Statistics confirm that American drivers continue to massacre walkers and cyclists.

Just the facts, folks. Sorry if it hurts your car to hear them.

Exactly How Far U.S. Street Safety Has Fallen Behind Europe, in Three Bombshell Charts, by Kea Wilson (Streets Blog)

We knew it was bad, but not THIS bad.

The United States has failed to reduce pedestrian and cyclist fatalities as fast as comparably affluent European nations, a new study finds — and the authors think we must employ the same simple, effective policies that they did to catch up in the fight the bloodshed.

Researchers from Virginia Tech and Rutgers University compared the last 28 years of available transportation fatality data from the United States with data from the four countries with the most closely comparable national travel surveys and levels of affluence: Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. All four peer nations had reduced per capita pedestrian fatalities by at least 61 percent over the course of the study period — and standout Denmark did so by a whopping 69 percent — but the U.S. reduced ours by just 36 percent.

In other words, our worst peer country’s Vision Zero progress was nearly twice as fast as ours in the last three decades. And of course, U.S. pedestrian fatalities actually increased dramatically between 2010 and 2018. Only the U.K. experienced even a moderate increase over the same period — and some U.K. safety experts blame the rise on American-made SUVs.

“Forget Crossing Through The City By Car,” says the Mayor of Paris as automobile eroticists squeal and howl.

Anne Hidalgo is not backing down. Other articles on the topic have pointed out that in terms of Parisian voting districts, the mayor's most strident automobile supremacist critics live outside the central arrondissements, and her support is highest in the center where these changes are occurring.

Paris Mayor: “Forget Crossing Through The City By Car” by Carlton Reid (Forbes)

In the first major interview since her re-election as Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo told Le Parisien that her manifesto promise to crack down on motoring in the French capital would be kept.

“We must forget the crossing of Paris from east to west by car,” she told the daily newspaper.

‘The city needs to evolve,” she added.

Comfortably re-elected in June for a second term, she said she intends to create permanent curb-protected cycleways and expand the number of lockdown cycleways, known in French as “coronapistes.” At an urban planning conference later this month she also plans to reveal plans on restricting petrol-powered motoring on the usually car-clogged highways on the upper quays of the Seine.

Paris created 45 kilometers of coronapistes during lockdown, and now a further 10 kilometres of wand-separated cycleways will be added.

Of course the auto supremacists lurk in Paris, too.  

Not everybody is happy with Hidalgo’s plans. In the run-up to the mayoral election, Pierre Chasseray, leader of 40 Millions d'Automobilistes, a group with a claimed 320,000 members and which lobbies against speed cameras and other “anti-motoring” initiatives, said:

“[The Mayor] is wrong to take advantage of the health crisis to accentuate its anti-car policy.”

On the contrary, the “epidemic requires giving space to the car,” he added, more in hope than expectation because space for motorists in Paris has been much reduced over recent years.

As for Reid's conclusion, we know of at least one (local) mayor who remains oblivious. 

The plan, it seems, is for motorists to become an endangered species in many parts of the Paris of the near future. Mayors in other major cities around the world are watching with great interest.

From 2000: Beercycling beginnings in Poperinge, with previously unpublished photos.

Concurrently with the motor coach beer tours of Europe in 1998 and 1999, I was becoming a quasi-serious bicyclist back home. It was only a matter of time until the lightbulb fired, and when it did, a few of us began planning a bike-oriented trip to Belgium in 2000. We chose three Belgian cities as hubs -- Tournai, Poperinge and Brugge -- with the aim of renting bikes, riding by day and partying at night. 

My beercycling comrades were Kevin Richards, Bob Reed, Buddy Sandbach and Kevin Lowber. We were a quartet during the Tournai stay, which included a day of guided mountain biking, monthly brewing day at the Vapeur museum brewery, and a meeting with the visiting Danish contingent of Kim, Allan and Kim (who were in Belgium for football matches). Lowber joined us in Poperinge for three days in West Flanders.

I've tidied this account from some years back and updated it in places. Most of the photos are mine, but a few are Buddy Sandbach's.

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“The (German) attack had not penetrated to the decisive heights of Cassel and the Mont des Cats, the possession of which would have compelled the (British) evacuation of the Ypres salient and the Yser position. No great strategic movement had become possible, and the Channel ports had not been reached. The second great offensive had not brought about the hoped-for decision.”

--From the official German account of the offensives on the Western Front in 1918, as quoted by John Keegan in his book, The First World War.

Our fatigued foursome arrived by train on Sunday at lunchtime in the Belgian “hop town” of Poperinge, a tidy, friendly place that had the good fortune to remain somewhat safely behind British lines throughout the Great War and thus was spared the wholesale devastation suffered only ten kilometers away in Ieper (Ypres). 

The street called Ieperstraat, which leads from the tiny train station to the center of town, was packed with shoppers, strollers and snackers. The festive atmosphere came as a complete surprise, seeing as stores and shops seldom opened on Sundays in Europe then, but we later learned it was a special annual shopping day, precisely the sort of delightful phenomenon to encourage a few midday beers.

Checking into the legendary Hotel/Restaurant Palace, we found the newly arrived Kevin Lowber carving a massive slab of beef, anxiously awaiting us in the shadow of an equally oversized bottle of red wine. He’d just come into Poperinge from Brussels. 

Biking in and around Poperinge was slated to begin on Monday, and this seemed to merit a map, strategy and tactics session. Adjourning across the hall to the hotel’s cozy world-class beer bar, we discussed the riding itinerary for the coming days.

A plan of attack quickly fell into place. Monday would take us to Ieper for a ride through the battlefield sites south and east of town. 

On Tuesday, we would meet Luc Dequidt, chief of Poperinge’s amazingly comprehensive tourist bureau, for a two-wheeled tour of local attractions, hopefully to include the tasting cafe near the St. Sixtus abbey (home of the scrumptious Westvletern Trappist ales); the brewing town of Watou; the Helleketel forest: and row after row of the tall hop trellises that take on a life of their own each three years during the town’s hop festival.

Wednesday was chosen as the day for us to assay what German military might had failed to achieve more than a century earlier: Seize the heights of Mont des Cats and Cassel. From our Poperinge base, this projected foray into France wouldn’t be altogether difficult, totaling less than 30 miles roundtrip; more importantly, it would provide a glimpse of northern French beer culture, which naturally was my ulterior motive all along.

Riding east towards Ieper on Monday, the French hills almost always could be seen rising on the horizon to the southwest, and although they aren’t particularly lofty, the default flatness of Flanders magnifies their significance. 

One can readily understand their strategic importance in wartime. There were constant reminders of combat on Monday, as our journey took us past numerous Great War monuments and cemeteries of the British Commonwealth forces, whose final resting places attest to the global scale of the First World War: Irish, Australian, Canadian and Indian soldiers, buried alongside lads from Manchester and Newcastle. The resting places of Belgian, French and German soldiers also were seen.

Monday’s lunch sag came in the center of Ieper, a town utterly devastated from 1914-1918, then painstakingly rebuilt in the years preceding the next world conflagration. 

When the second war swept through Belgium, one young Ieper native resolved to escape. He made it somehow to the then-colony of Belgian Congo, and later to South Africa, where he enlisted in the British armed forces and fought against the German occupiers until war’s end in 1945. 

After returning home he founded a restaurant and pub, sold it, then opened another, called Ter Posterie for its location opposite Ieper’s post office.

I can’t remember this man’s name, and certainly he would have no reason to remember mine, but nonetheless I met him on three different occasions, all in all, and enjoyed the long beer list, savory food and consistent hospitality at Ter Posterie, where we convened at the terrace that day in 2000 and discussed our progress. 

By 2000, active control of the business had long since passed to his daughter, but the old man still frequented the establishment, and when glimpsing an English speaker, would spin his life story for the visitor in a narrative honed over thousands of ale-side retellings. 

Sadly, during subsequent trips, Ter Posterie’s colorful founder was observed to be sadly descending into advanced dementia, and since passed way, as has Ter Posterie. Both will be remembered fondly. 

--- 

Tuesday’s riding schedule was light, but rich in intangibles owing to the presence of Luc and his wife. We kept a leisurely pace on the country lanes radiating from Poperinge, never very far from the smell of manure and the sight of hops. It was a pub crawl on human-powered wheels: Westvleteren 12-degree Trappist at the terrace of the then-newly built tasting café opposite the abbey, through the woods and fields to the fabled “brewing village” of Watou and refreshing Witbier from the small town’s Van Eecke brewery, then south and east via wooded lanes back to Poperinge.

At the edge of the Helleketel forest there used to be a delightful small brewery and tasting café known as the Bie, which has relocated twice (to Loker, then Dentergem) during the period since we rode past in 2000 and found it closed on Tuesday. If memory serves, we got inside in 2001 and 2002.

Amazingly, yet another brewery is located near Watou, which is really no more than a collection of houses: St. Bernardus, which used to produce beer by contract for the monks of St. Sixtus under the Sixtus name. The contract was terminated, and the brewery began to brew its own line of abbey-style ales that arguably is the finest of all secular recreations.

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Wednesday proved to be the highlight of the Poperinge interlude, with the group primed for climbing the two French hills and having lunch in Cassell. 

Arriving winded at the summit of the Mont des Cats, we saw a conveniently situated Trappist monastery, which might have provided liquid incentive had it been situated a few miles north in Belgium. Unfortunately, there are no Trappist-certified breweries in France, so instead the monastery makes acclaimed cheeses and butter, some of which were destined for sampling later at our midday feast.

(As of 2011, the monastery at Mont des Cats has licensed a Trappist Ale brewed by the makers of Chimay. It does not bear the Trappist appellation because brewing does not occur at Mont des Cats.)

For beer, one must descend the Mont des Cats and proceed to the small town of St. Sylvestre Cappell, home to the brewery that produces Trois Monts, or “three mountains”: Mont des Cats and Mont Cassell (in France) and Mont Noir (in Belgium). 

Trois Monts is exemplary proof that good beer and France are not mutually exclusive, although this view continues to be held by many otherwise intelligent and discerning beer aficionados, whose Francophobia is permitted to hold sway at the expense of their taste buds.

They’re missing good things. Bieres de garde perhaps are best understood as a sort of appellation of origin, describing beers from northern France, but beyond that there are few hard and fast rules. 

Often they are made with top-fermenting yeast, but not always. Usually they are aged in a process akin to lagering. Colors and strengths range across the spectrum. Many, but not all, are bottled in 750 ml corked bottles. If there is any one characteristic that seems common among the better French bieres de garde, it is a richly complex malt character. These are beers that taste fine alone, but better when they accompany food.

Thus, having scaled the heights of the Mont des Cats and scrambled down the other side in pursuit of a restorative glass of Trois Monts, we found it in a tiny roadside café where the proprietor spoke no English but was happy to learn that we weren’t “English”, and who seemed amused by our interest in the local brew. 

Temporarily sated, our final and more formidable objective lay before us: Cassel, the town straddling the top of the hill of the same name.

A half-hour’s ride along the highway brought us to the foot of the hill, and we began the winding ascent that culminated in the town’s main square. A narrow lane took us further toward the top, ending in a wooded park with a large windmill situated to our left. I knew from previous research that this was the Grail, for located just beneath the windmill was our real reason for coming: T' Kasteel Hof.

The windmill is the highest point in Flanders, with unobstructed views far and wide even on a hazy day, and the café just below it, one that clings to the side of the steep hill, is considered one of the finest beer cafés in France. I’ve been to few others, but it would be difficult to imagine any better. 

(Admittedly, I'm several years out of practice. Craft revolution, and all.)

T’ Kasteel Hof specializes in all things local. The food is from French Flanders, as are the beers. We found seats on the patio after walking through the crowded main room, where spontaneous applause greeted our entrance; bowing in appreciation of this unexpected acknowledgement of our collective biking prowess, we were disappointed to learn that the group of senior citizens actually was applauding a speech of some sort by one of its own.

Instructed that the kitchen was being overloaded by the tour group and only cold food was available, each of us opted for a mixed cheese and pate plate. Three would have sufficed for all five beercyclists, such was the size of the portions. Three 750 ml bottles of French Bieres de Garde were shared: Hommelpap (four hop varieties, earthy and a moderate 7% abv), Kasteel (the house ale) and Pot Flamand, the latter two falling on the sweetly malty side of the flavor spectrum, as I expected.

As if a convivial atmosphere, bountiful food and delicious beer weren’t reason enough to seek out t’ Kasteel Hoff, the pub also boasts a shop for carry-out sales: Bieres de garde, local honey and jam, liqueurs, post cards and souvenirs -- more of each than any of us were able to carry, and Kevin Lowber drew the short straw in this regard: He had made the mistake of bringing his backpack, which was filled with booty gathered by the others, our rental bikes being unequipped with panniers or hauling apparatus.

With ground to cover back to Poperinge and expressing ample regrets over having to leave so soon, we lugged our booty to the bikes and debarked in a meandering northeasterly direction, enjoying the countryside and melting away the lunchtime caloric intake. The group seemed hale and hearty, except perhaps Buddy, and therein is yet another story.

On the night preceding our Cassell reconnoitering, after benedictory drinks with Luc, we’d dined as a group in the Hotel Palace’s restaurant and enjoyed several bottles of French red wine with the uniformly excellent meats, breads and pastas.

After dinner, adjourning once again to the nearby bar and seeking the inimitable service provided by Guy, the owner, Kevin Richards elected to continue drinking wine. For reasons that remain obscure to this very day, Buddy felt emboldened to undertake an impossible task, attempting to match Kevin bottle for bottle.

Knowing better from previous experiences, the remainder of the contingent nursed our Belgian ales and retired to bed early in preparation for the big day. 

For those readers who have witnessed such ill-conceived ventures in the past, it should come as no surprise that during our ascent of the two French hills, Buddy began to perceive the error of his ways, particularly during lunch, when he was overheard to remark that a nap would feel good. On the ride back to Poperinge, Buddy was flagging. For a while, it seemed that Bob (our unofficial chaplain) might have to offer last rites, but he rallied and finished the course.

A meal on the main square at Café Paix and a few ales at a pub during the evening’s televised Euro Cup soccer match capped off a long and fruitful day. Not for the first time, I asked myself why it had taken me so long to discover the joys of biking in Europe.

As a reminder, once every three years (2020's renewal has been rescheduled for 2021) Poperinge celebrates its heritage of hops with a festival that captures the attention of beer lovers throughout the world, but remains consummately local in orientation, with much of the town actively participating in the fun. 

The town welcomes visitors at all times, not only during the festival, and it is hard to overstate the many charms of the area, especially for those infatuated with Belgian beer. Poperinge is eternally relaxed and efficient. 

As has happened so many times since, it was with grudging reluctance that my friends and I group departed on Thursday morning, walking back up Ieperstraat to board the train to Brugge and travel to the final phase of a remarkable trip.

Doesn't It Make You Feel Small?

I'm taking it very slowly, this getting back into the saddle after seven-odd years. We've taken two rides on the Greenway, and I've been using the bicycle to get back and forth between home and work.

I use a rear-view mirror that attaches to a pair of sunglasses, with backup mirrors at home. It is my preference not to be on the street without a mirror, because drivers cannot be trusted.

Come cooler and darker weather, the plan is to take the lenses out of an old pair of cheap sunglasses.

As for the title question of this article, the answer seems clear enough.

We're flipping idiots. 

online.com/2394062/stealing-bike-racks" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Why Do Americans Hate Bikes So Much? by Eben Weiss (Outside)

How low will some of us go to keep our neighborhoods bike-free? And won’t somebody please think of the children?

 ... But regardless of whether this is indeed an organized attempt to shut a bunch of schoolkids out of a bike rack, or merely one self-appointed spokesperson claiming to represent an otherwise loosely affiliated smattering of disgruntled motorists, what’s perhaps most absurd about all of this is how long it took the city to install the bike corral in the first place. From application to installation, the process took one year, not including “a few months of work” during which “we had to take photos of bikes locked to sign posts and trees to demonstrate demand for a bike corral.”

Parents driving kids to school creates a traffic nightmare; the city should be doing everything it can to create safe bike routes to schools and to give kids places to leave their bikes and scooters once they get there, and they should be doing it proactively. This would make life easier for everyone, even the cranky people in the neighborhood whose primary concern is how difficult it is to find parking.

Instead of dumping bikes on the corral, they should be leaving it thank you notes.

ON THE AVENUES: In My Merry Oldsmobile.

“C’mon you stupid motherfucker, keep going – fuck that pussy bicycle rider.”

The voice emanating from behind the wheel of the spluttering, battered and duct-taped SUV sounded like a toxic cocktail of bubbling midsummer’s tar, job site mud, finely aged horse manure and industrial solvent.

I’d been casually waved through the intersection at the 4-way stop by the attentive fellow piloting the pickup in front of the SUV, managing to pedal only a few feet before the abrasive vowel movement commenced, punctuated by blasts on the horn, and quite likely to have included murky rim shots off a spittoon had someone thought to install one in the middle of the street.

At any rate, the furious driver passed up the opportunity to turn right and chase me down Culbertson, preferring to continue honking and screaming about those “fucking cunt bicycles” for a long block, until the obscenities became muffled by the tall brick walls of the old Robinson-Nugent building.

True story.

Wait – did I mention that the driver screaming at me was female? Alas, I've always had this effect on the ladies.

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Welcome back, cyclist!

Less than 20 miles into the recent revival of a very small sliver of my former two-wheeled habit, my aching derriere may have been in pre-season scrimmage mode, but already New Albany’s internally-combusted denizens of non-calmed, automobile-centric streets were in peak mid-season blind rage.

It’s been quite a while, but there were occasions during my previous life on a bike when objects were thrown in my direction, and drivers displayed a nonchalant eagerness to run me off the road. Far worse has happened to others, as in this horrible account of automotive entitlement in an article about the way potential safety improvements are routinely blocked and averted by auto manufacturers.

The Life-Saving Car Technology No One Wants, by David Zipper (CityLab)

“Early in the morning of August 10, 2019, a man in a Dodge Charger drove along Miami’s MacArthur Causeway. Encountering traffic, he swerved onto the shoulder and accelerated to 100 miles per hour — more than double the speed limit. That’s when he slammed into a man riding his bicycle. The force of the impact was so powerful that the rider was decapitated. The driver had been inebriated at the time of the crash, according to police who spent five months investigating the hit-and-run.

“The cyclist’s death that night was one of an estimated 38,800 that occurred on American streets last year. Pedestrians and cyclists accounted for 8,800 of those fatalities — 23% of the total, up from 6,300 in 2010, when they comprised just 17%. During that period, fatalities for automobile occupants fell.

“In other words, America’s roads are getting safer if you’re inside an automobile, and more deadly if you’re outside of one.

Can someone help me understand exactly what it is about access to an automobile that brings out the very worst in people?

Two months ago when the peaceful and powerful Black Lives Matter protests began nightly in Louisville, I lost count of the simply stunning number of times that an on-line diatribe along the lines of “kill them all and let God sort them out” included a snarky reference to Greg Fischer as “Mayor Bike Lane.”

Admittedly, Fischer was flailing, although for polar opposite reasons. Still, just think about it for a moment.

There at the confluence of novel pandemic and historical racism, with fear, loathing and various viciously sociopathic buttons being pushed, ones dating back to the arrival of the first colonists in North America, the perennially weak-minded among us were frantically googling their own points of reference in search of opprobrium to heap on Fischer, and they landed almost immediately on bike lanes, wild-eyed and foaming at the mouth about the way these libtard obstacles to automotive pre-eminence ostensibly add one, maybe even two minutes to a typical trip across town by their car – perhaps even worse, compelling them to occasionally glance away from their mobile devices and pay attention to what they’re doing.

Again, the dulcet tones: “C’mon you stupid motherfucker, keep going – fuck that pussy bicycle rider.”

This is merely one manifestation of automobile supremacy, which not only is a form of imperialism (defined as “the practice, or advocacy of extending power and dofarm-near-me/">minion”), but surely is the last remaining form of blatant imperialism almost entirely absent social stigma.

As a cyclist once noted, “We’ve gotta be perfect. If a negligent driver kills someone, people see it as a necessary evil. But if a cyclist runs a red light, or a scooter hops onto a sidewalk alongside a busy street, we are just jerks driving crazy little vehicles with no regard for the law.”

When Americans settle into their plush sofas on wheels -- all of us, including me -- our assumptions of acceptable behavior change every bit as radically as when we savage people on social media.

Imperialism? Very much so. When I drive, it must be recognized and wrestled to the floorboard every single mile. Such are the depths to which automobile supremacy has smothered us all, even those who know better.

Imperialism ... because after all, space must be seized to accommodate cars at the expense of non-car users. We demand to warehouse our cars on public ground at no cost to ourselves. We expect cheap fuel and will support seemingly limitless violence (foreign wars, domestic economic coercion) in order to get it.

We'll also go to any self-delusional length to characterize this addiction as freedom. The list of destructive behaviors is seemingly endless, and yet we've made automobile supremacy the basis of civilization at the present time.

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To be sure, the first step toward improving conditions for non-drivers of any stripe (walking, biking, using wheelchairs, etc) would be an attitude adjustment on the part of drivers; with lobotomies too expensive, at least being subject to the sort of peer pressure that precludes most of us from urinating on the produce at the supermarket might be a nice start.

There are laws against the bladder hydration of cauliflower, and we could use more of those, too, as they pertain to driver behavior, but only if governmental officials accompany legislation (far-fetched, I know) with enforcement mechanisms … and yes, pie-in-the-sky hasn’t ever been quite this unlikely.

Come to think of it, there’s no way of knowing for certain that my verbal abuser on 8th Street wasn’t a government employee.

Am I right?

During my brief time returned to the saddle, there has been ample time to ponder the way so many Americans misunderstand the whole notion of a bicycle’s uses and utility. Take Nawbany, as the most convenient and representative example.

To survey the actions (and more importantly, non-actions) taken by municipal higher-ups for the past decade or more is to quickly see that as it pertains to their attitude toward bicycles, it's as if none of them have ever been to a place in America or abroad where people use bicycles to commute and fulfill actual daily tasks (like they'd use a car to achieve), as opposed to riding a bicycle strictly as a recreational conveyance - often, by loading a bicycle onto a bike rack on a vehicle and driving to a place to ride it.

Conversely, in our planet’s genuinely functional bicycle-friendly cities, the idea is to connect one's front door to a safe route to food, drink, shopping and a haircut in addition to accessing the recreational pathway.

Recall that almost all the pragmatic bicycle infrastructure suggested in Jeff Speck’s street grid plan was stripped from the final version. By equipping most of the historic downtown business district with east-west bike lanes, Speck aimed at helping residents living in the more densely populated districts inside the beltway to transport themselves to downtown amenities by bike instead of car.

It’s conceivable that our movers and shakers grasped this intent, although I doubt it. Simple non-comprehension fits Occam’s paradigm far more logically. Regardless, the conscious decision was made to not pursue genuinely multi-modal transport options, pushing bicycles to the recreational periphery of the city.

The most recent triumphant revelation is a plan to extend the Ohio River Greenway via the levee to the expensive little pocket park next to Silver Creek, where people can store their cars as they pretend to fish for toxic aquatic life while smoking cigarettes and drinking bad light beer.

It’d be a quarter-mile of path, maybe, as well as cute, albeit serving no real constructive purpose as it pertains to people who want to ride their bikes to connect from neighborhoods to the center, presumably because any allowance for the latter would inconvenience drivers. It makes no sense whatever, and I wish someone would explain it to me instead of refusing to discuss it.

However, I'm blackballed; dear reader, might you be acquainted with a journalist of the intrepid sort who might ask these questions of the powers that be?

If so, and if the questions actually are asked some sweet day, can you awaken me when the moment arrives?

I’ll be napping over by that 8th Street spittoon, bicycle chained dutifully to my ankle, waiting for that driver to come past again. She's really getting an earful this time.

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Recent columns:

August 6: ON THE AVENUES: Surrender.

July 30: ON THE AVENUES: Guys.

July 23: ON THE AVENUES: These overdue mask mandates should help us separate the bad actors from the good.

July 16: ON THE AVENUES: Daniil Kharms, Marina Malich, and writing for the drawer about nothing ... pre-Seinfeld.

ON THE AVENUES: Guys.

I'm using songs to title my posts. They may or may not bear relevance to the subject matter therein. It amuses me; for how long, I don't know.   

It took only two pandemic-delayed months, and now the Confidentials finally have their bicycles back from the shop.

My battle-hardened Trek model dates to 1999, and Diana’s to 2005. Neither of us has been in the saddle for a long while, and our two-wheeled conveyances frankly have been shamelessly neglected, left to molder in back of the garage since Obama’s first term along with a pile of dry-rotted, heat-warped and mostly useless accessories.

But functionality has returned, and with it quite a few of my ghosts have come back to call. I’ll have more to say about them in a moment.

It has been eight years since I put appreciable mileage on the bicycle, with the final peak in odometer terms coming in 2010, my 50th birthday year, when I recorded approximately 3,650 miles without ever exceeding 30 in a single day.

Not at all coincidentally, 2010 was the year when Bank Street Brewhouse (founded in 2009) devolved into a perpetual stalemate of small business trench warfare. In retrospect, pinned in place of my own lamentable accord at BSB, and realizing that European travel was out of the question, I devoted a portion of most days to riding my bike to forget, in search of stress relief before returning to the intensive care unit called "work."

I was still riding in late November, 2010, trying to reach 6,000 kilometers. One morning late in the month while walking I slipped on some black ice in the parking lot opposite BSB and suffered a big quadriceps tear in my left leg, which was purple for months afterward. 5,875 km would have to do. It took until June of 2011 before I even considered riding again.

By then the biking spark had been greatly extinguished, most likely from sheer burnout after almost 15 years of riding so much, along with the lingering leg injury and never-ending frustrations at BSB. There was a short-lived comeback attempt in 2012, and then I became a walker instead – and this phase lasted eight years.

What’s more, the period of 2010-2012 was when Kevin Richards and I weren’t seeing very much of each other. Kevin, who sadly died of a brain tumor in 2016, was my original bicycling muse. He had personal and professional issues of his own at the time, and I was preoccupied with the tumultuous business expansion -- and my responsibility for it.

For whatever reason, our paths diverged.

Unfortunately I didn’t ever think to consider the impact of Kevin’s temporary absence until later, when it became permanent. In 2011 and 2012, Kevin wasn’t riding his bicycle much, either, but if we had been in closer proximity, we’d have shamed each other into getting out there.

We didn’t go for a ride together for the last six years of his life, closer to seven. I have few regrets, but this is one of them. A very, very big one.

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It’s a story I’ve told before, but humor me.

I helped get Kevin into better beer. He was instrumental in getting me into the seat of a two-wheeler.

In 1996 it had been twenty years since high school, when my teenage bicycling career came to a close once I had a dependable car to drive. Horrible, exceedingly American, and true.

But in 1996 I bought a cheap bike with big knobby tires and started tooling around New Albany. Gradually a collection of pub-going cyclists found each other, and I upgraded to the current Trek, swapping the mountain bike tires for hybrids because Kevin properly commanded it.

One late summer's day in 1999, Kevin and I rode to the top of the Knobs via Corydon Pike's switchbacks. We stopped for a sag at Polly’s Freeze, the venerable ice cream haven. Light bulbs belatedly became illuminated and an earnest discussion began. Might we dare biking in Europe, where it was standard operating procedure -- and heaven forbid – maybe quaff a few fine ales in the process?

So the planning began. We booked hotels at three beer-oriented urban venues in Belgium, along with rental bikes for day trips radiating from each stop. Faxes (!) and e-mails were sent, and the itinerary came into shape. As the calendar turned to June, 2000, there were five of us ready to make the journey, and it proved to be a classic.

A beercycling group was born, and as many as 15 of us in all took part in a total of seven European trips in nine years, with the last occurring in 2008. Kevin was along for four of the seven, and without his tutoring, I'd have lacked the confidence to "lead" the other ones, although in fact all of these trips were genuine group efforts.

Kevin and I conceived, orchestrated and performed those beercycling trips together, and while the cast revolved, each time out we functioned as a band of brothers (and on a couple of occasions, sisters). I’m not exaggerating when I say that Kevin’s bicycling advocacy changed my life. My European travel instincts were joyfully reborn in 2000.

During previous journeys to the continent, I'd dodged bicyclists while walking between train stations, never stopping to consider how much fun it might be to ride myself -- actually, never stopping to consider that I could do it. Kevin patiently taught me about the art of the possible on two wheels, with or without panniers. It wouldn’t have been possible without him.

By 2003, I was able to take my bike apart, pack it in a hard shell case, reassemble it, ride it all the way from Frankfurt to Vienna (meeting friends along the way), and get bike and me home without incident after almost a month on the road. As a humanities major with almost no technical aptitude, I've never been more proud of myself, and eternally grateful to Kevin for showing me how.

Our partnership was mutually reinforcing. We’d pause by a river, and I’d prattle on about a doomed revolutionary revolt in a neighboring town. Then Kevin would explain the hydraulics of the locks and dam we were observing. I’d score a brewery visit, and he’d calmly repair a spoke. Kevin had his life, and I had mine. Not all our interests intersected. When they did, life was great fun.

---

About those ghosts.

We brought our refurbished bicycles home yesterday, and as I rooted through the dusty gear untouched since before Kevin's death, it quickly became an emotional ordeal just filling the garbage can. His fingerprints are everywhere, stepping out of every shadow.

I’d only recently remarked to a friend that returning to the Public House can sometimes be challenging for me because of the ghosts; she asked if the ghosts haunt me, and I said no, not that. They accompany me. At times their presence is heavy enough to give me pause. It’s not so much individuals as the accumulated weight of the past. Most of the time my ghosts keep a socially respectful distance.

Then there’s yesterday.

Back in late 2015, maybe early 2016, during the period of my business divorce, I’d still be at the pub here and there and see Kevin, always in the usual “gee” spot, and eventually we started chatting about riding again. He’d been doing it. I needed to restart. We’d get the band back together, maybe even do Europe again.

It wasn’t to be, and there'll come a time when I accept it.

At some point after America’s COVID-19 pariah status finally dissipates, we’ll be in Europe somewhere (hopefully Belgium), rent bikes and say goodbye to Kevin again, preferably with a toast of Rochefort 10 Belgian Trappist ale, but I’ll be damned if I try to drink two of them and keep riding, as Kevin would have.

He was just showing off, and I loved him for it.

---

It isn’t the 60th birthday I’d have chosen, but it’s the one I’ll get on Monday, and that’s all right with me.

2020 has been the stuff of proliferating nightmares, and it’s easy to sense the pain, stupidity and avarice of the dipshits multiplying all around us.

D.I. Fred Thursday of British television’s Endeavor has advice, as he explained to D.C. Endeavor Morse early in the show’s run.

Morse: How do you do it? Leave it at the front door?

Thursday: 'Cause I have to. Case like this will tear a heart right out of a man. Find something worth defending.

Morse: I thought I had! Found something.

Thursday: Music? I suppose music is as good as anything. Go home. Put your best record on. Loud as it'll play.

And with every note, you remember: That's something the darkness couldn't take from you.

---

Recent columns:

July 23: ON THE AVENUES: These overdue mask mandates should help us separate the bad actors from the good.

July 16: ON THE AVENUES: Daniil Kharms, Marina Malich, and writing for the drawer about nothing ... pre-Seinfeld.

July 9: ON THE AVENUES: Mask up, folks. Pints&union is coming back, and we're taking precautions.

July 5: ON THE AVENUES took a week off. Here's what I've been writing while on holiday.

Seattle's "Stay Healthy Streets": You can't even IMAGINE any of this ever occurring to Jeff Gahan, can you?

No, it can't even be imagined.

Consider this: Gahan's belated embrace of public art for the parking garage has resulted in a three-story-high Freudian anchor seal and gigantic paintings of automobiles. 

There are, and always have been, people near Gahan who actually do "get it." But in Nawbany, you can't keep it (your job) without ditching any practical urban aptitude that runs contrary to campaign finance's pay-to-play circle of remuneration.

Too bad. Some of them might have amounted to something. All they have to look forward to now is a lifetime of employment as bootlicking functionaries, maintaining Dear Leader's automobile supremacy until retirement.

Seattle to bar traffic from 20 miles of streets so residents can exercise, bike, by Kaelan Deese (The Hill)

Seattle to bar traffic from 20 miles of streets so residents can exercise, bike

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan (D) announced Thursday that the city plans to permanently bar 20 miles of roads from car traffic to leave room for people to use bikes and walk.

According to a city spokesperson, the streets would be closed for thru-traffic only, allowing residents to still access their homes using vehicles and delivery companies to continue services.

The measure is part of a larger initiative that began in April called Stay Healthy Streets, a temporary relief program providing more space for residents to leave their houses while practicing social distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a press release.

"Safe and Healthy Streets are an important tool for families in our neighborhoods to get outside, get some exercise and enjoy the nice weather," Durkan said.

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) said that areas chosen to be closed from car traffic include places with routes that connect foot traffic with essential services and food stops, as well as streets with low car ownership, according to a release.

"We've witnessed a 57% drop in vehicle traffic volumes accessing downtown Seattle during Governor Inslee's Stay Healthy, Stay Home order," SDOT said. "Finding new and creative ways, like Stay Healthy Streets, to maintain some of these traffic reductions as we return to our new normal is good for the planet, but is also good for our long-term fight against COVID-19."

Part of the initiative includes building better bike infrastructure such as bike lanes to improve mobility around the city and help reduce pollution in the process.

The Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board strongly supported the measures Durkan announced Thursday.

"All these actions together will help Seattle come back as a safer, healthier, and more climate friendly city," the board said in the release.

What would it take to make Paris (or anywhere) a ‘15-Minute City’?

Inconvenient facts for Glasser & Speck.

Ultimately, the "15 minute city" (or less) is is the goal.

It's not taking away your car, just lessening (in ways great and small) the necessity of using is as much as you are now, because there are only benefits to this lessening in the sense of health and well-being for everyone.

Right now, where we live on Spring Street, many amenities are within walking distance. With improved public transportation, there'd be more. Grocery shopping remains a challenge, but if I could leave the car parked most of the time, then use it once or twice a week for groceries, that'd be an improvement. We might find it unnecessary to have two cars, and already have discussed selling one of them.

What has to occur first is this: One must be able to imagine another way, unlike car-centric opinionating bloviators like Lindon Dodd and John Gilkey. As for me, I'll continue to try to offer alternatives to the absence of creative thought so sadly lacking in my aging white male brethren. 

What It Would Take to Make Paris a ‘15-Minute City’ (CityLab):

So close, yet so far: Imagine a city where all your essentials are just a short walk or bike ride from your doorstep: the doctor, your local boulangerie, even your office job. That’s the vision behind a 15-minute city, which is at the center of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s re-election bid. The plan calls for creating a more thoroughly integrated urban fabric, where stores mix with homes, bars with health centers, and schools with office buildings.

It's a bold plan that counters the planning orthodoxy of separating residential areas from retail, manufacturing, and office districts, and would require reversing car-centric, suburban-style zoning, writes Feargus O'Sullivan. But Paris isn't the first city to explore the concept. Cities from Barcelona to Portland, Oregon, are taking steps to curb car dependency and boost hyper-local development. The question is: Can a city like Paris expand neighborhood amenities without leaving people behind?

Glasser don't care: "As a general rule of thumb, it’s not a good idea to encourage bicycling on sidewalks."

Yesterday we were walking westbound on an almost deserted Market Street, when Diana asked me why a grown man and a woman on bicycles were approaching us, riding on the sidewalk.

"Because they're fucking idiots," I said, "and because the city allows them to be fucking idiots."

But then they saw us, moved to unoccupied parking spaces on Market, and commenced riding against traffic.

Of course, I was being flippant up to a point. Granted, they shouldn't be on the sidewalk, and while ignorance is part of it, the bigger reason is an understandable discomfort (read: fear) of riding on the street alongside the cars, when neither the drivers of these cars NOR CITY HALL itself cares to acknowledge them, to calm traffic, or do anything useful to make their passage safer.

That's why when a useful dupe like Louisville's Chris Glasser crows about Jeff Gahan's excellence in street grid reform, he's actually looking at a Potemkin facade erected by congenital liars, and not the real state of affairs experienced by people who actually live here.

Speck's unfulfilled plan: Intellectually lazy carpetbagging shortcuts from clueless Louisvillians don't make New Albany's streets any safer.

Meanwhile, enjoy this digression.

BICYCLING ON SIDEWALKS (The Cornell University Bicycle and Pedestrian Web Site)

There is momentum throughout the country to make our communities more walking and bicycling-friendly, thereby making them more livable. In trying to accomplish this goal, citizens are challenged by limited physical space, high volumes of vehicular traffic, and overall congestion. The question of whether to permit bicycling on sidewalks is often discussed in the planning process.

As a general rule of thumb, it’s not a good idea to encourage bicycling on sidewalks ...

Speck's unfulfilled plan: Intellectually lazy carpetbagging shortcuts from clueless Louisvillians don't make New Albany's streets any safer.

On Wednesday in LEO Dead to Me Weekly, there was an extended hymn of praise for New Albany's Jeff Speck-inspired street grid reversion program, as written by the sort of useful dupe who formerly went to the USSR and asked Stalin's groveling, terrified minions what they thought about their dear leader's unparalleled success.

Care to guess what they said?

Of course, the article's befuddled author Chris Glasser is immune to criticism from those who actually live here as to the effectiveness of these epochal street grid reforms -- which in the end, weren't. Street direction did change, but the virtually all the remainder of the supportive mechanisms proposed by Speck were stripped away and tossed into HWC's rancid dumpster, as we've noted in this space time and again.

(Ironically, as with Republicans in the recent impeachment process, most of New Albany's senior Democrats will acknowledge privately that the truth about the post-Speck street grid differs from what they parrot aloud on a daily basis.)

Glasser's real aim was to criticize Louisville's sloth pertaining to these matters. That's fine; Greg Fischer is enduringly awful, but please, don't misrepresent our reality to further your propaganda. I'll repeat the offer I made to Glasser on Twitter:

Any time you want to come to NA, go for a walk, and get schooled about objective reality, I'm happy to guide you. You know very little about what actually happened here; it's like the American socialists who went to the USSR during Stalinism and came back glowing about paradise.

Jeff Gillenwater replied to Glasser with his characteristic command of actual facts, and the article's author devoted five or so minutes to defending his woefully gullible thesis before slinking back to Louisville to plot future intellectual carpetbagging.

This is a fantasyland recitation worthy of the Trump administration.

As is too often the case, a self-styled advocate/expert has little to no idea of what he’s talking about, no actual evidence to provide, and dismisses fact-based disagreement as the work of Internet cranks. Even his opening salvo that projects like New Albany’s are virtually unseen elsewhere is obviously false. As many of us spent a decade or more pointing out before Speck was even involved, reversions to two-way streets have been common for a long time. New Albany is just one on a long list and not a particularly good example. The only thing in the implemented plan that’s all that similar to the Speck plan is the two-way reversion itself. With as common as that has been around the country (not to mention lots of two-way, complete street advocacy in New Albany before Speck), specifically attributing two-ways to “the Speck plan” would be like attributing ice cream to Graeter’s.

Unlike the author, I have been providing a link to the actual plan the Speck design group created for the project. Anyone interested can see for themselves that the HWC plan that was actually implemented bears very, very little resemblance.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/cityofn.../NAReport.compressed1.pdf

Meanwhile Glasser, unable to connive a handy way to fit the wholesale discarding of Speck's bicycling plans into his convenient, fawning narrative -- has career bureaucrat and sophistry mangler John Rosenbarger ever been showered with as much adulation for doing little or nothing? -- Glasser merely glossed over bicycling safety as a necessary compromise.

Unalloyed bullshit, and Bluegill called Glasser's mealy-mouthed bluff.

An important point here. Because a majority of the Speck plan was cut, streets are still dangerous for people on foot or bike, more so in some places. It’s so “compromised” that very few benefits have happened. If this is what success is, why would anyone spend millions on it?

In New Albany, we have scattered bike lanes to nowhere - they just randomly begin and end - in areas where high volume, high speed automobile traffic makes them dangerous. Those lanes are hardly used, reiterating the idea they’re a waste.

The article suggests that Speck-proposed bike lanes were altered from protected to just painted. I’ve asked where all those lanes are. No answer, of course, because they don’t exist. It’s unpopular, but I persist in thinking facts matter.

We already had the fights, spent all the $$ without a good example to show for it. Re-doing what was just done isn’t likely. In some ways, we’re further from getting it right than we were. If everyone in L-Ville does go for similar “compromise”, we’ll be even further behind.

As for Speck, he's still talking from both sides of his mouth, which is unfortunate. Maybe his contract requires him to keep "selling" HWC's shambles. It saddens me tremendously, but there it is.

Of course the flunktionaries on the prom planning committee applauded on cue, safe from the horrible burden of comprehension. That's too bad. It's really not that hard to learn.

You merely must want to learn.

Pedestrians and bicyclists in Amsterdam -- and Deaf Gahan's Nawbany.

On Monday I was walking down the sidewalk on the south side of Market when I saw a bicyclist riding down the sidewalk toward me. At this time of the morning there were no cars whatever on Market, and yet there she was, so I politely asked if she would stop for just a moment and entertain a question or three in the interest of science, and she was amenable.

From a former to a current bicycle rider, do you always ride on the sidewalk?

"Yes, almost always," she said.

But shouldn't bikes be on the street?

"It isn't safe out there -- there's no bike lane."

There's a bike lane on Spring Street.

"Sort of. The traffic still moves too fast, and anyway the bike lane ends and I'm back on the sidewalk again."

What do you think of sharrows?

"You used to ride a bike? Then you know sharrows aren't safe."

---

I thanked her and kept walking, confident that this brief conversation of two or three minutes was two or three minutes linger than any chat ever held between Jeff Gahan's inept minions, his corrupt contractors and a real human being on an actual bicycle.

By the way, there are problems in Amsterdam, too.

Can Amsterdam’s Cyclists and Pedestrians Learn to Get Along? by Sophie Knight (CityLab)

As Amsterdammers jostle for space, the city government is trying to ease conflicts between those on bikes and on foot.

Urbanists around the world swoon over Amsterdam’s cycling culture: residents trundling around cobbled streets with a child balanced on their handlebars or a friend on the back, everyone blissfully free from the road rage that infects car-heavy cities such as London and New York. What’s not to like?

Well, a few things, if you’re a pedestrian. An oncoming cyclist may barrel through a red light or crosswalk or suddenly swerve onto the sidewalk. Cyclists in Amsterdam often park their bikes haphazardly, cluttering street corners and blocking the passage of strollers, wheelchairs, and suitcase-bearing tourists.

And woe betide those who accidentally step onto a bike path. “This is Amsterdam!” is one of the kinder reactions.

“Cyclists are even more antisocial than drivers,” complains Jennifer Brouwer, 37, who is registered blind and who moved to the city’s quieter outskirts from its busy West district because she was tired of conflicts with cyclists. “They’re more likely to think, ‘Oh, I can get away with that,’ like cutting people up, cycling a hair’s breadth away from you… There is just no enforcement.”

Efforts to educate cyclists or tame two-wheelers are met with opprobrium in anti-authoritarian Amsterdam, according to “street coaches” hired by the city to do so. Nevertheless, the local government is trying to balance the needs of cyclists and pedestrians. Aware of pressure on public space as the city’s population swells, the municipality said in 2017 it would prioritize both groups, not just cyclists, in its five-year Bicycle Plan starting that year ...

Jeff Gahan's persistent transportation hypocrisy: Electric cars win, bicyclists lose.

If you prefer alternatives to cars, like a bicycle, then get ready to risk your life because all Jeff Gahan can do is laugh and give you another meaningless sharrow.

⚡️New Albany’s first electric car charging station -providing the power to choose cleaner energy.⚡️ Proud to provide options to our neighbors that prefer alternative energy sources.

Never forget that Jeff Speck showed Gahan exactly how New Albany might leap to the front of regional leadership when it comes to bicycling and a bicycle-friendly grid. But Gahan the suburbanite C-minus student can see only cars -- and he cannot see how two-wheeled alternatives would provide him with the same campaign finance pull as car-centric street designers.

Can you even begin to imagine the mayor on a bicycle on a street with a succession of sharrows?

I can't. Neither can he, which is why street grid stupidity like ours keeps happening.

Some Bike Infrastructure Is Worse Than None at All, by Eric Jaffe (CityLab)

It’s time to put the sharrow to rest.

Denver gave rise to the sharrow in the early 1990s, and now two researchers there offer a compelling case to put the lowly form of bike infrastructure to rest.

You’ve seen a sharrow painted on city streets: it’s that image of a cyclist below two arrows in the middle of a lane that—you guessed it—is meant to be shared by bikes and cars. The Federal Highway Administration gave sharrows its official blessing in 2009, and the symbol is now ubiquitous across urban America. It’s also arguably the least-loved nod to cycling, a low-cost way for cities to say they’re doing something about safety and street design without really doing much at all ...

Not me, but still: "Meet the blogger powering a cycle revolution."

During the approximate 15-year period of 1998 through 2012, I was an avid bicyclist. The late Kevin Richards got me back into it (I hadn't biked since high school) and it was a blast.

Regional forays led to overseas excursions. Those trips to Europe we took were the best ever. Back home I tried hard to organize my life such that I could bike or walk to work.

Then, as the Bank Street Brewhouse expansion devolved into trench warfare, I had less time for my bicycle. There was burnout involved, too. I took up walking in 2013 and haven't been on a bike in at least three years.

As much as I rode there for a while, a part of me always resisted the competitive aspect of bicycling, which Kevin very much embraced. For instance, I always used middle-of-the-road hybrid tires, and as I grew more confident I tended to avoid the more egregious of the showy costumes whenever possible.

One time I went out with a group of bicycling club enthusiasts for a ride in Harrison County, and what I remember about it was their conversation for the better part of two hours about all the money they were spending on bigger and better equipment.

It was my last group ride. Me? Just a locally-oriented beercyclist, thanks.

It wasn't just a weekend thing for me. It was everyday. In 2010 my mileage log showed more than 3,000 miles, but no single trip exceeded 30. I enjoyed commuting by bike when possible, and saw it as an essential part of urban life even in a place like New Albany where the doltish ruling elites never once grasped the meaning of it (and still don't).

Because any city official who believes a sharrow symbol can be drawn on Vincennes Street and this somehow encourages the use of bicycles is a complete moron and hardly worth my precious time to insult him/them. 

This article goes beyond my own ruminations, and yet there's a big element of it to which I can well relate. The whole point of a bicycle is democratic. It's a freedom kind of thing. It's well past time for me to get back in the saddle, albeit it with modest and sustainable aims. Abysmal time-servers in government and oblivious drivers behind steering wheels both aside, bikes are a tool in the urban arsenal.

I need to reclaim mine.

Meet the blogger powering a cycle revolution, by Robyn Wilder (The Guardian)

Dump the Lycra and competitive attitude. Cycling is open to all. Activist Jools Walker reveals why life is better by bike – and why she’s fighting to make it more socially inclusive

I’m sitting in the dark eating biscuits with Jools Walker while she tells me about elitism in cycling. It’s not quite what I was expecting from an interview with an icon in the cycling community, but the rain has forced us inside. Five minutes ago Walker was gliding through the park on her Pashley Princess against a curtain of falling blossom. Now the rain is lashing the windows as we sit on her sofa, with the rain-spotted bicycle propped against an armchair, looking slightly resentful.

“The way cycling is portrayed sometimes…” Walker tells me, reaching for another biscuit from the super-sized tin her mother has supplied. “It can feel like you have to have the latest gear or the latest bike, or whatever, to take part. The other day I heard someone refer to it as ‘the new golf’. No offence to any golfers, of course,” she adds. “But cycling doesn’t have to be this hyped, expensive, middle-class, aspirational thing. There’s the Lycra that you’re supposed to squeeze yourself into, the diet regimes to make you the fittest and the best, and get thighs the size of a lamb. It’s just like… No! That isn’t it. It’s part of the narrative, but it’s not the whole story.”

Walker, it should be noted, does not have thighs the size of a lamb. Sure, she cuts a glamorous figure in her paper-bag trousers and statement necklace – and her blog, VéloCityGirl, was originally devoted to cycling and fashion. However, it’s her candid, humorous takes on mental health, the female cycling experience and the industry challenges for women of colour that have made her such a prominent presence.

Now she’s written a funny, vibrant book, Back in the Frame: How To Get Back on Your Bike, Whatever Life Throws at You, which details how cycling has helped (and hindered) her own wellbeing – in particular her diagnosis of depression, and the stroke she suffered in her 30s. It’s also an instructional manual for any budding female cyclists who, like her, aren’t seeing anyone in the industry they relate to – whether that’s other women, women of colour, or just the fact that they’re 28 and might feel they’re past it ...

Lords of the Sharrow? This blog's editors discuss cycling opportunities in Jeffersonville as compared with New Albany.

Bluegill posted a characteristically insightful thought about cycling.

Jeff: I listen to Jeffersonville’s mayor touting increased cycling opportunities there. Then I look out the window here in New Albany where preexisting infrastructure is actually better suited to cycling opportunities but our mayor and planners have worked to specifically remove bicycles from nearly every plan and space. That’s a big difference, one for which New Albany will pay for a long time if not corrected.

I replied.

Roger: And of course we both recall our purportedly (is puppet-edly a word?) council rep Greg Phipps stating aloud that Jeff Speck’s views on the matter of bicycling were just crazily out of sync with mainstream New Albany (read: alien to Gahanism) and merited adjustment (read: outright removal). But there they are, all the Phipps signs in the yards of “progressives,” who’ll praise Jeffersonville’s Republican Mayor for bicycling initiatives even as they vote for Phipps and Gahan, otherwise known as Lords of the Sharrow. #IronyFreeNawbany

Jeff: Yes, on all accounts.

Roger: That's what I thought, although occasionally we all need a bit of verification to make sure we haven't gone insane ...

Jeff: “Well, sure, I prefer the policies of so-and-so, but this time I’m voting for the one in the blue shirt, because I really like blue shirts, too.”

Roger:

Jeff: LOL. Three Republicans and a dentist’s office.

---

Democratic mayoral candidate David White understands that change begins with a whole lotta scrubbing, and NA Confidential advocates just such a deep civic cleansing. 

After eight years on the job, Mayor Jeff Gahan's list of stunning "achievements" is long, indeed: tax increases, budgetary hide 'n' seek, self-deification, daily hypocrisy, public housing takeover, non-transparency, pay-to-play for no-bid contracts, bullying city residents and bullying city employees. Eight years is enough. It's time to drain Gahan's swamp, flush his ruling clique and take this city back from Gahan's Indy-based special interest donors. 

NA Confidential supports David White for Mayor in the Democratic Party primary, with voting now through May 7.