!

there's a few post ride pics after the jump!




a tasty post ride deuce deuce of redstripe in dolores park


shoupy and i in the park. beer and bicycles seem to really affect him!

Read more!

Wingnuts in Victorian Houses

Maybe bikes like this should be kept off the roads.

I can't take credit for finding this, I found it on the very well-designed K-Wall Blog, but I thought others should read it. Or, if you don't want to read the article, this is a brief summary:

This man in San Francisco named Rob Anderson hates bicycles. He's a bitter and unemployed political muckraker of little popularity. None the less, he was able to halt San Francisco's plan to expand their bicycle infrastructure by suing them because the Board of Supervisors voted to skip the environmental impact review. Conventional wisdom is that increased bicycle infrastructure will encourage more people to ride their bikes and therefore reduce the number of cars on the road. The few cars, the few pollutants in the air. Mr. Anderson believes that cars will never leave the road and that developing more bicycle infrastructure will cause more traffic jams. More traffic jams, he says, means more idling cars wasting gas and expelling pollutants into the air. He prevailed in California's Courts and San Francisco is being forced to do the environmental impact review, and they are doing it very slowly.

Now I'm all in favor of environmental impact reviews for most things, but from what I understand, SF's plan was to roll out more bike lanes, a traffic matter. From my little bit of experience with municipal government, we don't need to do this type of impact study if we change traffic patterns. Further, the logic makes no sense. If you clarify who is where on the road, traffic will flow better and more safely for everyone.

However, the big thing is "Why is the WSJ legitimizing this guy?" I mean, there are some pretty obvious reasons, but it really vexes me that they're handing out new talking points for people to oppose/hate bikes. Read more!