Tag Archives: San Francisco

May 2, 2012 · 9:32 am

Taxis and bicycles

Oh look. A taxi parked on the sidewalk. Quelle surprise.

I have issues with taxis.

I am glad that taxis exist. They have bailed me out of more than one emergency “your kid is sick and you need to come right away” situation, as well as out of occasional public transit failures in multiple cities. I take cabs to the airport when I’m on business in other cities. The world would be a much more difficult place without them.

That said I kind of hate taxi drivers. They are often rude, and they frequently ignore the rules of the road. I never know, stepping into one, whether I will end up feeling like I’m on a death ride. And when I’m riding my bike, driver rudeness is the least of my worries. When I see a taxi on the road I immediately tense up, waiting for a swerve into the bike lane or a dooring or an unmarked turn into oncoming traffic.

This is the world's most loathsome bumper sticker.

San Francisco made my irritation with taxi drivers even more extreme last year, when the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency allowed taxi drivers to officially occupy the bike lane, ostensibly to pick up passengers who were disabled. Over half the cabs in the city now sport the blue bumper stickers advertising this new liberty, which I have learned the hard way to read as: “I’m going to do whatever I want and you can’t stop me.” I have seen taxis with these bumper stickers parked on the sidewalk. A couple of weeks ago I watched a taxi with that bumper sticker swerve directly in front of me, at which point the passenger opened the door, leaned over, and vomited into the bike lane. No photo: this is a family biking blog. Parking in bike lanes is a given. Everyone does that. But taxis can’t get tickets for it anymore, and those blue stickers are like a “neener-neener-neener” right in my face every time I have to cut into traffic around a parked cab in my lane. I hate those bumper stickers. Thanks for nothing, Muni.

Objectively, I realize that taxis that do these things are the minority, but oh, what an annoying minority they are.

And then yesterday, when I was riding mid-afternoon to a meeting, I happened across two other bike riders on my route—a woman on a road bike and a man on a cruiser. These riders were casually blowing through red lights and stop signs, swerving through traffic and into crosswalks to avoid even the slightest loss of momentum, and all of this despite the fact that they were riding even more slowly than I was. And I ride pretty slowly on my way to an afternoon meeting in dress clothes, because I refuse to show up at a meeting sweaty. I get mistaken for a student often enough as it is.

Suddenly I thought, “Oh my god! These riders annoy everyone else on the road the way that taxis annoy me! And I am guilty by association!” These bicycle riders are the reason that pedestrians stop me in the street about once a week to thank me for my complete stop at every 4-way stop sign intersection. I am not kidding. Last week one person clapped.

Taxi drivers and bicycle riders: we are ugly bedfellows, all of us damned by association no matter how we behave. I cannot begin to imagine the cultural shift it would take to make me start trusting taxis to behave like even normal cars, and that is a not a very high standard. Which means it must be equally impossible for most drivers (and most people are drivers) to imagine bicyclists behaving like something other than spoiled children.

There are a lot of parents like me who would be willing to ride their bikes with their kids if it seemed like something respectable people did—I talk to these parents every week. They would never run a red light any more than I would: my kids are on the bike! But why would you want to start riding a bike if you hate bicycle riders who ignore the rules of the road? Those are the riders people see—how could they not? I hate those riders and I was actually riding a bike when I saw them. Who would want to start driving if it meant being scorned like a cab driver? I hate riding in the vicinity of cabs even though most of them are driven by responsible people.

How do you change an entire subculture of people behaving badly? Change the law or change the culture, but something would have to change. Right now, for both taxis and bicycles, there is a critical mass of scofflaws.

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May 1, 2012 · 10:57 am

What I learned in 30 days of biking

Brand new life

When we first had our son, our usual range of activities suddenly became very circumscribed. It was so intimidating to go out with a baby, and there was so much to remember to bring, that it felt like a huge triumph to load up the stroller and walk around the block. We were nervous that he would cry if we went to the library or a restaurant, so we didn’t go to the library or to restaurants. I didn’t like to feed him in public, so for quite a while we didn’t go any further than a half-hour’s walk to ensure we could be back home in time for him to eat or to take a nap.

As he got older, and we became more confident, we started to return to some of the places we’d known before, but even more than that, we began to discover new places to go. We walked to local bakeries and learned when the library offered story times. We remembered there were such things as children’s museums. We realized the value of parks with playgrounds.

Then we were four.

When our daughter was born, the same thing happened again, although to a lesser degree. We were once again limited by naptimes and although she wasn’t one to cry much, we had to relearn the places that were best for babies. Now that she is three, we have a range of places to take our kids that make sense for our lives. We have adjusted. We go out at least as much as we did before, but to different places and at different times.

It's a stealth cargo bike.

When we started transitioning to riding our bikes, there was that same sense at first of feeling constrained. The routes we traveled by car were not ideal for riding bikes, and there was this new effort involved in riding with cargo that made everything feel a little harder. I had to learn how to carry groceries on my bike. It took some time (and one disaster) to identify good child seats. We were figuring out everything. But this feeling of life changing in a new-scary-exciting way was familiar. I knew intellectually that it was temporary and that we would adjust.

Every weekday morning, and it never gets old.

Signing up for 30 days of biking pushed me to make some of those adjustments. With a bike ride to fit in every day there was always pressure to go somewhere, and with two careers and two kids there isn’t time to take daily joyrides. I took Amtrak to Sacramento with a bike for a conference. I learned how to strap a pizza to my rear rack with my bungee net (and I got at least three days of rides in by ordering takeout pizza, which is typically a once a month occasion around here). I also learned how to strap a yoga mat to my rear rack with my bungee net and went to a yoga class at a studio I’d never visited before. I found a good bike route to our CSA pickup. I checked out small local grocery stores just a little too far for walking that have no parking for cars but offer generous bike parking—and it turns out that neighborhood shopping by bike is efficient, maybe more so than my usual method of shopping during lunch and carrying everything home after work. I finally raised my seat another inch, and found that I could usually get up hills in a higher gear. I stopped riding my brakes so much on the way back down those hills. I rode to work every weekday that I was in San Francisco, in the new JFK bike lanes, and found that my love for the Conservatory of Flowers has not faded even slightly in all these months. I found out that no amount of riding in stiff headwinds is enough to get used to it. I learned not to order Mexican on 4/20.

The camera flattens the hill up to work, but it feels flatter now as well.

There are some changes in the works around here. We have a trailer-bike coming for our son from Europe, purchased for a song on German eBay by a friend. There are new bikes to join our current collection. My son and I are signing up again this year for summer Japanese classes, which are offered on the eastern edge of town across the Wiggle. Although I am still intimidated by the prospect of taking our kids along the Oak and Fell arterials at any time of day, I feel ready to try riding that route with him again.

Let's take a ride!

Summer in San Francisco is marked by festivals, marathons and half-marathons, and parties that nearly shut down the city. For some time we’ve reacted either packing ourselves into public transit or staying home to avoid the hundreds of road closures and the crowds. Attending the Pride parade last year sent our kids into a tailspin of exhaustion, although it was awesome. But I learned on Easter weekend that riding our bikes changes everything. This summer we can make it anywhere in the city without getting caught in car traffic or being packed into trains or carrying our tired kids for miles. What I learned in 30 days of biking is that riding our bikes isn’t a constraint at all. Riding our bikes makes us free.

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April 30, 2012 · 8:54 am

Catching my breath

Peas=pollen

It is allergy season and I have spent the last week exhausted. Single parenting, even with just one kid, means early mornings and late nights. Part of the reason I have felt so unwilling to go anywhere, I realized, is that I was constantly short of breath. It was unnerving. On the bike, feeling unable to breathe made even level streets feel impossible.

A little shortness of breath is a small price to pay for all of this

I have been here before so unlike the first time, I knew it would get better eventually. When I first found myself gasping for air in a California spring, I thought I might be dying, perhaps from a giant tumor on my lungs. That is because I was a hypochondriac. Longer term residents assured me it was spring pollen coupled with the lack of sleep inherent in having a newborn. That’s less exciting but turned out to be: true.

So when Matt got back on Saturday afternoon my goal was to catch up on sleep and in general take it easy. Neither of us wanted to drive anywhere, and Matt was tired of all forms of travel. However we needed to cook enough to make it through a week (we cook on weekends) and I hadn’t shopped for four people in two weeks.

How to park a balance bike

As a result, on Saturday I decided to ride my bike around to various neighborhood bodegas. I do most of our shopping at the grocery stores near work so I sometimes forget the quirkiness of the neighborhood joints. There is the place a block from home that sells outstanding coffee and top-shelf liquor, and another two a block downhill. One of the downhill shops is a dirty and odd-smelling market that has outrageously good prices on pretty much everything, including organic produce, if you don’t mind groceries pretty near their sell-by date. But unbeatable value! Across the street is a wildly expensive natural foods pocket, which ably serves the coconut water and primal snack bar needs of the neighborhood. None of them had what I wanted, so I rode down to the Haight Street Market a mile away. I had never been there before because it’s too far to walk and unbearable to drive—Haight Street is always packed with pedestrians, some sitting on stoops testing out the wares of the multiple head shops, and traffic backs up for blocks. But on a bike, there’s no problem. I parked right in front of the store (which is fantastic, I will return) and slipped easily through the crowds on the way home. I am always reminded on the weekends, when we slip out of our normal routine, how liberating it is to ride a bike in the city. Traffic jams and parking, which formerly frustrated us on a daily basis, become other people’s problems.

On the way to the races

Then on Sunday we walked around the corner to our neighbors’ block party. The neighbors on this street are cooler than the rest of us, and arrange to close off the street once a year. Then they drag out chairs, toys, and grills from their garages and backyards, throw them all into the middle of the street, and start making and handing out food, playing music, and running big wheel, scooter and balance bike races down the hill. My son’s martial arts studio does a show and the local fire station drives over and lets the kids climb on board the trucks. It is fantastic. It was pretty lame to get a bike ride by riding my bike literally around the corner to the block party, but I redeemed myself by running a quick errand a half-mile away partway through the afternoon.

Complete street

On Saturday morning I was still gasping for air most of the time. But by Sunday evening I was only slightly out of breath. Things are getting better.

Breaking boards!

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April 27, 2012 · 9:22 am

Running out of steam

Maybe I need a new hobby. Bike polo?

I don’t usually ride my bike every single day. That is, until this month, when I signed up for 30 days of biking. Commuting by bike is brilliant, as is running errands, but on the weekends we have usually just hoofed it around the neighborhood, unless we’re headed out of town. Today I talked to a neighbor, also a bike commuter, who said the same thing. There are compromises to be made when you live in San Francisco, but a huge advantage is being able to wind down on the weekends by going almost everywhere on foot.

So 30 days of biking is starting to wear on me toward the end of April. 6 out of 7 days on the bike seems reasonable and almost effortless. 7 out of 7 days on the bike has been a challenge. And it’s been a tough month in other ways—flooded basement, multiple tedious end-of-the-school-year committee meetings, and a conference out of town. Mentally, I want to stick a fork in 30 days of biking already. Today my daughter and I rode to pick up our CSA box and Chinese takeout. It would have been almost unbearable to make this trip by car (no parking, ugly traffic) and unpleasant on foot (exhausting, time-consuming) but mostly I just didn’t want to leave the house at all.

Part of the problem may be the advent of pollen season, which makes difficult to breathe even lying still in bed. It’s either that or I’m coming down with the killer flu that’s felled half my office and my son’s elementary school. Maybe getting an electric assist would take some of this edge off, because it’s the hills that are really killing me lately. Either way, at this point I think I might celebrate May 1st by taking the shuttle to work and back.

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April 25, 2012 · 9:29 am

San Francisco Parks and Recreation Eggstravaganza

My son's handmade Easter bag

Recently our son decided that Jewish holidays were depressing relative to Christian ones. On Passover you stop eating bread and on Yom Kippur you stop eating altogether. Whereas on Christmas you get presents and on Easter you get candy. Even Matt’s efforts to promote Hanukkah and Purim did not impress him, as he is not a fan of fried food or Hamentaschen. The Jewish tradition was starting to come off like the enemy of fun.

Technically we are an interfaith family (I come from a long line of Protestants). We usually have a Christmas tree but have never done anything for Easter. What can I say? We may be interfaith but our true religion is laziness. Before we had kids we exchanged unwrapped chocolate bars and went hiking for Christmas (still do!) At any rate, our son was ready to renounce his faith after contemplating Passover v. Easter this year. He wanted candy and he wanted to go on an egg hunt. The things kids learn at school! And one-third of his class is Jewish, too, although our son is the only Caucasian one, and that was a weird discovery at Rosh Hashanah last year, as each of these kids had been assuming they were the only representatives of the faith. I digress. Our son insisted he didn’t want to be Jewish anymore if he couldn’t celebrate Easter. We decided to play the interfaith card and start celebrating Easter.

Free parking!

Fortunately for us, we had all noticed the signs advertising the SF Parks and Rec Eggstravaganza the day before Easter in Sharon Meadow, next to the Children’s Quarter. As a bonus, like virtually all events in Golden Gate Park, it would have free valet bicycle parking. Our kids were over the moon with excitement at the prospect of going egg-hunting in the park. I was pleased I wouldn’t have to figure out something at home—we have no yard, so an egg hunt would have been challenging. And we wouldn’t have to drive anywhere or walk to the park (which would definitely imply carrying our kids up the hill) or worry about finding bike parking. Although I hate crowds I have found I’m willing to attempt a lot of events I wouldn’t otherwise consider if there is a bike valet.

Making Easter bags for the egg hunt

Much of the Eggstravaganza was not really our kind of thing. It was obscenely crowded, featured terrible food (stale popcorn and “nachos” with neon orange cheese sauce), politically incorrect rides (the ghastly “Hillbilly”), a petting zoo filled with terrorized rabbits and goats, and long, long lines for all of these things. But there were also less crowded craft booths for making hats and Easter bags, egg hunts with almost no lines, play areas with dancing, and napping tents. After the first 30 minutes we realized we could stick to the fun stuff—making things, dancing, and hunting for eggs. The kids were absolutely delighted. The egg hunt was a huge hit. You would have thought those cheap plastic eggs had been laid by unicorns.

My daughter's handmade Easter bag

Also we were two of only six bikes at the bike valet, in a crowd of thousands. The valets had started parking kids’ scooters by the time we left just to have something to do. Our choice to ride our bikes did at least draw envious comments from people saying that they should have done that, probably because parking for cars was beyond nightmarish. I realized that the bike valet had not been well-advertised, as most people who talked with us had not realized it was there.

When we got home I made our kids a morning Easter surprise using little green plastic strawberry baskets, some paper grass we’d picked up at the Eggstravaganza, a bag of peanut butter M&Ms chosen for their vaguely eggy shapes, and lavender Peeps. To my shock, they actually ate the Peeps. And they declared it the best Easter ever. Clearly we have kept their expectations low.

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April 23, 2012 · 9:03 am

#virtualfamilybikegangride

Park panda

Saturday was the #virtualfamilybikegangride. Thanks for the inspiration, cargo biking families! I had a complicated morning, because I had to give a talk on campus just after Matt and my son left for a week in Boston. This violated one of my parenting principles, which is Do Not Work On Weekends (Especially When Your Spouse Is Out Of Town And You Must Pay A Sitter), but it made my department chair and my dean happy, and this is worth something too, given that I am currently up for review. And I was home in time to make lunch and attempt to get my daughter down for a nap. No nap, unfortunately, but the effort meant we got a late start.

"I say 'Cheese!' and 'Shy cookie!'"

For a change of pace, we took the Kona MinUte, now that my daughter is old enough to ride on the deck safely. At my kids’ current ages (3 and 6.5) the medium-tail really shines, as it can carry either or both of them without any need to attach a child seat. There are things I would change about that bike (e.g. compatibility with bus rack, better brakes, more stable kickstand, chain guard, dynamo lights, front basket—and even making the possible changes would run a tab higher than the list price of the bike), but it is very easy to use for multiple purposes, and that alone makes it probably our best ride almost all of the time.

Bikes and helmets locked; let's play!

My daughter wanted to go to the park, and was thrilled at the chance to ride Daddy’s bike. We headed to the Koret Children’s Quarter at Golden Gate Park, a quick downhill from home. I am always amazed to find ample bike parking there, as it is packed with both people and bikes, but I think that most people must be unaware of the racks under the Sharon Building, or just like to keep their bikes on the playground itself. Also there are mostly kids’ bikes on the playground, which suggests that a lot of people are driving with the bikes in the car.

Happy happy.

The weather was unbelievable for San Francisco, sunny and warm, verging on hot. And I was struck once again as we arrived at how effortless it is to travel this city by bicycle, assuming you’re not facing a hill. We rode past dozens of cars circling for parking or stopped, complete with fuming drivers, hopped off, locked up the bike and helmets, and went to play. No waiting, and easy. And for the first time all day, even as I watched my daughter express her lust for danger by climbing up various ladders and ropes, hanging off monkey bars, jumping off decks and barreling down giant slides, I felt relaxed.

Delighted to get a second ride.

After some time on the playground we headed to the carrousel, and as we are regulars there, even got a free second ride on request. (Nothing will ever top the day, years ago, that we were the first and only family to arrive one morning and the operator ran the carrousel for my son for almost 20 minutes nonstop, blasting Tom Waits rather than the usual Julius Fucik. But my daughter, who was as yet unborn on that occasion, was delighted just the same.)

Slowing down at the Academy

I wasn’t sure where to go next, except that we should ride somewhere, and after some consideration (and probably because it was getting seriously hot by San Francisco standards) my daughter decided on the California Academy of Sciences. We visited the Rainforest (a poor choice given it was even hotter than the outdoors), went to the aquarium to see colored jellyfish (“Medusas!” yelled one little girl) and even saw a pregnant daddy seahorse, which was hanging out in the seadragon tank, presumably as encouragement. Although it was getting toward dinner time, we stopped at the café for a pink jellyfish cookie, then headed home.

My goal while Matt is away is usually just to keep the kids occupied enough that they don’t obsess about his absence. With our son away as well I was concerned that our daughter would be more lonely than usual, but she was cheerful all day long. As sometimes happens, I screwed up at bedtime. But when I went in later to check on her, she forgave me, as she always does.

"I love you and you love me," my daughter says. "We love each other." Yes, we do.

For most of the rest of 30 days of biking, I will be either commuting or riding with my daughter. When I have time alone with her, I am always struck with amazement that we have this brave and strong little girl, who lights up our lives like a second sun. I couldn’t ask for better company.

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April 21, 2012 · 1:17 pm

420

Oh yes. One of this kind of day.

On Friday, April 20th, I had one of those driving days. I had to be at one meeting in the morning and another across town in the afternoon, and the combination of tight timing, high dress standards, and steep hills made riding a bike implausible. The second meeting was the campus sustainability awards committee. Because I was driving for the first time in two weeks to attend a sustainability award meeting, I figured I would win the irony award. Despite that things were going reasonably well at first.

I had planned to pick up my son early from school after my last meeting, because he and Matt were heading to Boston for a week to visit an uncle’s new memorial, and I wanted to spend some time with him before he left. But then I got an emergency call that my in-laws, who were supposed to pick up our daughter at preschool, were nowhere to be found. And it was an early pickup day, and preschool was closing. I was across town and had no transportation but the car. This was a situation I would come to regret.

Golden Gate Park looks so innocent from campus

So I started to drive back across town to pick her up, with the clock ticking and fees for late pickup piling up. Traffic was unbearable, even for San Francisco. By the time I reached Golden Gate Park, I realized the problem: I was trying to drive across Golden Gate Park at 4:20pm on 4/20. A haze of marijuana smoke lay over the park like thick fog. I didn’t reach preschool until a half-hour later. I have not yet had the courage to ask how much a pickup that late will cost us.

Matt picked up our son, late, and they rode his bike through the park. He said that even that was significantly slower than usual, as walking stoners kept darting into the road and driving stoners with out-of-state plates kept circling randomly looking for parking, which was nowhere to be found for miles in any direction. They seemed confused to make this discovery.

Getting closer to the front of the line

My son, when I asked if there was anything I could do to make up our lost afternoon, requested a quesadilla from the Mexican restaurant. His favorite Mexican is a block from the park. Sigh. I rode my bike down through the traffic, which was stopped dead in every direction. It was a bad day to drive for anyone. I waited behind 100 stoners in line at the Mexican restaurant for 30 minutes, which was a trial. Their conversations alone, if you could call them that, were numbing. They had trouble organizing their orders. At least it was a quick ride home. That’s 20 days of biking now.

We had a similar experience last year, and the year before, on 4/20. I think given that we live so close to the park, I will have to black out that date on my calendar. Next year maybe we’ll rent a car and drive to Danville for the day.

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April 16, 2012 · 7:23 am

15 days of biking

These riders have it easy: it's flat on this side of the city.

I came into 30 days of biking knowing that there would be some challenges. Not least among these was the fact that I was going to Sacramento for a conference halfway through the month. I was there most of last week. Unlike a normal conference, this one was arranged by one of my grantors, and that meant blowing off part of the meeting to cycle around town was: unlikely.

Just to make me look even more unprofessional, my poster arrived looking like this (fortunately it was undamaged).

This expectation was pretty much spot-on, as it turned out attendees were expected to see and be seen from 8am to 8pm every day. Skipping part of the poster sessions to quickly ride around the Sacramento Conference Center felt like both a huge accomplishment and a huge risk, as explaining myself to colleagues who spotted me was sort of complicated. I proposed that I was wildly eccentric and they did not disagree. At least I missed most of the thunderstorms in San Francisco.

If I had been thinking, I would have headed to one of the many all-night bodegas in our neighborhood. But evidently I look just Russian enough that the owners here get annoyed when I speak English.

But I missed doing even this on the last day of the conference. So when I got home I scanned the kitchen to discover that our grocery situation was dire, made lunches for the next day with the available remains, and went out to ride once around the block in my dress clothes and high heels around 11pm. The only way to ride around the block where we live involves an unappetizing choice between (a) going up, then down, or (b) going down, then up. I picked the former. My choice of timing, route, and dress were atypical, and several oncoming cars stopped dead as I approached them (we live next to a hospital; there is traffic at all hours). It could only get easier from here.

Water in the basement, down from 5 inches to 2 inches

There were also some unexpected challenges. The hospital building behind our street was built over everyone’s former backyards without regard for neighborhood drainage, and as a result, whenever it rains heavily, every basement and garage on the street ends up several inches underwater. This happens a few times every year. It happened last week. As an aside, when we first moved in to the neighborhood, we were the kind of people who put things on the floor of the basement. These days, like every basement on our street, ours looks like an ad for the Container Store. There is nothing on the floor except garbage bins and modes of transportation, but just to be safe, everyone keeps the bikes and scooters on the uphill side. (The bins float so they can go wherever.)

Our son arranged this hardware--Matt insisted I take a picture because it is proof, as if any more were needed, that he is in fact my son.

So when I came home the basement was still draining away several inches of water and everything was covered with mud. Per usual the campus maintenance people came by and pressure washed out most of the mud, but everything was still moderately grungy. Today our kids decided to clean up the rest of the mess. Although they’re not really up to the task, we were so touched by their effort that we took them out to Japanese food and ice cream. That’s another ride in the bag.

So that’s 15 days of biking. Some of the days have been unimpressive. Twice I have ridden only to get takeout pizza (a perfect application for the bungee net!) But I’m not going anywhere the rest of the month, the forecast predicts sunny weather all week, and I’ve already totally embarrassed myself professionally, so barring a plague of locusts, I’m feeling like I should be able to manage 15 more.

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April 9, 2012 · 9:08 am

Protected bike lanes on JFK Drive

Most (not all) cars seem to understand the new lane markers

Recently San Francisco striped new separated bike lanes on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, which is a bicycle arterial through the western half of the city for commuters, including me. Thanks, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition! We take this route around the park with the kids on the weekends, but many more people take it east to the Panhandle on weekdays, and from there to the Wiggle and downtown. San Francisco is only 7×7 miles, so even people living at Ocean Beach can reasonably ride a bike all the way to work on this route, which is largely parkland, and now features protected bike lanes as well.

The new striping put two-way car traffic in the center of the road, with a parking lane to the side of each car travel lane. Then there is a buffer zone for car doors (so awesome!), a constant risk in the park, and a bicycle lane on the right at the edge of the road.

Am I a bicycle?

Figuring out the new system is apparently a struggle for some drivers. Although the bike lane is clearly marked, some people just can’t get over the idea of parking against the curb. This driver ignored all the cars appropriately parked in the strip to the left, not to mention an open parking space immediately to the left, in order to block the bike lane. It’s rare that I would advocate for a narrower bike lane, but maybe that might help this person get the point. Maybe not, though, as the car is parked right on top of a bike lane marker (an oppressed bicycle).

We don't need no stinkin' buffer zone

Still, having ridden these new lanes all week, I like them. Although I find it annoying that nearly all the cars park over the line so that they’re sitting in the door buffer zone to the right. Apparently drivers don’t really like being forced into moving car traffic when they’re stepping out of a parked car. The doorers now get to experience the consequences of dooring. Welcome to my world.

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April 2, 2012 · 7:43 am

I do, in fact, wear a helmet

It looked even less like a helmet when it was fitted wrong

I never really liked the look of helmets. But I never really liked the look of rain pants, either, and I wear those. When we rode bikes in Copenhagen, we didn’t wear helmets, mostly because we got blank stares from the bike shop owners when we asked about renting them (they did, however, have helmets for the kids to rent).

The blank stares reflected the fact that there is little reason to wear a helmet while riding a bicycle in Copenhagen, where there is extensive protected bicycle infrastructure and drivers know that hurting or killing someone who is not in a car would have consequences. Like losing a driver’s license. Pedestrians and bicycle riders in North America may now laugh bitterly.

So I was delighted to discover that there was a helmet I would not be depressed to wear, by a Danish company no less, the Yakkay. It costs a freaking fortune, compared to other helmets, but honestly, even expensive helmets are not that expensive compared to other things, like, say, a tank of gas these days. The Yakkay does not look like a helmet. It looks like a goofy hat (see also the Lazer CityZen). My kids call my Yakkay the hat-helmet. It has some advantages over a traditional helmet; one of them is that like a hat, it provides ample sun protection. It can also be difficult to fit correctly, which is a hassle and annoying for an expensive helmet, but not really a long term kind of problem.

My kids think my helmet looks goofy. I can't argue with that.

What I did not anticipate when I started wearing this helmet is the widespread perception by the rest of the world that I wasn’t wearing a helmet at all, and “the rest of the world” includes bike shop owners. I get lots of compliments on my “hat,” and occasionally, I get dirty looks or comments about how I should be wearing a helmet if I’m riding with my kids. This IS a helmet, I say, rapping my knuckles on it. “OH!” is the typical reply. “That’s COOL!” But I have begun to realize there are a lot of people who pass judgment without bothering to ask.

Why wear a helmet at all? My mother was surprised that this was actually a serious question. Of course bicycle riders should wear helmets, right? I don’t think it’s so clear-cut, but there are some reasons one could go either way.

Why not? It’s not clear whether helmets are really that protective, relative to the costs. There’s no such thing as a risk-free activity, and we all make choices that balance cost, safety, and convenience. People may drive (less safe) instead of riding the bus (more safe); people eat processed food (less safe) rather than preparing food themselves (more safe); people cross against the light in the crosswalk or fail to make a complete stop at stop signs. Some people find the cost of purchasing and the inconvenience of remembering to carry a helmet not worth the potential increase in safety. Bicycling simply isn’t that dangerous in most circumstances, and helmets don’t protect against many of the likely risks. A culture that demands helmets make bike share programs much more difficult, and creates the perception that riding a bike is a dangerous thing to do, rather than just another form of transportation. Pedestrians and drivers don’t wear helmets, despite the fact that in some circumstances their need for them may be greater. My colleagues at SF General joke darkly that pedestrians in the city probably should be wearing helmets, at least in certain neighborhoods.

Which brings me to the opposite question: why? The short answer to that question for me is that I don’t live in Copenhagen. In a city like San Francisco, where trauma physicians can make a serious argument that pedestrians should be wearing helmets to walk across the street, wearing a helmet while riding a bike starts to look pretty reasonable. I’m going faster than a pedestrian, so if I’m hit I’ll land harder, and I don’t have the same legal right-of-way.

Not that that necessarily matters. Recently, while riding the university shuttle, I watched the driver mosey between two parked trucks into an intersection only to stop dead just before mowing down a man in a wheelchair. “Oh my god!” he cried. “I didn’t even see him!” Seriously? Dude, it is your JOB to drive safely enough that you don’t mow down people in wheelchairs in the crosswalk. But “I didn’t even see him” is the driver’s equivalent of the “Get Out Of Jail Free” card in Monopoly. It works when mowing down pedestrians and wheelchairs and it works when mowing down bicyclists.

San Francisco, like a lot of cities, is undergoing a commuting shift. There are more bicycles on the road than there used to be, and there are, sadly, drivers who view that as an unacceptable imposition on the world that they were used to experiencing. With the protection of a two-ton vehicle, these drivers can express their opinions very dangerously indeed. That’s no reason to get off the road, but it does make me modify some of my choices. I don’t ride my bike on Masonic, for example, or any of the other streets in San Francisco that are widely recognized as high-speed arterials for driving. And I wear a helmet.

My son's helmet has flames on it, and he'll wear it everywhere he can.

There’s also the issue that although wearing helmets is optional (but encouraged) for adult riders in San Francisco, it is required for children. We are very fortunate that our children have never objected to wearing helmets, which is by no means a universal sentiment among the small. They like playing dress-up and we let them pick their own helmets (within their size range), and that helped. But part of the reason we’ve been so fortunate is that we ourselves wear helmets and have never given the impression that it’s an imposition or a hassle. It’s just something we do before we get on the bike, like checking the brakes or packing the lock. Many of the parents who have complained about their kids not wearing helmets admit that they themselves either don’t wear helmets or that they complain about it. We’d much rather wear helmets without complaint than risk not riding at all because our kids refuse to wear their helmets.

My daughter wears her helmet while practicing riding her balance bike in the basement, because it has pink hearts on it.

I do a lot more stupid things to fit in and smooth our daily lives than wearing a helmet when I ride a bike. My helmet is either cute or goofy, depending on whom you ask, and it keeps the sun off my face, and that makes wearing it even less of a burden. It provides some extra protection against accidents (just as a helmet would for a pedestrian or driver), and weighed against the marginal imposition it makes on my life, I choose to wear the helmet every time.

Other people make different choices based on their life circumstances, and I have zero problem with that. I don’t judge other riders for not wearing helmets, and I’ll defend their choice when it comes up in conversation with people whose knee-jerk response to seeing a bicycle rider without one is to call them crazy or stupid. That said, I won’t ride with adults who aren’t wearing helmets when I’m with my kids, as the idea that wearing helmets could be optional is a can of worms I am not ready to open with them.

So I have this crazy hat-helmet, and in the tempest in a teapot that is the question of whether bicycle riders should wear helmets or not, I now get to experience the moral high ground and various minor inconveniences of wearing a helmet as well as the opprobrium of people who think I’m setting a bad example for my kids and risking my own life by not wearing a helmet at all. It is not something I expected when I bought the Yakkay, but I can live with that too. Knowing what I know now, I will not, however, ever buy their kids’ model, even though I think it’s super-cute.

Helmets are also handy while picking dandelions in the park.

I think that there are much bigger problems to worry about in North American cycling than helmets or the lack of them. I find advocacy about helmets, whether pro or con, tiring. When cities in the US have the infrastructure to make cycling feel safer, like extensive protected bike lanes and stronger legal protections, I suspect that bicycle helmets will become a quaint relic of a more dangerous time, used only by certain specialists, much like chainmail.

Until that happens, my feeling is that arguing about whether or not to wear helmets is like arguing about whether a red fire truck is more visible than a neon green fire truck. Maybe one color will make drivers pull over more quickly and thus help get the truck to its destination a little more quickly, but a better use of everyone’s time would be preventing the fire in the first place.

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