When the hell was someone gonna tell me it’s “Biketober?”
It’s bad enough nobody told me that the Rev-X was back.
I particularly like how the news guy lets his personal biases slip in, and that he’s clearly incensed by all the riders who aren’t using helmets and lights and are therefore responsible for their own deaths.
I mean we all know the reason bike deaths are up is because of e-bikes:
Or am I?
Either way, I went to the DOT website to learn more about this whole “Biket Ober” thing, which sounds like a Jewish holiday:
You know, there’s nothing more annoying than people who remind you they’re taxpayers, but I’M A TAXPAYER, DAMN IT! And while most of my fellow taxpayers-who-gratuitously-remind-you-that-they’re-taxpayers are complaining about how they’re spending all our money on illegals or gender reassignment surgery for toddlers or teaching Critical Race Theory to pets or whatever, what I’d really like to know is how much money we’ve thrown away so far by giving away 300,000 freaking bicycle helmets. Regardless of what you may think of bike helmets, what kind of signal does that send? Does this sound like a city that’s confident in the safety of its its bicycling infrastructure? I’m sure I’m repeating myself, but that’s like a restaurant that hands out barf bags.
While I’m at it, I’d also like to question the “Delivery Worker Outreach”–nothing whatsoever against delivery workers, or reaching out to them, but should it really be part of Biket Ober? It seems like this needs to be a stand-alone thing, since “bicycle” delivery has evolved into something that no longer bears much resemblance to regular bicycling; in fact, many of delivery people aren’t even riding bicycles at all, they’re riding gas-powered motor scooters. So why not just give them their own month already? I like the sound of “Deliveryvember,” it rolls off the tongue like a delivery bike off the curb.
Of course, there was once a time when bicycle delivery conjured up images of urban outlaws on racing bikes carving through traffic:
Now it looks more like this:
And instead of wearing a chain around your waist and thumbing your nose at the corporate world you’re working for the venture capitalists and wrestling with your key fob:
But that’s not stopping people from paying homage to the romantic image of the now-extinct bicycle messenger:
And engaging in competition that has nothing to do with delivering anything, like pulling off really long skids:
[Like what does skidding have to do with delivering stuff? Is it what you do when you realize you just overshot the address?]
Or modeling their hairstyles:
Ironically, the image of the bike courier has looks nothing like “bicycle” delivery in 2024, but bike courier fashion and office fashion have totally converged to the point where they’re now indistinguishable, and if you see someone who looks like a bike courier today there’s a 99% chance they’re on their way to their job in an old warehouse district that’s been transformed into a tech hub:
[Outlaw office bro working on his TPS reports]
Then again, riding to work instead of for work doesn’t look like riding a bicycle anymore, either:
I guess this is what getting old feels like.