St. Paul Motorists Want Free Parking on Grand Avenue, and Free Ice Cream

Grand Avenue Business Association, known as "GABA", is upset over a proposal to install 525 parking meters along St. Paul, Minnesota's Grand Avenue.  Motorists are also upset with the proposal to take away their free ice cream, a treat they have enjoyed at no expense to people who arrive on Grand Avenue by car.

Motorists pay for vehicles, gas, tax, insurance, part of the roads, the services & products from Grand Avenue businesses, but why should they have to pay to park our car, or enjoy ice cream?
image found here.

A Grand Avenue Business Association survey found that 88 percent of businesses on the street are opposed to having to pay for their own ice cream.  Gary Stumpfield, longtime community whiner, said, "People have had free ice cream here ever since I can remember, so why should they ever have to pay for it?  We're angry, and we want ice cream, so give us our damn ice cream!"

 "We're an angry whiny crowd of people who want free stuff.  Look at us in the eyes when you're telling us we can't have free ice cream, you monsters!"
image found here

The plan, according to anecdotal evidence from news outlets, is opposed by ~many~ businesses and residents who say that meters & paying for ice cream will discourage shoppers and just push the demand for free ice cream into other surrounding areas.  People who get to Grand Avenue by taking public transportation, biking, or walking said it's not fair that motorists get free ice cream in the first place, while no one else does. "Let them pay for the wear & tear, and public safety upgrades for the street, as well as their own damn ice-cream.  Why do they think they're so special?"

They're just going to go to one of those other magical places where there's free ice cream for motorists.
image found here.  

Mayor Coleman announced the pay for parking & ice cream plan would draw in an estimated $800,000 for the city’s general fund.  “Making motorists pay for their parking, and sweet delicious treats is the fiscally responsible thing to do.” Kristin Beckmann said, “Minneapolis has 7,500 metered spaces and they all pay for their ice cream.  You do not see businesses going out of business because of lack of free ice cream.”  Beckmann spoke at a rally held Sunday by GABA to protest the plan with many adult children booing and throwing themselves on the ground in tantrums.  When asked why they thought they should continue to get free parking and ice-cream, one man-child replied, "because I'll hold my breath forever if you don't" and proceeded to turn purple.

"Why are you being so meeaaannn?!?"
image found here.

Pedestrian's Guide to Getting Along With Vehicles - Part II

Has this ever happened to you?  You're foolishly using your legs like a sucker, walking down a sidewalk and you find yourself basking in the glory of a car parked on the sidewalk?  Well fear not, pathetic pedestrian.  Here are a few simple tips that can help in these situations.

How fortunate were you to be reminded about your foolish decision to walk on a sidewalk?!
image found here, courtesy of Patrick Traughber

Step 1: Don't get angry.  While a metallic marvel resting on a sidewalk might not be your cup of tea, it's a very low level offense in the eyes of the law.   Retaliation in any form, like causing permanent damage to the car, could be considered a felony.  Don't even think about it!  Come to think of it, you should write an apology note just for contemplating such a thing, you monster.

A nice little note will go a long way to mending the rift you caused.

Step 2: When you're done writing a pleasant, self-effacing note, delicately post it on the car.  Throw in a few bucks as well for their troubles!  After that, simply walk around that steel beauty on the street, ever so slightly bowing your head in reverence and shame.

 

You are, quite simply, the worst.
image found here

Step 3: Once you passed your combustible, metal superior, find the nearest police station and turn yourself in for jaywalking.  You should be ashamed of yourself.

Walk over to the nearest SFPD station, like the Park(ing) Station Police Department and turn yourself in for being a filthy jaywalker.
image found here.

Having this kind of humility when it comes to traversing our city streets will go a long way to making  our cities better for motorists everyone.

Mayor Lee Urges Bikers to Take Biking More Seriously Than he Does

Mayor Lee and the SFPD on little toys not meant to be considered legitimate forms of transportation.
Photo: Aaron Bialick

Mayor Lee has been throwing a bone to the bike weirdos for some time now, with a smattering of disjointed bike infrastructure here and there and giving words of consolation whenever a biker or pedestrian meets their untimely end.  He even bikes every year in front of cameras!  He's now asking bikers to do what he cannot, take biking more seriously, mainly in the name of parking, parking, parking, and then safety.  The mayor made a brief announcement regarding his recent veto threat of the Idaho Yield Law, where bikers rolling through stop signs with their nimble, lightweight vehicles, would be deemed less important than motorists speeding, running red lights, or violating pedestrian's right-of-way.

The mayor then urged bikers to take biking far more serious than he ever has.

Mayor Lee's private "Safety Wagon" Perfect for navigating approximately 50 square miles of city.
image found here.

Biking is a priority (second, or third to car storage)  

"Biking has its place, and that's usually next to car storage.  If we can wedge in a bike lane between some parked cars, we'll probably do it, or not.  Also, parking is so important that I removed "nickle and diming" motorists on Sunday, because there's nothing worse than having to pay to park your car on a Sunday. You can now drive and circle around for parking to your heart's content!  Don't worry, Muni and Bay Area Bike Share users, your trips still cost the same on Sundays!  I'm all for 'balanced streets' where the safety of a bike lane is met with the parking of my optometrist."

Cars can and will always be  found on virtually every road in all of San Francisco, even in our urban parks, like Golden Gate Park!  Market Street will always have tons of cars, but they're kind of diverted now. Sorry about that, motorists!  You got most of what you wanted with Polk Street though! *wink *wink"

Laws apply to ALL vehicles.

"I mean, not that many of the traffic laws are really upheld that much anyway, but they apply equally to every vehicle.  Even if it's a 3000 pound truck or a seven pound carbon frame with a 150 pounds resting on it.  It's exactly the same in the eyes of our traffic laws.  Listen to our officers when they say that you should make a complete stop, or put your foot down, or not put your foot down, or maybe you can roll through?  Eh, semantics. We care about you bikers enough by lumping you all into the same bucket for safety or whatever.  I won't stop another great use of SFPD resources and time to start another bike crackdown.  I didn't before and I will didn't again.  Oh and by the way, "Focus on Five" really isn't much a demand.  If the SFPD does it that's fine, if not, well we kind of tried."

Do these look the same?  Well to the law it does!  It's for your own good probably.

As Mayor Lee left he told bikers to "take those toys of yours seriously" and reiterated his stance that he is "not willing to trade away safety for convenience.”  Lee then got into his private chauffeured car, and drove off."  

Bikers May Finally Get Their Ultimate Wish - A License to Murder Everyone

Whiney, entitled, bikers have a laundry list of things they want.  If it's not something like a 3 foot buffer law to save their lives from cars, it's an unbroken network of bike lanes in the city.  More recently, after the SFPD Park Station ~probably~ saved dozens of lives in a series of bike crackdowns, bikers were up in arms.  The bikers made outlandish claims that somehow cracking down on their 20 pound bikes, going at relatively slow speeds, shouldn't be on the SFPD's radar and that it accomplished nothing in the way of public safety.

The six Supervisors who want to quench biker's thirst for blood.

Tomorrow the Board of Supervisors is set to vote on an ordinance that "urges the SFPD to let bicycle riders safely treat stop signs as yield signs".  Supervisor Avalos introduced the legislation.  He stated, "In essence, it would legitimize the safe, practical way that people on bikes normally treat stop signs, which has been legal in Idaho for 32 years."  In other words, bikers would get their deep-seated wish to have a LICENSE TO KILL!

Bikers all over the city were thrilled at this news.  Veronica, biking with her child Angie, was overjoyed.  She said, "It's wonderful that I can spend some quality time with my daughter, rampaging through the city with absolutely no regard for anyone's well-being or safety, which is really what all us bikers wanted all along.  Veronica and her little psychopath in training were heading down to the Zoo to see the baby penguins, and "mow down as many people as humanly possible."  

Veronica & her child Angie, enjoying a leisurely Sunday ride & TRAIL OF TERROR.
image found here.

Mike Haven's response to the news was one of elation and then quickly followed with a maniacal laugh.  "It's going to be a great day once this ordinance passes and we can finally rule the roads in terror!"  Mike told us he was ready to tear around in his 7 pound carbon framed "murder machine" taking out pedestrians left and right, with no legal or moral compass to hold him back anymore.

Places like Paris, which have not only allowed bikers to skirt through stop signs, but also red lights, is most likely a hellish nightmare of death and destruction.

Whats left of Paris, since bikers can flagrently blow through red lights and stop signs, probably.
image found here  

SF Carnicle Reports 19,000 Bicyclist Inflicted Deaths; City Panics & Internet Explodes

A San Francisco Carnicle article sent shock-waves across the Internet, and brought along a barrage of outrage from the SF community, all the way to City Hall.  The news week started off like most, until one after another, articles depicting horrendous bike destruction swept across the Bay Area.  At least a dozen bike inflicted injuries were reported in less than one week.  They included:

Aug 22: The San Francisco Police Department is seeking witnesses to a Mission Street hit-and-run that critically injured a 24-year-old woman.  The biker kept going north on Mission following the collision, an SFPD spokesperson says. Neither the biker nor the bike have been identified or found as of Monday morning.

Aug 24: A pedestrian was critically injured from a hit-and-run biker in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood Saturday night.

Aug 26: An elderly man was hit Tuesday morning by a speeding biker and then run over as the biker reportedly tried to flee before being stopped by a crowd of onlookers on 6th Street, according to witnesses.  That same day a San Francisco motorcycle police officer was struck by a silver bike on his way to help out the previous accident about two blocks away.  The two bike induced collisions happened within 10 minutes of each other.

Aug 27: A fire started Santa Clara as investigators found that a bike struck the gas line on the north side of the strip mall and fled the scene.

Just one of many tragedies reported, caused by reckless bikers in one week.
image found here. 

The Carnicle discovered this was just the tip of the iceberg.  A report from the National Safety Council reported that nearly 19,000 people were killed as a result of bicycle related crashes between January and June of 2015, nearly 100 deaths caused by bikers each day.  In addition to the astronomical amount of biker inflicted deaths, there were nearly 2.3 million “serious injuries."  The estimated costs of these bike related crashes, including medical expenses, wage and productivity losses and property damage, topped $152 billion.  California alone had a share of at least 700 pedestrians losing their lives due to bicyclists in 2014.

The Internet exploded over this new, "horrendous", news.

"I always knew those ENTITLED bikers with those killing machines would eventually lead to this.  It's high time we crack down and ban bikes from the road completely"

"This is what you get when you start devoting space to bicycles.  Time to rethink if we really want these destructive vehicles on our roads anymore."

"If these casulaties aren't a wake-up call, then I don't know what is.  How can we as a society, in good conscience, let these reckless cyclists continue their murderous rampage through our city?  We have vulnerable children and elderly that need protection.  One life is one too many."

Thousands of citizens not willing to wait for the government to stop the "bike pandemic that's sweeping the nation"
image found here

Several groups of people took it upon themselves to rip out bike bike racks and paint over the few bike sharrows scattered across the city.  Hundreds flocked outside the San Francisco Bike Coalition asking them disband completely or they would burn down the building "for the good of humanity."

When Mayor Lee heard of the news, he issued an executive order to halt construction of the two bike lanes in the city, and tear up the dozen that already exist.  In an emergency town hall, Lee spoke to hundreds of panicked citizens, "We can't sit idly by when dozen's of people will lose their lives to reckless biking each year.  We must take bold, drastic steps to curb this threat to public safety immediately."  Lee also demanded that the SFPD devote as much time and resources as possible to prevent the "tragic and senseless consequences of reckless bike behavior."

"The death and destruction caused by bikes will not be tolerated, even if it takes putting every one of those godforsaken, bloodthirsty bikers behind bars."
image found here

Hatred and anger for bikers reverberated throughout the city, until the following week, when the Carnicle issued a retraction on the last page of their paper:

"We apologize for last week's error.  We inadvertently replaced "motor vehicle" with "bicycle" in last week's stories.  The high injury and death count was nothing more than typical vehicle "accidents".  We deeply regret the alarm and distress we may have caused by this error.  We repeat, there is no epidemic and there is no cause for alarm."

As the news slowly spread through the Internet, panic and worry subsided.  Mayor Lee, in a statement, said "we can all breath a collective sigh of relief knowing that our reasons for panicking were unmerited."  San Francisco residents rejoiced and left their houses again, flush with the knowledge their city was exactly how it should be.  The SFPD said they would continue to crack down on bicyclists "just in case".

"We'll put this back in, someday"
image found here.

Back To School: City Aims to Clear Conscience on Children's Street Safety

It's that time of year when parents send their children back to school and pray their kids can traverse the car dominated streets they've bestowed on them, unscathed.  Fortunately, the city has come up with some things to make themselves feel better, since speed limits, crosswalks, lights/signs and actually witnessing children on the streets just doesn't cut it.

And while motor vehicle crashes remains the leading cause of death among young children in the country, and driver distraction is at an all time high, the city will remain committed to safetyesque things while allowing unfettered street access to motorists.  The city police also threw out a bone, saying they will "be writing tickets to try and prevent disaster" a statement which is sure to comfort parents who have witnessed the driving habits of San Francisco motorists every day.

San Francisco "steps up" enforcement, because seeing vulnerable children on the street isn't enough to stop motorists from speeding, ignoring crosswalks and stop signs.
Image found here.

In addition to all the existing laws in place that have been around since the inception of the motorized vehicle, there will be at least 193 crossing guards staffing 187 corners at 95 schools citywide. Though there's little data on whether or not crossing guards do much to save the lives of our most vulnerable people on the streets, the tradition will continue.  One concerned resident said, "Whatever we can do to to make ourselves feel better that we're making a difference in the lives of children" and then sped off in her SUV while sending a "#SFsafetyfirst" tweet.

People with no actual power to enforce laws, stand by children with high-viz vest and stop signs in hopes of squeezing out some measure of humanity from motorists.
image found here.

Even Mayor Lee has gotten into pandering safety in the midst of car dominance, saying, "Drivers need to be more aware of traveling at safe and appropriate speeds, especially near schools where children learn and play,"  The Mayor plans on saying other nice fluffy things until statistics catch up and a life is lost, in which case he'll reiterate the same thing only in a much sadder tone.  In additional saying nice things, the city also plans on telling children how to maybe be safer by staying in "magical paint" and watching the light turn green and waiting 2-3 seconds for cars to pass, then weaving around cars in the crosswalks.

As cars zigzagged around one of the crossing guards, he said, "We're doing the best we can, and that's really all we can hope for.  I mean do you really expect people to drive reasonably knowing that our most precious resources are crossing the streets of San Francisco?  How ridiculous would that be?" as he chuckled to himself, with a visible tear in his right eye.

Signs like this will be all over SF to help people feel better about the city they created for their children.
image found here.

Lessons in Transit Shame from Smiley the Clown's "People Behaving Naughtily"

Doesn't matter if you're a texting pedestrian, biker rolling through a stop sign, or a person in a 2 ton pickup speeding through red lights.  Smiley Robinson and his clown van will find and SHAME YOU!
image found here and here 

The streets of San Francisco were rightly designed to move and store cars on every street, along with afterthought sidewalks and the smattering of bike lanes here and there.  Every day, at least 3 people are hit by cars while walking and pedestrians make up over 50% of all traffic fatalities, four times the national average.  San Francisco's data, as part of Vision Zero, have uncovered that most of the injury and death is allegedly caused by:

1. drivers speeding
2. running red lights 
3. running stop signs
4. violating pedestrians’ right-of-way in crosswalks
5. failing to yield to pedestrians while turning

But it certainly doesn't hurt to pepper in a little victim blaming now and then to give motorists some sense of relief that their behaviors are on par with that of bikers and pedestrians.  And that's why so many people love Smiley Robinson, a clown that drives around in van, recording stranger's naughty transit habits to give his TV viewers a "balanced" view of what accounts for all the death and injury on the roads.  Many of the offenders on Smiley's "People behaving Naughtily" show smile and say "you caught me being naughty, Smiley!" and laugh at their deadly behaviors to the chagrin of the viewers.

Naughty behavior is all around us, from bikers rolling through stop signs, jaywalkers, motorists impinging upon other's right of way, to cars blasting into each other at high velocities
images found here, here, here and here.

Smiley's program helps everyone build their own anecdata based conclusions on why people meet their doom on streets that weren't designed for non-motorized transit.  Motorists can feel like they are are often the true victims of pedestrians & biker's impatient and suicidal ways.

"Oh yeah I love Smiley, said one motorist.  We really get a kick out of that clown busting people on the streets doing stupid things.  Admittedly, I text while driving and never abide by the speed limit, but then I see that clown's show I think, 'look at all those distracted pedestrians and that biker on the sidewalk.  They're just as bad as me!'  I can sleep a little more soundly at night knowing that some of those people had it coming."  Smiley admittedly doesn't choose favorites and everyone can be an equal opportunity offender.

Smiley's recent month long attention to naughty bike behavior in San Francisco which he has chocked up to an angered "cycling community".  People have argued that bikers not abiding to laws designed for motorized vehicles has led to an insignificant fraction of the 4,735 pedestrian deaths and 66,000 reported pedestrian injuries and was undeserving of such attention.  That hasn't stopped Smiley's viewers from building anecdote fueled rage at these scofflaw bikers and threatening violence against them.  Although the clown has said this retaliation against bikers makes him sad (*cue slide-whistle*).

According to Vision Zero SF, 41 percent of all pedestrian related crashes take place in a crosswalk, and Smiley urges everyone to make sure they are in a crosswalk, because, well, that's the law.  The 1 in 4 patients at San Francisco General Hospital’s trauma center who are people hit by cars while walking can take comfort in the fact that they weren't naughtily breaking the law when they were struck by vehicles.

Smiley catches people texting and walking through car dominated streets.  Doesn't it just grind your gears you when you see this kind of naughty behavior.  They're just asking for trouble!
image found here 

Thanks to Smiley, we can all have a good heathy chuckle at our naughty behaviors, regardless of whether they could cause harm to ourselves or wipe out an entire family in the blink of an eye.   This clown's strict, unquestioning and religious adherence to traffic laws is certain to make our city streets safer for everyone.