It Must Be a Movement
This guy was stopped in front of me at a light on Interstate this afternoon:
When I asked if I could take his picture, this Obama enthusiast said I was the second person to ask that day. Damn rival bloggers. This is good news for the Illinois senator: if you’ve got Portland cyclists in your back pocket (as snug as, say, a U-lock?), you’re a movement.
One Good Turn
I didn’t leave downtown until after 10 pm on Thursday evening. The night was clear, though, and there was little traffic, which made for a pleasant ride through downtown, up over the Bridge, and along Interstate. On the stretch of Greeley where the elevation begins, there was an old SUV pulled over onto the bikelane. As I got closer, I saw that it had stopped for another car, an aging Tercel, and that two men were standing outside their cars, talking worriedly. I checked my mirror and entered the deserted right lane of traffic to give them wide berth, but one of them looked over at me and made the international hand gesture for “Do you have a cell phone?” So I stopped.
The younger of the men asked if I knew the number for a tow company. I told him I didn’t have a car. After conferring, they decided to call their insurance company, so I stood there while they used my phone. They clearly weren’t from North Portland– they didn’t know what street they were on, and they gave the operator an address in Southeast. English wasn’t their first language, and I got the sense that the insurance company was giving them a hard time. Finally, however, they managed to set something up with a tow truck. They thanked me, and I pedaled off, liberal naivete intact: I had stopped to help to men on the side of the road late at night, and only good had come of it. The world is an okay place. Most people mean well.
Riding high on my good deed (because, really, it’s arduous to stand around while other people listen to Muzak on your phone), I went up Greeley and over onto Willamette, rounded the quiet curve of Mock’s Crest, and bore left at the University of Portland. After crossing the light at Portsmouth, I was in my homestretch, already thinking about whether Drew might have saved me any leftovers, when I heard the roar of a fast-approached engine behind me. A burly, shiny pickup truck zoomed past me on the left, and as it went by, I heard a chorus of young women shout out the open window at me, “Fuck the environment!”
As they pulled ahead, their high-pitched giggles poured out of the back window, and I saw a glimpse of platinum-blond hair through the tinted glass. Our nation’s future. I blew them a kiss.
More Trouble at Interstate and Greeley
As I passed through Interstate and Greeley this afternoon, I saw that several orange and white reflective barriers were up along the left edge of the southbound bike lane, effectively blocking any vehicles from turning right across the path of cyclists coming down the hill. A big white Channel 8 news van was parked around the corner. I just figured that the City had already gotten started on some of the safety upgrades they’ve been discussing for that intersection, where a right-turning garbage truck killed a cyclist a few weeks ago.
When I got home, however, I saw that several people had ended up at this blog while searching for information on bike accidents at Interstate and Greeley today (that’s exactly how I found out about the fatal collision at that intersection a few weeks ago). I performed my own Google search, and sure enough, another cyclist was hit by a right-turning vehicle at that exact same spot this morning. Fortunately, it sounds like her injuries weren’t life-threatening, but the City has decided that enough is enough: by early afternoon, they’d set up the barricades I saw, to prevent any vehicles from turning right across the bike lane until they’ve made safety improvements at the intersection.
This is very scary. In class today, a friend told me that just a few hours after she and I had been talking about bike safety last week, her boyfriend, an experienced cyclist, had been hit out in Beaverton in yet another of these failure-to-yield, right-turn-across-the -bike-lane accidents. Fortunately, he was wearing a helmet, which she said got so badly battered that the doctors insisted on performing a CAT scan; aside from a badly scraped shoulder, though, he seems to be okay.
Two hours later, a student in another of my classes was talking about what he called the “car versus bike” debate. “Out where I live, way out east near 163rd,” he said, “they’re all saying, ‘Yeah. People are dying. We need to get those bikes off the road!’”
I really hope that’s not where this conversation is going in the Greater Portland area. Two tragedies seemed to galvanize the city into a commitment to infrastructure at some of the most dangerous intersections, and all the local print media did big stories about the dangers of cycling in “Bike City USA” (here’s the Mercury, here’s Willamette Week, and here’s the Oregonian online). With all this coverage, though, I’m worried about bike accident fatigue among drivers in the city– for those who aren’t committed to cycling as a green mode of transportation, a source of exercise, and a lifestyle, the simplist answer may indeed seem to be, “Get those bike off the road before anyone else gets killed.” If people perceive that “too much” money is being spent on safer infrastructure (even though an improvement like bike boxes would only cost about $200o per intersection), or that drivers are being “unduly” inconvenienced by concessions to cyclists (for instance, having to take the long way to Swan Island when they can’t make the right turn onto Greeley from Interstate), the tide may turn from sympathy to resentment.
I don’t have a solution or a proposal here– I just want to stay safe on the road, and see more investment in off-road options for commuters, like the North Portland Greenway. However, I know how easy it is for us to listen exclusively to our own echo-chambers in the media and on the web, only to be taken by surprise when it turns out that we’ve lost the majority (as you can see, I’m still suffering from PTSD after the 2004 presidential election).
I hope the woman hit at Interstate and Greeley heals quickly. I also hope that the city starts issuing citations for failure to yield! They have yet to give a ticket to any of these right-turners with tunnel vision.
Vote
For the last month, my morning bike route has been festooned with pleasantly alliterative signs, all white with black, all-caps stenciling:
STRIP MALLS OR STRAWBERRY FIELDS?
PUMPKINS OR PARKING LOTS?
CORNFIELDS OR CONCRETE?
LOVE OREGON?
YES ON 49
A few weeks ago, there was one lonely NO ON 49 sign, posted near the top of my evening climb up Greeley. After a few days, I saw that it had been pulled up from its curbside location and tossed into the blackberry brambles: we liberals are always such a class act.
Tomorrow is the last day for Oregonians to vote on Measure 49. I’ll spare you yet another rehash of the debate (here’s yes, here’s no, here’s Willamette Week, and here’s BikePortland.org); essentially, Oregon’s progressive anti-sprawl zoning laws were dealt a huge blow when Measure 37 passed in 2004, and Measure 49 is an effort to curb some of the most excessive development that Measure 37 has made possible.
For those of us who like the city to be the city, so we can live car-free, and the country to be the country, so we can go bike in it, there’s no real controversy. For those who own undeveloped property that they’d hoped would fund their retirements, and for development companies that have been jumping all over the loopholes in Measure 37 to build sprawling McMansion communities and big box stores, Measure 49 is, as the No on 49 folks like to say, “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” To me, this is an issue of the greater interests of the community (and the planet) outweighing the potential profits that would fall to a few.
Right now, though, it’s not looking very good for us wolves. So vote already.
Shadow of Myself
As I was unlocking my bike to go home yesterday afternoon, I had a very pleasant conversation with another cyclist who was doing the same.
“Can you believe this?” he said. “Biking in the sun in November? I grew up here, and I can remember it snowing at this time of year.”
“Well, there is an upside to global warming,” I said.
We’ve had a two weeks now of almost unbroken dry, sunny weather. Sometimes it’s a little chilly and windy, but that’s a small price to pay to have dry socks all day. The return of the sun and the delayed end of daylight savings time this year has led to a not-very-interesting phenomenon that still delights me in the late afternoon along the southernmost stretches of Mock’s Crest: as I bike, I can see my own shadow, cast long and lean along the asphalt to the east of me.
My “new” bike has beautiful lines– the curving handlebars, the oversized wheels, the slender thread of cables. With my helmeted head, low-slung messenger bag, and rolled up pantlegs, we cut an iconic image on the pavement. The sidelong rays of the setting sun capture a perfect profile silhouette, plus a little extra height that makes me look thinner. I can see the fluid circular motion of my pumping legs, the seamless integration of woman and machine (although, if I don’t check my narcissistic self-hypnosis, I’m likely to integrate myself and my machine into the back of the VW bus that’s always parked on that stretch of Willamette).
If identity is performance, that shadow shows me myself playing the role of cyclist in a very satisfying way. One of the fascinating things about bike culture in Portland is the variety of rider identities, and the degree to which we feel compelled to display that identity to each other, and to those Outsiders who don’t ride (I found this blog post on indie-fixie-messenger identity very entertaining, mostly because I’m hopelessly attracted to these guys, as well).
As a former Future World Famous Anthropologist (that’s how I signed yearbooks my senior year of high school), I’ve been developing elaborate theories about the degree to which urbanism makes it impossible for us to actually get to know (and make ourselves known to) most of the people we share space with every day. This means that we often feel compelled to develop elaborate visual cues to communicate whatever we think is most important about ourselves, and the groups to which we feel we belong, to the strangers around us. There’s a touching urgency to create community (and, in this city, an interesting desire to demonstrate political positioning) in that impulse, and also tremendous room for conflict over perceptions of authenticity (i.e. accusations of “poserism,” as one of my high school students used to put it).
Because seemingly endless years of studying post-structuralism have trained me to break down and analyze identity signifiers, I tend to feel reluctant to participate in the fashion indicators of cycling, even as I feel self-conscious satisfaction walking around campus with chain oil on my clothes and my helmet hanging off the strap of my messenger bag. I guess I’ve been in Portland long enough now that I’m starting to buy into the need to signal to strangers.
Ultimately, though, one of the great privileges of being a bike commuter in this town is the easy sense of affiliation with strangers, like that guy I chatted with about the weather yesterday. We went on to discuss the best northbound routes through downtown from PSU, and the perils of kids on skateboards along the Esplanade, before going our separate ways. That community, which is a big part of the “signified” that corresponds to the pleasing signifier of my bike shadow, is real and important. The desire to belong is a basic cross-cultural human need, and I’m happy when I feel like I belong to the fellowship of the chain ring in Portland.
If This Were Art Redux
This morning, as I pedaled past the Women Making History in Portland mural and the graffiti that I mentioned in yesterday’s post (the blank wall sprayed with the words “if this were art, you’d be in a gallery right now”), I had a sudden stroke of brilliance. Given Portland’s status as America’s bicycle capital, shouldn’t we have a mural commemorating the city’s bike history, and some of the key figures who have made biking such a part of the region’s culture? I know that the Community Cycling Center has a beautiful mural celebrating bike transit, but it would be great to see something in North Portland highlighting the political will that has invested in, and continues to improve, the city’s bike infrastructure.
Of course, as Ben can attest after juicy, unrecognizable mess I made out of the pumpkin I tried to carve last night, my ability to execute an artistic vision is well below average. So this is really a project (like so many of the projects I come up with) for someone else. Still, the Albina/Mississippi MAX stop area could be a gallery, and what better to showcase with public art than bicycles, a mode of transit that crosses class and cultural lines all across the Portland? We could call it “Going Platinum.”
P.S. Willie, stop fucking with my search terms. “Liederhosen,” indeed.
If This Was Art
I somehow managed to break the memory card in the digital camera, so I’m going to go ahead and report on something I’ve been seeing on my commute, even though I’d been hoping to post pictures. Last week, as I was riding home along the Yellow MAX line near the Albina/Mississippi stop, I saw that someone had spray-painted a message along the blank white wall of a warehouse on Interstate. It said:
if this was art,
you’d be in a gallery right now.
And whoever wrote it was right: that white wall would be much more interesting if it was covered with, for instance, a mural, like the one a few blocks down the street.
I’ve been watching the progress on the “Women Making History in Portland” mural ever since school started again. It’s sponsored by In Other Words, an awesome non-profit feminist bookseller that I’ve had very positive dealings with in the past. The mural is on the wall of a building on the west side of Interstate, and I see it every day as I come around the bend in the road just south of the I-405 overpass.
In September, the mural was just some barely-visible sketches over white paint; in the last six weeks, it has become a vibrant, colorful collection of portraits of a very diverse group of women. I don’t recognize most of the names, but I’ll stop one morning when I’m not running late and jot them down, find out what they’ve done in this city.
The older I get, and the more I encounter the kind of masculine disregard, condescension, and sexual harrassment that I used to think was a thing of the past, the more I connect with the idea of feminist solidarity. When I was younger, I experienced other women as the enforcers of a gender norm with which I didn’t identify, so I blamed women for their own problems, and figured that because I had rejected “girly-ness,” sexism didn’t apply to me. Wrong! It turns out we don’t get to opt out of the structures of oppression. There are definitely times (more and more, as I step into positions of authority) when I want to grab some men (and women) by the neck and demand that they take me seriously.
Equality would be great. Failing that, I’ll take a mural.
Come to think of it, there is one small act that routinely gives me a sense of feminist satisfaction: tooling men (preferably men in spandex) on Mock’s Crest.
Interstate and Greeley Memorial Update
Fortunately, I accidentally left a few books I needed on campus on Thursday, so on Saturday, I had to bike downtown and back under the glorious fall sky. Traffic is so much more mellow on the weekend– I used to make that trip at 9 am every Saturday morning last year, when I was teaching downtown, and in some ways I’ve really missed it. This time, the PSU area was a little hectic because of the farmers’ market, but the buildings themselves were almost empty. When I got to my mailbox, I was delighted to find my Chinook Book, a collection of coupons for organic patchouli and nitrate-free hippie spit that many Portland-area nonprofits sell to raise funds (my co-worker has a kid at Trillium Charter School). This year’s Chinook Book has a 20%-off coupon for the Bike Gallery, which is five or six blocks from PSU (and also the workplace of the cyclist who was killed on Interstate and Greeley last week), so I headed over there to buy a new red light for my bike, and some lights for Ben, who’s taken to riding home in the dark after watching the (2007 World Series Champion) Red Sox on Kyle’s enormous HDTV (I decided I don’t want him to die during football season).
The mood at Bike Gallery was subdued. As I was paying, I said, “It’s been a rough week around here, huh?”
“Yeah,” the cashier said, looking down. “Yeah, it has.”
“I’m sorry for you guys,” I mumbled, which wasn’t the right thing, but I never know the right thing. Maybe there isn’t one.
On the ride home, I passed the growing memorial at Interstate and Greeley. The Ghost Bike is so covered in flowers, photos, candles, and other offerings that you can’t even see the frame or wheels from across the street anymore. The scrap-metal statue is still there, and on Saturday, there was a new addition: a life-size, extraordinarily detailed stencil portrait of a bike racer, spray-painted onto the ramp pylon at the intersection. It’s a startling work of art; although it’s only black paint and the gaps in between, the piece has depth and perspective, almost like a photo exposure on concrete. My digital camera is broken, but here’s a picture I pirated from the internets:
One of the many great things about Portland is the way that it responds to pain and fear with art (rather than, for example, riots– although riots have their uses, too). This is also a city of compulsive photographers: over the last week, I’ve passed this corner five times, and all but one of those times, there have been people taking pictures or film footage of the scene of the accident and the evolving memorial. In the Digital Age, I guess, we mourn through documentation.
Dangerous Intersections
As part of the community conversation ignited by the city’s recent fatal bike collisions, the Portland Mercury is compiling a list of reader-reported dangerous intersections. I’ll be chiming in on the hairiest parts of my commute, and thought I’d post those thoughts here, as well. These are the Intersections Where I’m Most Likely to Die, listed from least to greatest potential for carnage:
The Place Where the Swan Island Ramp Pipes Traffic Onto N Greeley.
The southbound bike lane runs downhill, along the shoulder of N Greeley. About halfway down the hill, a ramp leads up from Swan Island, a busy industrial park with, amongst other large commercial trucks, huge fleets from FedEx and UPS. The bike lane ends abruptly at the ramp, and you have to come to complete stop in the middle of a descent, and look for traffic coming from almost directly behind you, since the ramp traffic is merging from the north. The vehicles come flying up the ramp, picking up speed to go 45 mph on Greeley, and because of the curve of the ramp, you can’t see them until they are about 5 seconds from barreling across your path.
Crossing the Ramp from N Greeley onto I-5.
Continuing down Greeley towards Interstate Avenue (where the cyclist was killed earlier this week), there is a heavily-used ramp on the right that takes traffic onto I-5 and I-405. Because the southbound bike lane runs along the shoulder, you have to cross the ramp to stay on Greeley. The traffic here is building up highway speed as it approaches the ramp. Worse, many drivers shift from the inside lane, which stays on Greeley, to the outside lane, which turns into the ramp, at the very last minute, usually signalling late or not at all. This makes predicting whether it is safe to cross over to the spot where the bike lane picks up again very difficult. I’ve had some very scary moments with commercial trucks here.
N Greeley and N Willamette
N Willamette Blvd is easily the most pleasurable part of my bike ride home, especially the stretch that is local traffic only. The problem is that, particularly at rush hour, getting on to Willamette from Greeley is hideously dangerous. Making the left turn from the bike lane involves crossing the northbound lane of traffic, which is often backed up from the light at Greeley and Killingsworth (one block north of Willamette) down the hill past the Adidas campus. Sometimes I have to wait here for several minutes; usually, some kind motorist waiting in traffic will wave me across. However, because of all of the northbound traffic (often trucks, vans, and SUV’s) and the bend in the road, I can’t see whether any smaller vehicles are coming from the opposite direction until I’m halfway across the intersection. I’ve had a few close calls here, and some angry hand gestures from drivers: the irony is that I’m trying to get to a low traffic street, out of the way of the cars.
There’s a lot of discussion going on in the city right now (for instance, here and here) about bike infrastructure at dangerous intersections, including talk of bike boxes, widened and/or painted bike lanes in conflict areas, and loop-activated warning lights when bikes are present. I’m glad that the city (most visibly, Traffic Commissioner Sam Adams) is moving to invest in these safety measures while the (non-biking) public has the tragedy-induced will to act/spend.
A parting thought: one major way that Portland could address all three of these shitty intersections on my commute to and from St Johns would be to fund the North Portland Greenway project– the only thing safer than Sharing the Road is not needing to.
