The San Francisco Citizen

The SFBC’s Second Annual Family Day was well-attended this past (Healthy) Saturday in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Check out a bunch of photos from the day at the Flickr from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

People enjoyed a bicycle road-eo, games, a safety clinic, a scavenger hunt, a parade and some free bike maintenance.  

But best of all, some children gained their Freedom From Training Wheels. (Four wheels bad, two wheels good, right kids?)

Click to expand.

See you next year!

Today’s Pandhandle Bike Swap and Summer Party had a huge turnout with hundreds of cyclists doing all sorts of things. Check it out here.  

The First Annual Dustin Long Tubeball Toss was a smash success:

What’s a tubeball? This is. It’s surprisingly heavy:

At the end of the day, people pedalled off with bike frames, tires and wheels.

See you next year!

Cycles of Change Bike Benefit Party and Swap Meet

Sun., Aug. 17 | 12-5pm, Panhandle blacktop, corner of Masonic and Fell

Come out on Sunday for a day of bike-related fun! Cycles of Change and a few of your local SF cyclists are putting together a bike benefit party promoting the organization. Cycles of Change is an East Bay cooperative that builds bikes for kids and teens and promotes bicycling as a more viable form of transportation. Donate your old bike parts to help CoC continue to assemble more bikes for children. Come for a the big bake sale, fun game events (like Chainring toss) and swap meet with fellow SF cyclists. For more information, please visit www.summerbikeswap.blogspot.com

It’s safe to assume that wheels are in motion for changes at the infamous Fell and Masonic intersection. Even District 5 Diary’s Rob Anderson (and hey Rob, nice pullback on your recent reckless and defamatory post this past week) doesn’t object.

But here’s the problem for some cyclists:

 ”A traffic signal displaying a red, yellow or green bicycle will usher cyclists through the intersection.”

That means you’re going to have less time to get across deadly Masonic on your bike. Hopefully, these changes will add up to fewer injuries but if you cross on a red bicycle light, as you might be tempted to do, any collision that results will likely be blamed on you.

The changes will take some getting used to, anyway.

Have fun, stay safe!

This was the scene last night at the Atlantic Richfield on Fell and Divisadero last night. “No Gas.” Why’s that? Who knows. Maybe it’s a temporary shutdown at this particular station for an innocuous reason. Maybe.

Or, maybe it’s a signal to go out and buy all that you can lay your hands on. That was such a good strategy a few months back when we had that “rice shortage“. Wasn’t it?

These days, it’s not just Peak Oil or Peak Rice, it’s Peak Everything. Oh noes! Panic, panic panic!

Oh well. The upside to all this is that the Fell Street bike lane, formerly crowded with cars sitting in line for ARCO gas (check the photo from MapJack at “1160 Fell St, San Francisco, CA 94117“), is now free for bikes to use 24/7. So  the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition can count another victory. Plus the owner of the Spirit station across the street must be happy.

Hurray!  

The Ice Age is coming, the sun zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin
Engines stop running, but I have no fear…

Here’s what’s missing in your life - bicycles from Cadillac or Lamborghini. Get yours from Amazon or the Costco today!

Now when you drive your Lamborghini, you won’t need to stop for petrol. And you can be assured that your bike is the Cadillac of Bikes. But as the Cadillac Man says:

“Our target customer is someone not necessarily bicycle-brand conscious, but brand conscious.”

Oh, snap! That kind of sounds like an insult.

randomduck via Flickr 

Perhaps your new Caddy won’t give you the street cred you so richly deserve, but these branded bikes seem to offer a nice alternative to spending 400 bones at Valencia Cyclery. Actually, it seems that these two-wheelers are all sourced from Taiwan, or China (or one of the Chinas anyway), so prices seem fairly reasonable.  

Plus, you can get a back rest (just like an office chair!) for the saddle of your full suspension ride. Wouldn’t that impress everyone at the next Urban Bike Training session put on by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition?

Here was the scene this morning during the A.M. drive - a cyclist getting ticketed by a motorcycle officer. Don’t know the details of this particular incident, but it wouldn’t be hard for you to find cyclists blowing stop signs or red lights at any intersection in San Francisco.

Individual officers sometimes get on a kick and issue tickets for the same type of infraction over and over all day. If you get cops acting together, as sometimes happens, then you’d call it an enforcement action. They could go after drivers who roll through stop signs, or pedestrians who jaywalk - you never know.

Harley Davidson of a bitch! Yet another ticket from a Dudley Perkins-motosickle-riding buckethead.

Some would like to see Page become the Page St. Bicycle Boulevard - this would allow cyclists to maintain speed. Traffic circles were tried before, but those things proved unpopular.

Leave us turn to Idaho for the answer - stop signs mean “stop” for drivers but mean “yield” for cyclists:

                                  TITLE  49
                                MOTOR VEHICLES
                                  CHAPTER 7
                           PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLES
    49-720.  STOPPING — TURN AND STOP SIGNALS. (1) A person operating a
bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a stop sign shall slow down and,
if required for safety, stop before entering the intersection. 

What’s wrong with California having a similar law?

Let’s be careful out there.