Today Has "Wednesday" Written All Over It.

Hey!

You know how I have a new book?

[REDACTED]

(You should always wear a helment while reading or else you could die.)

Of course you do, I won't shut up about it.  Well, in it I wrote some things about Portland which were quoted by The Oregonian, resulting in typical Portland-style hand-wringing:

[REDACTED]

I should stress that I love Portland.  At the same time, it's hard not to find Portland funny and want to needle it.  Certainly I'm not alone in this, which is why they have a whole TV show about it and everything. Plus, the context of the comments is my asking myself the question every American cyclist invariably asks himself at one point or another, which is: "Should I move to Portland?"  Naturally, the conclusion I draw is a highly subjective one, and while I analyze Portland in a deliberately exaggerated and provocative fashion, the above-quoted section is about how I arrive at it and why.

Anyway, one of the subjects I touch on is "diversity," by which I don't only mean ethnic diversity, but also diversity in attitudes, belief, income, architecture, volume and odor of the dog stools you'll encounter when strolling on the sidewalk, and so forth.  Now, I'm as white as they come, and the two friends I have pretty much look like me and act like me.  I'm also incredibly boring.  I keep old person hours, I eat the same thing every day, and any deviation from my routine generally causes me to break out in hives.  Nevertheless, I come from New York, and one of the things I realized in traveling is that even though I spend my entire life hiding in a cubby I also think I'd miss the knowledge that I'm surrounded by millions of other cubby-dwellers and that I'm just a grain of sand in the vibrant mandala that is this city. I'm not saying that's better, I'm just saying it's what I'm used to, so I find it comforting.  Portland, being a considerably smaller city, naturally feels different, and the facile way to express this difference is to say it's not "diverse"--which touches a nerve with people in Portland.

Really, what it all comes down to is the difference between city living vs. small town living.  It's an archetypal debate, one as old as human civilization itself, which is why it's the subject of some of our greatest works of art:

(It has "Funny" in the title, so you know it is.)

Each lifestyle has its quirks, and each gives one group ample opportunity to mock the other.  The small town people get to ridicule the city-dwellers for paying a premium for pretty much everything, and the city-dwellers get to tease the small town set for being insular busybodies.  And while Portland is technically a city, it does have some small town qualities.  As it happens, after reading the Oregonian reader comments on my Portland comments, I came across the following story on BikePortland:

Now, I haven't been following the story from the beginning so I may not have the timeline completely right, but as far as I can tell here's what went down:

1) The guy in the above photo, Krisapon Chaisawat, joined a bike activist ride in Portland organized by a "new league of tactical urbanists calling themselves VELOPROVO;"

2) Some of the participants in the ride thought Chaisawat looked like Portland Police Bureau Captain Chris Uehara--you know, because he's Asian:

3) The participants came to the conclusion that an undercover cop had infiltrated their ride and that they were living in a "police state;"

4) BikePortland published a story (now deleted, but reposted by Jonathan Maus in the comment section), complete with damning side-by-side photo--you know, damning because they're both Asian:

5) Then, this happened:

[Chaisawat] called me after his wife saw his photos on this site. He said he's from Key West, Florida and just moved to Portland a few months ago. Chaisawat does not speak very good English (he told me that several times I think as a way of explaining why he wasn't more talkative at the event) but said he attended the event after hearing about it on BikePortland and just wanted to go on a ride and meet some people. About the story, he said, "I thought it was an April Fool's joke."

6) Oy.  Just oy.

Now, I should stress that I have nothing but respect for Jonathan Maus, who runs about ten times the blog I do.  I should also stress that I don't think this was anything other than an honest mistake by someone who thought he had a juicy "scoop" and hit the "publish" button a bit too soon.  (Actually, I shouldn't stress these things, I am stressing these things.  Sorry for the lame figure of speech.)

What this does speak to though is that:

1) These "VELOPROVO" characters are clearly hilariously self-absorbed.  They're like a real-life
Judean People's FrontPeople's Front of Judea;

2) When you combine hilarious self-absorption with homogeneity (HSA + HGN = PDX) you make decisions this way:

Caleb said the man he suspects of being Cpt. Uehara was suspicious because he had all brand new "stereotypical biker gear," didn't speak with anyone and was filming everything.

A guy with a bunch of new crap who films everything?  Yeah, highly suspicious.  This only describes every single bike dork on the planet Earth.

Though to be fair it's not difficult to imagine a similar group of "activists" doing the same thing in New York or anyplace else--though it should be noted that when I went to Portland I went to all sorts of bikey events and took pictures under false pretenses without anybody questioning me.

But I guess I must have "looked the part," and therein lies the difference.

Meanwhile, want to know the best way not to be killed by a car in New York City?  Is it crossing in the crosswalk with the light?  Nope:

One harrowing take-away from the report is that no area, it seems, can be entirely safe. Six percent of pedestrians were injured while on a sidewalk. Of those injured on the street, 44 percent used a crosswalk, with the signal, compared with 23 percent who crossed midblock and 9 percent who crossed against the signal. 

In other words, if you choose to walk from place to place you're going to get creamed regardless of whether or not you follow the rules, but fortunately you do have one form of defense, which is to be fat:

Perhaps the most surprising finding was that excessive weight may prove a boon for pedestrians in a collision. Victims with an above-normal body mass index were found to have less severe injuries than their counterparts. “It is not implausible that a greater proportion of torso and extremity fat may protect against injury,” the report said.

So it's finally come to this: obesity is the new helment, and clearly we're evolving to the point that we're developing protective outer layers to protect us on the short walk from the car to the house.  Obviously Bloomberg better rethink that large soda ban.

Also, here's something you already knew, which is that taxis are dangerous:

In a finding unlikely to surprise the city’s cyclists, about 40 percent of injured riders were hit by taxis, compared with 25 percent of the pedestrians. More than 80 percent of cyclists rode with traffic flow, but less than a third wore helmets.

I'd argue that the helment statistic is pretty meaningless, unless taxi drivers are specifically targeting cyclists because they're not wearing helments.  Plus, it doesn't specify what kind of injury.  If a cyclist gets hit by a cab and breaks his collarbone, does it really matter if he was wearing a "safety kippah" or not?

Either way, my prediction is that the next mayor is going to use this study as the basis to tear out the bike lanes and force all pedestrians to wear helments and gain 20lbs--which will make you stand out as an obvious New Yorker should you attempt to infiltrate a Portland activist ride.