9:48am | You’ve seen the sentiment memorialized in metal on the side of City Hall: “Long Beach, the Most Bicycle Friendly City in America.”
The amusement this causes me is endless. Far greater than the nerdy mirth I get from the shoddiness of not checking for grammatical correctness before making a permanent installation is the risibility I receive from its being there at all, that someone—and presumably multiple persons—found it a worthy project to promulgate an insupportable claim, as if by fiat the reality on the ground would be forever altered.
As anyone in the Long Beach bicycle community will tell you (and as many members have told me personally), to label our fair city the American paragon of bicycle-friendliness is to make a joke. It would be an absurd claim even if Portland didn’t exist. And while my original idea for writing this piece included tracking down exactly who are the unintentional comedians responsible for this errant signage so we could laugh at and not with them, that’s really beside the point.
The point (aside from fulfilling my yen to dedicate an entire column to the silly proclamation) is that we attend to the danger of the complacency that is a natural complement to attempts at manufacturing a perception that stands in place of reality.
While there’s no doubt that Long Beach is pretty far from the least bicycle-friendly city in America—the propagation of bike racks is nice (even if occasionally excessive); the sharrows in Belmont Shore bespeak a certain level of civic commitment—the nearness of this danger can be seen by considering just a few occurrences which have transpired since the proclamation.
First there was the fiasco surrounding the October 29 “Critical Mass” ride, which saw a moveable garrison of law enforcement deployed to subdue the menace of bicycle riders not coming to a full stop at stop signs or (gasp!) piloting unregistered bikes. Reportedly even a police helicopter was involved. Note to the City: if you’re deciding even before a bike event begins to include a police helicopter to prepare for, I don’t know, high-speed bicycle pursuits?, not only are you not the most bicycle-friendly city in these United States, but you also can’t boast having the police department with the best set of priorities.
Speaking of which, in response to questions about the event, Chief McDonnell likened police responsibility for stopping fixie riders with that of not letting drunk drivers to go on their way. Memo to Long Beach law enforcement: if ever you have to choose between letting a fixie rider go or stopping a drunk behind the wheel of an automobile, please don’t think yourself in a quandary because of your chief’s parallel. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME!
Yes, I’m pretty confident that McDonald and the rest of our finest actually know this; the problem is that such a likening would even occur to a police chief of a city labeling itself as the country’s most congenial to non-motorized two-wheel transportation.
Then there was last week’s move by the city council to stop making bike registration mandatory. No, wait: the moved to consider such a change. As of this writing, registration is still a legal requirement, and police can confiscate your bike if it’s unregistered.
Obviously such a change will be a good move, but that many months after calling itself the most bicycle-friendly city in America Long Beach still has such a ludicrous law on the books—and enforces it, as we learned from the interrupted Critical Mass ride—is stomach-turning for any of us who find disingenuousness distasteful. First District Councilmember Robert Garcia (one of the forces behind making the change) states in a recent press release that “the vast majority” of bicycles in Long Beach are not registered, which shows how unnecessary the bicycle community at large feels registration is. This state of affairs, along with proclivities that certain some police officers may have1 plus the very real citywide problem of bicycle theft, sets the stage for racial profiling. “Say, that guy on that bike in this neighborhood looks suspicious. Let’s see if the bike is registered.”
Perhaps it is true that Long Beach sincerely aims to be the most bicycle-friendly city in America; and perhaps posting it as a fait accompli is intended as motivation. But however good the intentions, we’ll probably be a lot better off if we confine our claims to the true, the verifiable, the not-completely-lacking-in-credibility. How about we let our actions do the talking? Then, maybe, when those actions are really, really good, patting ourselves on the back won’t look so unseemly.
In terms of bicycle-friendliness, the writing on the wall at City Hall should serve as an object lesson in putting the tail wagon before the bike.
Footnotes
1I make no insinuation about the Long Beach Police Department in general or police in general; I’m just not pretending that racial profiling is never in play with law enforcement.