Friday Morning Bus Ride Post

Cops are funny, when they see the potential of having to write a lot of tickets they always opt for the verbal warning, typically. This is true unless, as a comedian on Def Comedy Jam once put it when talking about dealing with the cops, “You ain’t gonna have nuthin’ but a conversation unless you fuck it up!”

So, it’s about 6pm and it’s also the middle on rush hour for trains, planes, automobiles and bikes here in San Fran. We bikers for the most part, follow the law. However there are many of us that happily break the driving laws because we can. We shouldn’t be allowed to weave between cars, ride against traffic, run red lights, etc. but we do because well, what the hell, its fun and gets you through traffic a lot faster than being obedient.

The more I ride the more I have become very aware of my surroundings and riding home in rush hour traffic your spidey-sense is going off constantly.  You are always looking out for danger not so much looking out for the cops.

The wiggle is well known by bikers as the fastest way to get from Market street to the Panhandle.  Drivers know this route as well and for the most part avoid it which makes it rather stress free most days.  Well this past friday was like every other one and the ride home  along the wiggle was uneventful until we hit Scott and Fell Streets.  There was about 4 of us that made it to the intersection and like every other day, every biker makes a left onto Fell Street, a oneway,  whether the light is green or red.  Remember, we break laws cause can.

We all turn left completely ignoring the “no turn on red” sign and halfway down the block stood one of SF finest waving at us to the curb and doing his best to pretend that what was about to happen wasn’t going to be 1omins of his life that he’ll never get back.

We pull over and get off our bikes and the cops proceeded to ask us one at a time, “Do you know why I stopped you?”

Guy #1: Red light

Me: “We turned against the red”

Guy#3:  “I don’t know.”

Girl#1:  “Red Light.”

Cop: “Let me see your ID. The rest of you can go.”

Like I said, we break the law because we can, that doesn’t mean we don’t know that law.  Well most of us anyway.  So you are all smart people no need to tell you who got the ticket.  It was a very large waste of time and all I learned two things: 1-my theory about Cops is extremely true and 2 – from now on I will turn my  spidey-sense up to 11.

DjD

BwB – Biking while Black

A few days ago right after lunch, I was thinking of things I need to blog about. And much like Nappilicious I have all kinds of random things running through my head. But unlike Nappilicious I want to go a lot deeper. So, what does that mean? I really don’t know yet, but what I do know is that this is the first entry of the deeper version of Nappilicious.

I have recently took up biking and not just any kind of biking, fixed gear biking. Taking up biking in itself shouldn’t be that big of a deal right? Well, when you are Black, it seems to become a really big deal. Now at this point in Nappilicious I would have started talking about the funny ways White people look at me when I ride my bike, as if they have never ever seen a black person ride a bike before and that would have been the end of the post. Not this time because I have really being giving this some thought and I decided to ask myself a question.

Side Bar: Why did I decided to take up biking in one of the hilliest cities I have ever lived in? Bike to work day, thats why. The company I was working for at the time organized a group to take part in the event which is huge here. From the email and links that went around it seemed like an easy way to chill, ride around the city, make some friends, have a couple of beers and get some bike swag. None of this happened. Here is the long version of the story. The short version is simple, I had a 200 dollar mountain bike and jeans, my co-workers had 1,500 dollar road bikes and spandex. Add to this that it was the hottest day in a long time in SF, around 98 degrees at 4pm…well, you get the point. After that day I headed to bike shop, bought my self a fixie (I never change gears anyway so, why spend the money) and never looked back.

Back to the post.

Why is it a Black person riding a bike is see as alien to the natural order of things?

Being the “alien” I couldn’t answer that question and stopping and asking the white people that are staring at me would only cause the issue to be seen as hostile aggression towards the “natural order”. So I asked the one entity that wouldn’t talk back, call the cops nor fail in given all the right and wrong answers at the same time. Google, you are on!

Straight away I type “African American and Bicycle” in the Google machine and the very first result was Major Taylor Iron Riders. I had no idea who Major Taylor was and the Iron riders thing was a close second. I clicked, started reading and the 1st line: “Major Taylor Iron Riders is an African American New York City based recreational cycling club that was formed in 2005”

What the what?!?

We have a organized cycling club?! I continued to read…“Our name is derived from two historic African American cycling milestones. The first is Marshall “Major” Taylor ; in 1898 Major Taylor became the world’s first African American cycling champion. The second name “Iron riders” comes from the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps at Fort Missoula , Montana .” At this point I knew two things, 1 I was done (mentally) working for the day and, 2 I was pretty sure I heard the crackling sound of a fuse, unbeknown to me I was about to have my mind completely blown.

I continued to read about the Iron riders bike club and look at all there pics. Lots of middle aged Black men (and some women) a few White people sprinkled in for flavor, that get together for short training rides and long brutal rides. Seeing and reading all this was getting a bit much. I mean, I went from me being the only one I ever say like me that rode a bike for exercise and for fun, getting stared at like I was a rainbow colored unicorn riding on a tandem bike with Lockness herself to being floored by the fact that I was never alone…my bike riding people were in NYC.

So I thought.

I will save what I learned about the Iron Riders and Major Taylor for another post, I promise. For now I have to continue exploring the splattered remains of my currently blown mind. The MT Iron Riders of NY didn’t have links to other groups like it so I thought it was a the only one of its kind and with no plans to move to NY, I was left to believe that I had to live vicariously through my peoples on the east coast.

GOOGLE MACHINE TO THE RESCUE!!

Back to typing away online, hunting for more of my people Biking while Black. Major Taylor Bicycling Club of…what this can’t be right…Minnesota?!? I didn’t waste time reading about this particular group, I head straight for their links, hoping I would find exact what I did find, a lot more groups named after the great Major Taylor. Sadly the closest MT Cycling Club to San Francisco is in LA so I couldn’t leave work early and ride down to my local MT Cycling Club office and sign up. That’s probably a good thing because my nose was open so wide I probably would have offered up my first born if that was the entry fee.

So what does all this mean for me?

As I am gathering up the last bits of my brain off the floor I realize that my company just paid 4 hours (and I am not that cheap) for me to learn about my heritage. Are these things I should have already known? Perhaps, and I will have plenty of posts dealing with the things about my heritage i just don’t know. For now, here is what I do know. Riding a bike in a city with very few people that look like you has nothing to do with your skin color. That fact alone will have people staring. I would love to see the Black people in this city riding bikes around, I would also like to take a ride without being watched like a UFO flying over an obscure part of Arizona at 3:30am but you can’t force people to experience something they don’t want to. I will have to deal with White people and their children staring at me. They don’t see this kind of thing where they are from. I will also have to deal with my people not riding bikes, it’s not something that enters into our daily lives. I have had 36years worth of conversations with Black people and never once has riding a bike for fun or exercise ever come up.

One Black guy won the one-mile track championships 111 years ago, there are several African American cycling clubs throughout this country. Two great things I am happy to explore more. That doesn’t change the reality in which I live but it does allow me to ride with the confidence that I am not the first and under no circumstances am I alone.

And now, My Black History Moment: The Plow, who knew it was invented by a Black Man? Not me, did you? Enjoy
Andrew Jackson Beard (1849-1921)

DjD