Meet the Candidates, Part 5
March 5, 2019 § 2 Comments
As we approach the March 5 municipal election for city council in Palos Verdes Estates, it is time to complete our penetrating analysis of the diverse set of almost exclusively white candidates running for office. It is widely agreed that this municipal election is pivotal in the history of PVE: Will the city remain white and exclusive, or exclusive and white?
We sat down with Kevin McCarthy, the New Jersey native who has worked with LAPD for over 30 years helping keep black and brown people out of wealthy neighborhoods and in jail where they belong. As a second term member of the PVE Traffic Safety Committee, we were especially interested in his stance on the Big Orange Cycling Gang that has been terrorizing the local unicorns.
CitSB: So, what’s a nice Jersey boy like you doing in a toney SoCal enclave like this?
KC: Hey, let’s get one ting straight. I ain’t from Joisey. I’m from Nu Yoak.
CitSB: Oh, right. Sorry about that. Which exit?
KC: Begya pahdon?
CitSB: Inside Jersey joke. Or New York joke. I can’t keep them straight. Which one is famous for its police brutality?
KC: Dat’d be Joisey. Nu Yoak ain’t bad, though.
CitSB: Check. So, we see that you’re really into traffic safety and stuff. What’s your position on cyclists in PV Estates?
KC: I lub ’em.
CitSB: Excuse me?
KC: Youse hoid me, I lub ’em. Bikes, see, dey’s great. Cuts down on da traffic, cuts down on da pollution, dey’s good fuh da viment, see? We need moa bikes heah in owa city. Dis is a small town and small town’s ain’t needin’ no moa cahs, see?
CitSB: Wow, a bike advocate on the PV Estates Traffic Committee? And running for city council? That’s incredible.
KC: Jus kiddin. Fuk da bikes. Youse wanna know what I tink when I sees a bike? I tink, dere’s a crook oughta be inna slammah, see? When I’m da boss o dis town dere ain’t gonna be no bikes nowhea, see? Dat’s how it’s gonna be when I staht callin da shots heah.
CitSB: Okay, so moving on, where are you on white people?
KC: Dey’s numbah one. Lub ’em.
CitSB: Taxes?
KC: Don’t need none o dem taxes, see?
CitSB: Local police force? In your candidate forum video, as one of the senior commanders at LAPD, you make it pretty clear that what’s good for Los Angeles would be horrible for rich white people. Care to expound on that?
KC: LAPD is a huge oaganization, see? PVE is a tiny town, see? See?
CitSB: I see. And finally, what about this photo of you on a horse trampling the lawn?
KC: Oh, dat? Dat’s my hoas, Bessie. Ain’t she a beaut?
CitSB: So you’re quite the equestrian?
KC: Nah, I’m a hoasman.
CitSB: Um, okay. Thanks.
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Wasting away again in $977-ville
March 16, 2017 § 14 Comments
Last night the very sad denizens of Palos Verdes Estates swarmed the city council chambers to mourn the effects of their poverty, general brokedness, poor planning, and stinginess. The meeting lasted close to three hours, but my evening was spent much more productively, at Telo, chasing the winning breakaway of Evens S., Colin C., and Shon S.
This evening I got around to watching snatches of the meeting video that is posted online here. It was fascinating because it showed that even in broke-ass towns like PVE, democracy works. And it works with a vengeance.
Ostensibly the council was meeting to figure out how to fill the gaping $4M hole created by the recent vote on Measure D, which, and I’m paraphrasing, was proposed like this: “Are you too cheap to pay for a fire department and EMS? It’s gonna cost you $977 dollars a year.”
The community resoundingly voted “Hell yes we are!” which magically created a budget crater big enough to drive a Range Grazer through. And since no one was really about to eliminate the fire and EMS services, it meant that the council would now have to find “other” places to economize, a fancy euphemism for “eliminate the private security detail a/k/a PVE Police Department that accounts for 54% of the city budget and contract cop services out to LA Sheriff’s Department like everyone else with a brain.”
The problem with that was stomach-churningly obvious, though–it meant that Chief Jeff Kepley, a renowned expert in selectively enforcing laws, and the 39 other PVEPD employees would be out of a job. Any citizen who thought they might show up at this council meeting and applaud the city for finally defunding its private security force soon noticed that almost the entire police department was attending in mufti. Probably not a great place to say, “Fire ’em, one and all!”
Since I only watched part of it, the best line I saw was when Chief Kepley noted that part of the problem with excessive overtime at the department was related to the “difficulty” of hiring permanent positions because, as he delicately put it, other communities “paid more” and working in PVE had “conditions” that some applicants did not prefer, in other words, the residents in PVE treat the police like shit.
You know, the little things that make you love your job–being held in contempt by the people whose leased Maseratis you protect and whose Mexican gardeners you arrest.
There were other gems as well, especially Mayor King and Lame Duck Councilman Goodhart anxiously inquiring about Rancho Palos Verdes and displaying spleen-bursting jealousy about the fact that RPV wasn’t in the same boat they were, that is, broke. But the best part was the speech by the Tax Dude, the only person at the whole meeting who talked about facts with less spin than a beginning ballerina.
You see, PVE’s tax problem began a long time ago, when it had its own fire department. In 1978, the conservative and greedy voters of California got together and passed Proposition 13, which capped property taxes at one percent. So far so good. The fake rich denizens of PVE were able to hold onto a few more bucks while foisting the cost of running an actual community back onto the county and state. Everyone celebrated with a few more lines of cheap coke, a tawdry affair, and a prayer that their worthless children would quit beating up strangers at the surf break.
But after Prop. 13 passed, the voters realized that no one had bothered to work out how the taxes would be apportioned under this new system. In other words, for each dollar taxed, which taxing entity would get how much? The solution was AB 8, which said that taxing entities would get their share of the tax in the same proportion as they got it before Prop. 13 was passed. Back to the future, so to speak.
Well, okay. Except shortly after that, PVE disbanded its fire department, which was an independent taxing entity. And since you couldn’t create a new taxing entity and glom onto the property taxes due to Prop. 13, the clever folks in PVE were without a fire department and without a way to pay for a new one through city revenue. So they contracted with the LA County Fire Department and voted on a separate parcel tax to pay for it.
Until this year, when they didn’t. In other words, they wanted to have their defibrillator and use it, too.
Tax Dude’s basic message, and hats off to his professionalism, was this: “You greedy, broke-ass idiots really fucked yourselves. Even the apartment dwellers in RPV were smart enough to figure this out. Time to either give the Kepstone Kops their pink slip or fire up the tax ovens again. And here’s my invoice, net 30.”
You never saw a sadder looking bunch of broke people in ugly suits unless you’ve spent time at a cut-rate funeral parlor. And when Chief Kepley explained that a huge chunk of his overtime costs were from the Stop Sign Virginity Protection Program, I couldn’t help but laugh thinking that he’ll be blaming the city’s woes on the biker gangsters up until the day they board up the jail and auction off the used uniforms.
I hope they have one that will fit Garret Unno. He could mount it on his wall as a trophy for inadvertently bringing down the PVE PD.
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Time wounds all heels
January 24, 2017 § 25 Comments
It was with great pleasure that I read about the invasion of the wave snatchers at the holy site formerly marked by the masturbatorium erected by the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch, and reputedly mourned by white pick-up kook, workboots surfer kook, Michael Kirst (known for his role as Deputy Sykes in the video blockbuster “Sisterhood of the Shewolf”), and of course Falling Off Surfboard Robert Chapman.
The big hammer that the surf community is swinging is the class action lawsuit combined with threatened action by the California Coastal Commission. If you are curious about the surfer kook gang that has made Palos Verdes Estates infamous for great waves ridden badly, here’s one handy link.
However, it was with great displeasure that I realized how long it has taken the surfing community to stand up to the violence and the bullies that rule the break formerly known as Aloha Point, but now rechristened “Taloa Point” after the courageous activist who has broken the color line at Lunada Bay and led the charge to open public beaches to, well, the public. Displeasure because it’s been a Thirty Years’ War, and when I look at how much effort and money it has taken, it makes me wonder what the prospects are for cyclists who dare to ride in PVE.
The police force, led by Jeff Kepley (also a defendant in the class action lawsuit against the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch Surfer Gang), has still not issued a single citation for cars violating the 3-foot law, but has handed out numerous tickets to cyclists for running stop signs. That makes a lot of sense: Ignore actions by cars that can kill people and clamp down on victimless stop sign violations. Moreover, the police, ordered by the rampaging city council, have focused their efforts not on protecting cyclists and finding the person who killed John Bacon but on harassing legal group rides and shutting down legal protests.
If the surfer activism at Lunada Bay is any indicator, the fight for cyclists’ rights in PVE is going to take a long time. What’s worse than that is the city’s effective crackdown on cyclists’ efforts to educate the residents about the actual law and what it means.
Having taken a page out of the alternative fact playbook, the bike hating activists are relentlessly pounding home falsehoods, and the cycling community’s early enthusiasm has flagged. When it comes to endurance athletes, maybe we’ve met our match in the form of a few rabid, racist, bike-hating NIMBYs.
With a city council impervious to law, fact, or reason, with a raving minority of bike haters, a hostile police force, and falling-off-surfboarders like Robert Chapman bobbing around the rocks, the question of “What next?” is more than simply relevant. It’s a frontal challenge to our right to ride safely on the peninsula.
The scary reality is that most cyclists may simply be too flat fucking lazy to defend their rights to ride here. A whole bunch of dedicated people have shown up and advocated, but a whole bunch haven’t. When given the choice between showing up and doing a cool ride or fighting city hall, maybe it’s more important to more people to go out and do the big ride, clock the miles on Strava, hit the “like” button on Facegag, and ride somewhere else than it is to put in the time and effort to beat back the crazies. I mean, isn’t that why we have the president today that we so richly deserve? And isn’t there a saying somewhere … “No time to do it right, always time to do it over.”
But I digress … a new educational protest is in the works pending completion of some very cool t-shirts currently in production that will help residents and car traffic understand and apply the law. Date/Time TBA–hope to see you there!
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Pizza conquers all
November 11, 2016 § 30 Comments
We showed up in force for the PVE City Council meeting on November 8, beginning with sign protests at Malaga Cove Plaza. Rather than riding our bikes, about twenty people stood on the various corners and held up signs that said “Bikes May Use Full Lane,” “3 Cyclists Dead!” and various other proclamations of our rights. We even had a young protester up in a tree!
It was fun sitting on the corner while the crazypants video nuts stood around and took videos of the protest, and the only non-fun part was that I’d pulled my fascius buttassicus muscle and had to stay seated holding up my signs. Roughly one in five cars came through the intersection, saw the signs, and gave us a shout or a thumbs up, and only a handful cursed, told us to ride on the sidewalk, or advised us to go die.
Living up to its moniker as Dick City, after the protest ended I hobbled across the street, hunched over from the spazzed-out back muscles, and a nasty old woman in a giant red Buick rolled down her window and screeched, “Get out of the street!”
In the crosswalk. So classy!
The huge benefit to holding up signage at the intersection was that passing motorists understood why we were there. After the previous protest ride one citizen had approached the group and said that people had no idea what we were advocating for or why we were riding around the plaza. It was a great point and we took it to heart, and of course our signage proved our point about BMUFL signage: IT WORKS.
People saw it, read it, understood it, and went away knowing more than when they got there. It also completely destroyed the NIMBY, Special Snowflake on the Hill theory espoused by Garrett Unno, Zoe Unno, Cynthia Bianchi, and Shannon Zaragoza that signage is unnecessary or that it somehow has to be part of a big, multi-year project.
Put up the fucking signs already.
After an hour and a half of signing we went over to the city council chambers where the mayor opened things up by praising a group of young students for taking an active interest in city government and becoming participants in democracy. Too bad the kids didn’t stick around to see the shenanigans pulled by Mayor King as she squashed dissent, illegally limited speaking times based on speech content, and showed a stony, cold heart to people’s pleas for help.
Our council meeting strategy was different because Mayor King had made it clear that she had dug in and not about to put BMUFL signs back on the agenda. In order to shut us up she had moved the meeting back to 5:30 from its regular time of 7:30, hoping that people wouldn’t be able to get off work (doesn’t she know cyclists are all unemployed?). Then she shoved public comment back to the very end of the meeting, hoping that by forcing us to wait around we’d give up and go home.
Sadly, both ploys failed. More than fifty people showed up to the combined protest and council meeting, including:
Kristie F.
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The best defense …
November 1, 2016 § 22 Comments
Props to Garret Unno, anti-bike signage NIMBY dude from Palos Verdes Estates, for this gem:
Yes, after leading the charge to shoot down the Bikes May Use Full Lane signage, which signage was approved by the Traffic Safety Committee, the city engineer, an outside consultant, the city attorney, and over a hundred cyclist advocates, Garrett has now targeted the 3-Feet signage recently installed in PVE to advise drivers that they have to, you know, give cyclists three feet when they pass.
Nothing like being in the vanguard to protect your idyllic community at the expense of lives!!
Still, Garrett, who is reputedly an engineer at Raytheon, deserves mad props. Dude gets R done. Quiet, head down, consistent, and relentless, his hatred of cyclists has effectively beaten back a broad-based coalition of cyclists that includes actual PVE residents. To me that’s kind of weird, because a lot of people at Raytheon cycle. Do they know that their colleague is all-in when it comes to opposing signage that protects cyclists? If I had someone like that in my office, I’d read him the riot act.
Anway, One Unno > 200 Freaks in Lycra, at least according to PVE City Council math. And he’s no dummy, either: Don’t sit around waiting for the enemy, hit them as hard as you can when and where they least expect it, and press the hell out of your advantage. Momentum doesn’t come often, and a good strategist knows to roll with the tide.
It will be absolutely fascinating to watch how the Traffic Safety Committee responds to Unno’s plea, especially since they’ve already voted for the signs, recommended that the signs be installed, and worked with the city engineer to place the signs and oversee their installation. It will be even more awesome to see how the city council, if the TSC caves to Unno, votes regarding the new signage they just installed.
Stay tuned for the shit show …
In the meantime, I’ve set up a store on Shopify where you can buy South Bay Cycling items, the purchase of which will help pay for food/drinks/snacks at our next City Council Bike Ride and Pizza Party, as well as for advocacy to fight the evil of people like Unno, his wife Zoe, Shannon Zaragoza, Frank Ponce, and the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch who zealously oppose bicycle signage in PV Estates.
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The PVE Traffic Safety Committee Grand Prix
September 8, 2016 § 41 Comments
Before the race we all pinned on each others’ numbers, which looked like this:
The ref blew the whistle but before we could get going they had to neutralize the race. A gaggle of ancient retirees, all of whom had lived in Palos Verdes Estates since 1978 and were still wearing the same shoes, did a parade lap around the course.
Each angry resident did a mini-ragesprunt, where they harangued about parking. Elbows were thrown, headbutts lodged into ribcages, and one old codger whipped out GoPro footage of *CARS RUNNING STOP SIGNS* and *GASPY GASP GASP* a white vehicle that REGULARLY PARKS TOO CLOSE TO THE STOP SIGN NEAR THE INTERSECTION ON THE STREET THAT GETS 183 WHOLE CARS A DAY.
Fortunately, the parking club riders were not as fit as the SoCal Allstar Race Team, so after they ran out of electrolytes and Depends, the parking club riders shunted off to the side and wrote nasty emails to each other on NextDoor.
The whistle blew and the race was on. Dashing into the first corner was Jay “BMUFL” Yoshizumi, who attacked hard up the gutter, battering into the wind while pointing out that safety was paramount. He swung over just in time for G3 “Data Boy” Seyranian, who unleashed a flurry of softening-up punches over the short cobbled section, stringing out the peloton, making the watt meters crackle, and pointing out to statistical data points that validated the BMUFL signage.
One of the riders on Team Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch, Doper McWanksalot, got caught up against the curb, threw a chain, and dropped his fake petition with 83 bogus signatures just as Michael “Call Me Claw” Barraclough came up hot and inside to set a course record for the first lap. Claw also let the refs know that if the Allstars didn’t sweep the podium with BMUFL signage, they would continue to show up to every subsequent race and stack the field until justice was done.
Shrimpy McShrinksabunch, team leader and designated sprunter for Team Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch, roared briefly to the front and sputtered on about delaying BMUFL signage until the year 2082, when all of the ramifications and data and GPS coordinates could be algorithmized, logarithmized, digitized, and mesmerized, but was quickly chopped hard by Kristie “All Aces” Fox, who blew him up against the barriers with a hard-charging citation to traffic counts related to Terranea and The Donald Drumpf Golf Club.
Now the Allstars were warmed up and a series of brutal attacks began, headed up by Pete “Older Than Dirt” Richardson and followed by Jon “Same Shit Sounds Smarter In British English” Phillips, who hit it hard at the bottom of the small cobbled climb that had been slickened by the snot, spittle, and Internet ugliness dribbled out by the NextDoor Wankers On The Bay Boys’ Moms’ Couches.
One Lunada Bay Boy on Mom’s Couch slid out in the turn and caught his monosyllables on his poor syntax, making a fool out of himself and going hard into the hay bales, where he was forced to pay rent and get a job sacking groceries at Von’s.
Suddenly the weather turned nasty and a foul gale blew in. Our heroes, who had been driving it at the front with relentless accelerations by Victor “Don’t Fuck With Me” Cooper, Delia “These Are The Facts And They Will Hurt You” Park, Doug “The Motor” Toland, and a vicious move that split the field by Tom “One-Handed” Duong, the peloton began to crumble.
A breakaway formed with Claw, Park, Fox, G3, “Gizzards” Jim Hannon, and “Bronx Bomber” Julian Katz, as the Allstars back in the field sat up to block the weak, ineffectual, incoherent, and disorganized attempts to bridge by Team Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch Who Mostly Complain on the Internet but Don’t Have the Balls to Show Up.
Just when it looked like the break would go clear, Norm “Video Production” Zarifsky of Team LBBOMCWMCOTIBDHTBTSU made a daring move out of the field and, stuck in no man’s land, seemed set to bridge. However, he began to huff and puff as he spouted anger at cyclists, reviled bikers who ran stop signs, and declared that all PVE stop signs should be removed, buried, and shot as his FTP of 12.2 watts was immediately exceeded now that he was out in the wind and unable to suck anonymous Internet wheel.
Moreover, he had failed to notice that Dave “Video Allthetime” Brinton had latched onto his wheel, and as Norm began flicking his elbow, drooling in desperation, and begging everyone to condemn that terrible pro bono lawyer blogger dude who is in cahoots with the cops and judges to get bikers out of citations, Brinton came around, dropped Norm like a big turd from a tall horse, and bridged to the break.
One by one the tired, unfit, tactically incompetent, and strategically defective members of Team LBBOMCWMCOTIBDHTBTSU came off the back while, back in the peloton, the shrewd, handsome, beautiful, fit, happy, and cagey members of the Allstars took turns pounding the BMUFL haters into paste. John Cayon, Joann Zwagermann, Larry Lem, Dave Terrell, Joey Cooney, Don Wolfe, Jaycee Carey, Wendy Watson, John Wike, Mark Maxson, Michelle Landes, Brent Davis, Allison Vought, Les Borean, Gary Cziko, Andrew Nuckles, Craig Eggers, Sam Gengo, Tara Unversagt, Sherri Foxworthy, Kevin Salk, and Brian Gee set a blistering pace that Team LBBOMCWMCOTIBDHTBTSU couldn’t begin to follow until, at the bell lap, there was no one left but the Allstars and five BMUFL signs which will be co-located with existing “3-Feet It’s The Law” signage.
The traffic safety committee voted 4-0 in favor of the Allstars when, post-race, a challenge was made due to alleged irregular sprinting by Wike, but the commissars concluded that not only had Wike won the field sprint clean, but that the complaining wankers who lodged the protest would, as punishment, be grounded until next Thursday and limited to $150 in gas charges on mom’s credit card for the rest of September.
After the race, the Allstars modeled their sexy BMUFL signage and prepared for the final race of the season. The next race in the series is the finale, the PVE City Council BMUFL Grand Prix. Be there!
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Crackdown
July 10, 2016 § 18 Comments
Now that the PVE residents have screamed bloody murder about cyclist scofflaws, as if that has anything at all to do with putting up signs that say “Bikes May Use Full Lane,” and “3-Feet, It’s the Law,” the police department has, shall we euphemistically say, “stepped up” its enforcement against bikers who violate The First PVE Cager Commandment:
- Thou shalt stop at stop signs.
On this morning’s Donut Ride, which I was mercifully absent from as Matt Wikstrom set a new KOM up Crest, when the group came lawlessly swooping through Paseo del Mar at the incredible speed of 30-ish miles an hour, a PVE cop lay in wait at the Cloyden Road t-intersection and burst into the middle of the peloton.
One rider later said, “I was sure twenty people were going down.”
Another rider said, “I know that crime doesn’t pay, but this is ridiculous. ”
A third rider said, “Brillo pad and bleach on my chamois for a week.”
So the PVE bike haters have successfully linked two completely unrelated issues. In order to be granted the legal right to ride on their roads, all cyclists have to obey the law. Doesn’t matter that cagers don’t. Doesn’t matter that not a single citation has ever been written for violation of the 3-foot law. Doesn’t matter that on the same day that the Donuteers blew through the stop sign at which there were no cars, endangering no one at all, another rider caught a driver on video committing assault with a deadly weapon against a cyclist. And of course it doesn’t matter that no charges will be filed against the pickup driver who was caught on video camera tailgating John Bacon shortly before his “mysterious” death.
None of that matters.
What matters is that if you ride in PVE, you had better understand that you will be subjected to strict enforcement of the First Commandment. If that means we are on our way to getting recognition of BMUFL, and if it means that the city is going to bring an equally heavy hand down on cagers who break the 3-foot rule, I’m not going to complain.
But if it’s just another attempt to privatize the public roads for the convenience of cagers, well, that’s a whole different kettle of fish. See you at the PVE council meeting this Tuesday, July 12, at 340 PV Drive, Palos Verdes Estates, 90274.
PS: If you’re planning on attending the Tuesday, July 12 meeting of the PV City Council, please note: 1) Although the meeting starts at 6:00 PM, public comment won’t begin until 7:30, and probably not until after that. So no need to be there at 6:00. 2) The council will be voting on the signs at their next July meeting; this meeting is an opportunity for us to communicate to the council that we support the signage and want them to vote on it at the next meeting. Hopefully you can attend both meetings.
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The Empire Strikes Back
July 9, 2016 § 19 Comments
Now that the City of PVE’s traffic safety committee has recommended the radical and revolutionary step of putting up a couple of signs that say “BMUFL” and “3-Feet,” a group of residents has proposed banning bikes from certain public roads within the city.
Nice.
I will be charitable and assume they don’t understand that the streets in PVE are public and that bicycles are legally allowed to ride on them. I will be charitable and assume that they don’t understand that municipalities cannot preempt the California Vehicle Code. I will be charitable and assume that they haven’t thought through the ramifications of a few angry citizens seizing public property.
But I won’t be charitable when it comes to the cycling community.
Here’s why: On July 12, at 6:00 PM, there will be a city council meeting at Palos Verdes Estates council chambers, 340 PV Drive. Cycling and the approval of the new signs is not on the agenda.
However, opponents of the signage, who also advocate illegally restricting cyclists from public roads, have already met with police and city officials. Postings on social media indicate that some PVE residents are going to virulently oppose any affirmative steps taken by the city to make cycling safer, or to increase enforcement of California’s 3-foot law.
Happily, I’m one of the targets in all this. Two members of the Lunada Bay Boys On Mom’s Couch Gang showed up at the protest ride and introduced themselves as “Rich dudes,” then interviewed me and did a great job of proving that I was wrong when I said that none of the roads in PVE were wide enough to accommodate a car and bike side-by-side. After heckling our protest ride, they put together a video and proved pretty clearly that a very short portion of the road we were on was 18 feet wide.
They neglected to note that it was only a couple of hundred feet long before it immediately narrowed down to a substandard width, and they agreed that the 3-foot law needs to be enforced. Bizarrely, the street that they have proven to be wide enough to accommodate bikes and cars (for a few hundred feet) is now part of the very same section of roadway that the angry residents are trying to ban cycle traffic from.
Moreover, they didn’t think my blog was funny, which is weird, because I try really hard to write a fair, balanced, ordinary bicycling blog that is non-controversial. Why? One simple reason: My mom sometimes reads it and I would be mortified if she ever saw me write words like “fuck” and “shit.”
But back to the Lunada Bay Boys On Mom’s Couch. They deserve props for caring enough about the issue to show up, scream at peaceful protesters, video it, spend two weeks and all 56 of their combined IQ points editing it, and then share it from an email called SuperRoidInRB@gmail.com. And I mean that. They do care. They may be unemployed bums, but unemployed bums have a whole lot of choices about what to do in a day, and choosing to counter-protest is pretty healthy for democracy, certainly more so than another drunken day harassing women and vandalizing cars at an illegal rock shelter built on protected public state shorelines.
The bicycling community now needs to build on the success we’ve had with the traffic safety committees in PVE and Rancho PV. What does that mean?
It means it’s time for usto show up.
The city council will allow concerned members of the public to address the signage issue even though the council won’t be voting on it at this meeting. This past Wednesday 17 cyclists made polite, sincere, and intelligent appeals to the PVE traffic safety committee. That needs to happen again on July 12, and again when the council meets to formally vote on the recommendations. You can rest assured that the PVE residents who don’t want the 3-foot and BMUFL signs installed have already met, spoken, and emailed every single council member, the city manager, the city engineer, and everyone on the traffic safety committee.
If you can’t make it, fine. What about your husband or wife pr boyfriend or girlfriend or kids? If you can make it, why not bring your husband, wife, or kids with you? The roads may be in PVE, but PVE doesn’t own them. To the contrary, the city takes hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars to pave and maintain them. They are our roads, too.
Democracy isn’t Facebook. It’s not Twitter. It’s not email or Reddit or NextDoor or campaign contributions and it’s sure as hell not this blog.
Democracy is you, your family, and the most precious resource you have: Your time. The elected officials in PVE are like elected officials everywhere else. They show up, struggle with problems, and try to find the best solutions for the least price that results in the most happy constituents and the fewest angry ones.
In short, if they’re doing their jobs even remotely correctly, they compromise.
We can be part of the compromise, but only if we collaborate by showiung up. I know that Tuesday is Telo training crit day and Eldo training crit day and there are lots of better places to be at 6:00 PM, but we can’t be heard by the people who matter unless we’re in the chambers with our names on a speaker card.
Please show up and help. Ironfly, South Bay Wheelmen, BCCC, PV Bike Chicks, and especially the members of the Double Secret Probation Cycling Committee, i.e. Jim Hannon & Eric Bruins & Mike Norris. LaGrange will be sending people, and they’re not even in the South Bay–they’re coming because public access to public roads isn’t a joking matter, and safety in PV is crucial to every cyclist on the coast.
We need you.
You will be empowered by the engagement and you’ll gain a ton of respect for the council members and the police. You’ll also gain respect for the people who oppose safer and better streets, and who think that bicycles are a plague. They may see the world differently, but they care enough to show up and make their case. They want their city to be a better place, and to them that means fewer bikes.
They care.
Do you?
END
PS: If you’re planning on attending the Tuesday, July 12 meeting of the PV City Council, please note: 1) Although the meeting starts at 6:00 PM, public comment won’t begin until 7:30, and probably not until after that. So no need to be there at 6:00. 2) The council will be voting on the signs at their next July meeting; this meeting is an opportunity for us to communicate to the council that we support the signage and want them to vote on it at the next meeting. Hopefully you can attend both meetings.
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Cycling in the South Bay 