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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END
Hired Guns: Part 9
April 17, 2017 § 18 Comments
Part 9: Who is Robert Lewis Chapman, Jr.?
Last year when the bicycle protests in PV Estates got underway, a guy told me to “look out for Robert Chapman.”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“He’s this anonymous Internet troll guy who lives in PV and is a complete ass.”
I didn’t pay much attention, since “anonymous Internet troll” always equates with “coward” and since I had other concerns than playing Billy Goat Gruff. Before long, though, this link on the Internet came up, and it won’t take you more than a few sentences to suspect what I did: The anonymous troll author of this web site is seriously deranged. I’m no fan of the PV Estates cops, the council, or the city manager, but these vile attacks on wives, ex-wives, and children are sick, and they’re the product of a sick mind.
Is the author of this junk Robert Chapman? I don’t know for sure, but the bizarre language of the web site is eerily reminiscent of the bizarre behavior in the following police reports, all of which were returned as part of a public records request for “Emails or any other documents in paper or electronic format pertaining to the following matters: Activities or complaints regarding or connected with Robert Chapman.”
Remember all those police reports where an anxious bedwetter in PV Estates consumed countless hours of police time to investigate dogs? Tip of the iceberg …
Hundreds and hundreds of pages were returned as a result of my public records request; some of the documentation is truly bizarre, and I’ll be publishing all of it shortly. I hope you like stories about bald, droopy, middle-aged men prancing around in hot tubs.
But my interest in Chapman is actually specific to cycling. Why is the author of the PVE PD hate web site, whether or not it is in fact Robert Chapman, so torqued about the police department?
I’m torqued about the police because they unfairly target cyclists and harass outsiders. But the hate web site’s author lists a slew of reasons that even a cursory inspection reveals as subterfuge. After a bit of reading, a bit of googling, and a whole bunch of time spent reviewing crazy-talk public and court records, I may have unearthed the reason for the author’s venom, and perhaps his hidden-in-plain-sight identity as well.
This matters to cyclists because the same web site that is going after the organization and the individuals who make up the PV Estates police department is the same person who’s going after cyclists. Perhaps a little sunlight will go a long way to disinfecting his rotten attitude and chickenboy attacks. If not, at least people will be able to pin a face and a name on the donkey who is too cowardly to sign his own name.
But first, a continuation of the police reports and the truly dyspeptic personalities involved. If you’re a cyclist, you should ask yourself again: Can a police department that responds to people and complaints like this ever be expected to treat cyclists fairly, when it’s these very bedwetters demanding that the police “enforce” the laws against cyclists?
black_fedex_deliveryman_mystery
boat_horn_illegal_mystery_pickup_mystery
class_action_illegal_talking_threat
complaining_complainant_mystery
construction_violation_but_stopped_while_rp_on_phone_mystery
doors_closing_and_talking_mystery
drone_operation_at_soccer_field
equipment_noise_crime_v_humanity
fireworks_parking_nothing_found
fucking_asshole_ordinance_violation
holiday_construction_unfounded_mystery
home_counseling_session_noise_session
illegal_tree_trimming_solicitation
legally_parked_vehicles_mystery
loud_music_mystery_again_again
loud_music_mystery_again_again_again
loud_music_mystery_again_again_again_again
measurement_of_noise_mystery_continued
measurement_of_noise_mystery_continued_more
measurement_of_noise_mystery_continued_more_again
measurement_of_noise_mystery_continued_more_again_more
END
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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.
END
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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!
END
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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!
END
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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.
END
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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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South Bay weekly round-up
May 23, 2016 § 6 Comments
Here we go …
- Red tide: Two more dead cyclists this week, one in Palos Verdes Estates (third cyclist death on the peninsula, second in the city of PVE), one in Playa del Rey. The car caught on surveillance tape tailgating John Bacon immediately before his death matches the description of a vehicle that has been harassing cyclists for months. If you’ve ever been harassed by this or a similar vehicle in PV, contact Detective Hellinga at the PVE police now. Oh, and then on Sunday another long-time South Bay cyclist was hit by a car in PV and transported to the hospital by ambulance. Business as usual.
- Man-Zilla, bear catcher: Tony Manzella captured a district championship in the race of truth, the individual time trial. Rather than the truth, though, it was more like a lie of omission, because the only thing the race proved is what we already know, i.e. Tony is a human missile on a bike. What the title omitted are much more important facts. Tony’s a great guy, a wonderful son, husband, and dad, and like Greg “G$” Leibert, Tony always has a word of encouragement and praise for you as he feeds you head-first into the meatgrinder. Join Tony for his birthday Ride to Rock on May 28, leaving with the NOW Ride in Santa Monica at 7:30–free coffee at the Rock for anyone who’s still alive when they get there.
- All hail Cesar: Cesar Reyes, junior rider with Team Velosport Junior/RideBiker Alliance, is the junior rider of the month, courtesy of Law Office of Seth Davidson. The award comes with a $200.00 check and one heck of a big smile from Cesar! Excited to see great results from a hard working and promising young rider.
- Bello Britannica: Local hammerhead and British import Alex Barnes put everyone to the sword on the world famous Donut Ride, winning the historic and legendary and wonderful and amazing climb to the Domes against a field of bloodthirsty killers all prepped and stretching their legs for nationals. Not bad for a beginning biker who still can’t talk well English goodly.
- Go forth and conquer: The South Bay sends its best road racer, Derek Brauch, off to the wilds of North Carolina to compete in the masters national championships next week. Along with Derek goes the South Bay’s best crit racer (yeah, we’re claiming him) Charon Smith in search of a national crit title. These two guys are unbelievably good bike racers and what’s more important, are incredibly good people. I’ve been trying for years to come up with dirt and rumors on them with no luck at all. Here’s hoping that they, along with my Big Orange teammate Greg “G$” Leibert, come home victorious.
- The end is near: CBR hosts its next-to-last crit on Memorial Day. Gitcher fast four-corner beatdown while it’s hot!
- It takes a village: When Velo Club La Grange Thomas Rennier lost his left thumb in a catastrophic collision at the Dana Point Grand Prix, he was asked if he planned on riding a bike again. Never mind racing. Riding. He said that there was no way he was going out like this and that he was counting the days until he could get back riding. As a super strong rider, “riding” is a euphemism for “full-blown beatdowns.” Thomas’s La Grange community sprang into motion. Within days, his teammates and friends at Santa Monica BMW concocted a plan to help him on his road back to the bike. Thanks to Jay Wolff and Dan Weinberg at Helen’s Cycles, Mike Miranda at Cannondale, Velo Club La Grange, an anonymous donor, but most of all Thomas‘s La Grange teammates, everyone pitched in to make the new bike a reality for one of the best loved and most feared guys in the peloton. No one expected this less than Thomas, and no one is more deserving. Hats off to the La Grange community for coming together like it did.
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Don’t take it lying down
May 22, 2016 § 41 Comments
The recent trio of cyclist deaths here in Palos Verdes has another angle, in addition to the lackadaisical police response as compared to how they deal with property crimes and crimes such as Driving While Black, Driving While Latino, and Driving While Poor. This other angle is the angle of cyclist inaction.
Since John Bacon’s death, numerous cyclists have reported that they too were buzzed and harassed by a vehicle similar to the one in the surveillance video. At least one other person confirmed that the driver was a big white dude, matching the APB description. None of these cyclists, after being assaulted, took the step of filing a police report. In one instance it was because the driver sped away before the rider could get his license plate, and although the PVE cops came they refused to report the incident because the cyclist didn’t have a license plate.
[Note #1: The police aren’t required to have a license plate to make a report. Note #2: Why haven’t the police followed up with every single person who has reported being buzzed by a similar vehicle? All it would take is a post on Facebag, a couple of phone calls to a couple of local cycling clubs, or even reaching out to a certain South Bay cycling blogger, to get that information. Note #3: This slackness is another example of the PVE PD’s casual approach to this case, rather than active, aggressive detective work.]
The other cyclists who have been assaulted by the white pickup driver never called the police. The reasons are myriad, but they typically boil down to this: Stopping your ride, calling the cops, and insisting that a report be made ruins your whole ride; in some cases your whole day. Most people ride by “snatching” a bit of free time in their busy day to go out and pedal. If they knew they would be spending the balance of the day at the police station, few would do it. In fact, when people are riding before work or before they have to be home to take kids to school, they simply can’t afford to stop–or so they think. And when they think about the hassle involved and the fact that the cager who assaulted them didn’t hurt or kill them, they get on with the ride and maybe talk about it over coffee or on a Facebook post.
This failure on the part of cyclists to report assault with a deadly weapon means that people like the mystery white pickup driver, who may or may not be the person the PVE cops have now identified as a “person of interest,” know that they can go about their deadly ways with impunity. In fact, the most famous case of cager-rager Dr. Thompson intentionally hitting a cyclist, in which the cager lost his doctor’s license and went to prison, only came to pass because of a previous incident in which a rider had reported the doctor’s assault on him. No charges were filed in that earlier case but a record existed, and this record resulted in the Thompson’s prison sentence.
Many have written or facebooked asking what can be done. The short answer is, “Take the time to report every single instance of assault, and especially every instance of battery.” No assault with a deadly weapon is minor, and people who do it once are the most likely people to do it again.
To give you an idea of what a buzzkill it is to report a crime, consider this:
A local 17-year-old was returning from the Telo training crit two weeks ago Tuesday, riding in the bike lane. An angry driver began honking and screaming at him. Of course there was a passenger and a child in the back seat because, role model. The cyclist tried to find out what the problem was, when the cager said he would get out and beat him up. The rider, a small high school student who is hardly a cage fighter, pulled over as he was afraid he was going to be run over, and the passenger jumped out. The rider took pictures, but not before the passenger slapped him in the face (a battery), and the driver continued to scream and threaten him (an assault).
Then they drove away. All this because a kid was riding his bike. In the bike lane.
Shaken and terrified, this young man decided to do something about it. So my daughter, who is an attorney at my firm, went with him to the Torrance Police Department to make a report and have the police open an investigation. Despite the location of the incident being clearly within the Torrance PD’s jurisdiction, they were sent to Redondo Beach Police Department, where they were told to go back to Torrance. It’s called Complainant Ping-Pong and the object is to wear people out so they give up and go home.
At Torrance, they waited almost three hours for the police department to do its job, and the boy was questioned over and over again, ostensibly to “make sure” he had his story straight, but clearly in order to try and trip him up so that the police wouldn’t have to open a report. Then, when it became clear that the kid’s story was completely consistent, and he had photos of the perps, and the attorney wasn’t going to back down, they opened an inquiry but only as to battery. It took additional argument to get them to include the obvious charge of assault as well.
The entire process took four hours, and of course the only reason it happened at all is because the rider happened to be on a club that happened to have a lawyer sponsor who happened to have someone on his payroll who happened to be able to take half a day off work to go help a crime victim. You can imagine how the young man would have been treated had he shown up at Torrance PD on his own.
Yet now the people who committed the assault and battery are going to be investigated by the police, and since the rider took photos, they may also be charged with a crime–though it’s easy to imagine that they will fabricate a story defending or wholly denying their behavior. What they can’t expunge is that there is now a record of them and their vehicle. If they repeat their behavior, or run over and kill a cyclist, there will be a smoking gun pointing at their California driver licenses and vehicle registration.
What’s as important is that regardless of how the case turns out, these bastards will know that their actions have consequences. They will think twice before attacking a cyclist. They may even have to hire a lawyer and part with some cold, hard cash to avoid a criminal conviction. These are the kinds of consequences that can never happen unless cyclists are willing to sacrifice the day’s ride and peace of mind to do the right thing. Like it or not, it’s on us.
This type of reporting has a ripple effect. Police know that their time is going to be consumed if they don’t do a better job of policing cager criminals. Best of all, these reports show up in local, state, and national statistics. And although dead bodies don’t impress bureaucrats, numbers do.
I reflect on the times I’ve been assaulted and have caught up to the driver and exchanged heated words. Never again. From now on I’ll be taking photos and calling 911. I’ll also be upgrading my bike into a rolling video production machine with front and rear cameras. Ruin my day? Fine. But at least the fucker who tried to kill me won’t be ruining some innocent person’s life.
So to everyone who asks, “What can we do?” the answer is this: Report the crime. Because if you don’t, the next John Bacon may be you.
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Cycling in the South Bay 