Back in June I wrote the following about the closing of the bike shop, CounterBalance, on Roy, in lower Queen Anne:

More than one million gallons of oil a day are spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and yet we keep driving and driving. We should be riding and riding. Places like CounterBalance should be opening shops rather than closing them down.

My friend Vinny, a stickler, argued that he'd seen a study on Publicola ("Seattle's News Elixir") showing walking and biking rates were up, not down, both nationally and in Seattle; then he sent me a link to the study. I glanced at it, poo-pooed it. Walking was certainly up, bicycling just a tidge. And it didn't explain CounterBalance. "What about CounterBalance?" I asked. "Why did that close?" Vinny had no answer.

Now I do. I ran into someone who used to work at the CounterBalance on Roy and he told me the shop had been financially solvent. There had, in fact, been two shops, one on Roy and one in University Village close to the Burke-Gilman trail, as well as two owners. The original owner opened the shop on Roy. And when the original owner decided to call it quits and move (back?) to New Zealand, the second owner closed the shop on Roy. It was, according to this guy, a wholly unnecessary move.

In the end, though, that's a double shame to me. It's a shame someone closed a bike shop that apparently didn't need closing. And it's a shame, given the general unhealthiness of 1) Americans, 2) the environment, and 3) our dependence on foreign oil, that more people don't walk and bike. A tidge ain't gonna do it, people.

I think my friend Brenda, a competitive cyclist, told me about it first, and last week I saw it with my own eyes: the CounterBalance on Roy in lower Queen Anne is no more.

I've been going there since I moved back to Seattle in Sept. 2007. I work just two blocks away, so whenever I had a biking problem—flat tire, shitty brakes, odd sound, seasonal tune-up—there it was. Easy peasy. Guys were cool, work was fast. I'd bought my bike in August 2000 and ride every day, in all kinds of weather, from 5 degrees to 103, so problems always cropped up. It was the guys at CounterBalance, in fact, who told me last February that the frame on my bike had cracked. Gregg's confirmed it. I wound up buying a whole new bike. A new bike needs less work, of course, so I hadn't been back. First my bike goes, then the CounterBalance on Roy.

Shame. More than one million gallons of oil a day are spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and yet we keep driving and driving. We should be riding and riding. Places like CounterBalance should be opening shops rather than closing them down.

Go outside

While doing research for my day job, which just had this nice (or, to be precise, extremely factual) write-up in The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, I came across this article in Ismthus, the alt-weekly of Madison, Wisconsin.

It seems that recently a Madison cyclist got “doored” (biking along, car door opens, splat), went to the hospital with multiple contusions and a fractured vertebra, and was then given a $10 ticket for violating — to quote the article — “a little-known state law that requires bicyclists passing a parked or standing vehicle to allow ‘a minimum of three feet’ between themselves and the car.”

Nice.

Of course, allow the minimum three feet and you’re in the entire lane and you’ll hear it from the cars behind you. I just got into a rather acidic back-and-forth with an acquaintance who, responding to my earlier post about cyclists vs. motorists, made this exact point. He said he was sick of cyclists taking up lanes and slowing traffic. I said traffic slows traffic: the reason why cars go slowly, most of the time, is because there are too many cars. I also said that, in downtown Seattle anyway, cars slow me up. It’s not even close. I zip, they clog. Then he made the argument — so odd for a lawyer — that cars own the road and cyclists should just bike on the sidewalk where they belong. Nice. And illegal.

But the article and the back-and-forth do clarify the larger issue. Sidewalks are built for pedestrians. Roads are built for cars. Nothing is built for cyclists. Occasionally you get the bike lane, which, as I’ve said, is yours until someone bigger wants it, and it often just ends after a few blocks. Complain, and you’re made to feel like Oliver Twist: “MORE? You want MORE? That painted bike lane that ran two blocks ain’t good enough for the likes a’ you, is it? You wif your fancy ways.”

The solution, for me, lies in creating more roads specifically for bikes, and I would do it on existing roads, possibly with a concrete barrier between bikes and cars. Let’s face it: The safer you make it, the more people will use it. The more they use it, the fitter they’ll be, and the less oil they’ll burn, and the less pollution they’ll create. All of which are good things. The other side? Gas, pollution, fat. Bad things.

It’s not even an argument. You burn fat (and become stronger) or burn gas (and make the country weaker).

Let’s get on this. Because this shit in Madison? That’s gotta stop.

One thing you can say about Jan Hoffman’s nearly 2000-word piece in the Sunday New York Times on the growing battle between motorists and cyclists: It probably won’t lessen any tensions.

I’ve been biking to work for 15 years now and couldn’t find myself in it at all. Talk about reporting. Or as Hoffman might write: Talk about reporting!

This is the money quote for me. It comes about halfway through the article and lit me up:

There’s a whiff of class warfare in the simmering hostility, too. During morning rush, the teeth-gritting of drivers is almost audible, as superbly fit cyclists, wearing Sharpie-toned spandex and riding $3,000 bikes, cockily dart through the swampy, stolid traffic to offices with bike racks and showers.

So cyclists are the rich ones now? Where’s the stats to back that one up? But you gotta love the flowery language. We cockily dart? Through swampy stolid? In Sharpie-toned? On our $3,000? Pity the poor souls who can only afford SUVs.

The next graph, in true journalistic fashion, gives us “the opposite end of the class spectrum”: Migrant workers cycling in pre-dawn hours without headlights. So both extremes are represented. Another job well done.

I’m among the unrepresented between these two groups: commuting on my $350 bike, without the spandex and no waiting shower. But there is a bike rack in a nearby garage. I’m living large. No wonder I’m hated.

This hatred for cyclists is the big unanswered (possibly unaddressed) question of the article. Most of the anti-motorist anecdotes end with cyclists bloodied or dead, while most of the anti-cycling anecdotes end with pedestrians and motorists “startled” or with a “pounding heart.” Yet motorists are the ones who are white-hot with anger? What’s up with that? Maybe this discrepancy should’ve been pointed out. Maybe further investigation was needed instead of, you know, flowery language. But who am I to say? I’m not a professional journalist.

How about this graph on biking irresponsibility?:

A pandemic of obliviousness — earbuds, texting — further ramps up the tension. Recently, Scott Diamond, ride coordinator for the Morris Area Freewheelers, a New Jersey cycling club, saw what he called a trifecta of irresponsible cycling: “A guy riding his bike without a helmet, talking on his cellphone, with his kid in the bike attachment behind him.”

Oddly, for a he said/she said article, there’s no correlating graph on the distractions for motorists: radios, CDs, DVDs; coffee, make-up, kids. Those texting cyclists — what percentage are we talking about? As opposed to, say, cellphone-talking drivers? I don’t want to make excuses for an idiot who bikes without a helmet and with a cellphone, but that trifecta of irresponsible cycling? That’s a normal driver.

Listen, there are assholes everywhere, and I’m often one of them (both on a bike and in a car), but everyone knows the entire system is set up for cars. Bike paths are rare, and even when you get one it’s like the weakest kid’s lunch money: Yours until someone bigger wants it. And someone bigger always wants it.

I have my own anecdote to add to Hoffman’s bunch, and it’s not about the number of drivers who have yelled at me over the years — sometimes with reason, most of the time insanely out of nowhere — and it’s not about the overwhelming obtuseness of most drivers (the powerful can afford to be stupid), and I won’t even bring up the whole gas/oil thing.

Here it is: Over the last three years, about a dozen people have asked me, almost shyly, about cycling to work, and I tell them it’s fun and easy and I feel better afterwards. I tell them they should do it. And every one has backed off. They think it’s too dangerous. They’re too worried about being hit by a car.

Now does anyone know one person who has quit driving because they’re worried about being hit by a bicycle?

There is no he said/she said here. There is just “startled” vs. “dead.”