by police who couldn’t believe he hadn’t stolen it.
(Screen grab from Tampa Bay Times)
Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
“Bicycle Blitzkrieg”: A Tampa woman walking her bike home after cooking for an elderly neighbor, carrying a plate of fish and grits in her other hand, got a $51 ticket for not having a bike light. A 54-year-old man’s bike was confiscated because he couldn’t produce a receipt to prove it was his. A 56-year-old man was handcuffed for towing a borrowed lawnmower through a stop sign on his bike. They’re all part of the Tampa police department’s effort to “head off crime before it happens” by issuing thousands of bicycle-related infractions to black people.
Bikes vs. bombs: After World War II, London teens turned bomb-site ruins into low-rent velodromes. One man who’s still in the saddle tells the story.
“Placemaking” problems: If something is unique and beautiful, who cares if no one uses it? An NYC architect goes after the “brain-dead urbanism checkbox” of the Project for Public Spaces with rhetorical guns ablaze.
Encaged bike: The so-called “world’s safest bike,” now in crowdfunding, claims that it can survive a truck collision.
Complicating simplicity: Writing in the Washington Post, Bike Snob Eben Weiss writes that the greatest trick the auto industry ever pulled will be turning people into cars.
Outreach model: Oregon State Sen. Ted Ferrioli (R-John Day) says legal marijuana should take a lesson from Cycle Oregon and build support respectfully before going big in rural Oregon.
Seattle chop shop: A Craigslist sting by Seattle police turned up 60 stolen bikes.
NYC biking slowdown: NYC’s bike boom picked up as Portland’s flattened, but it too has leveled off as bike-lane improvements have slowed.
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Vision Zero: A national network to encourage the spread of the idea has launched. It’s funded by Kaiser Permanente and led by the former head of San Francisco’s bike advocacy group.
Bicycle hero: Bicycling Magazine tells the story of Frances Willard, the bike-loving booze-banning suffragist fashion icon who was the “second-most famous woman in the world (after Queen Victoria).”
Bike history: The Wall Street Journal reviews a new book about U.S. biking history.
Private bikeshare: Fast Company picks up the news that Spinlister is planning to launch a private floating-fleet bike sharing service in Portland this summer by giving people free bikes to share. (Here’s our previous coverage.)
Diesel hub: Multnomah County has the country’s fourth-highest diesel pollution due to truck traffic to our ports.
Lower-car cities: Portland leads large U.S. cities in biking, but it’s far behind its would-be peers in the percentage who don’t drive.
Pollution boom: The most air-polluted city in the world is now Dehli, the capital of India.
CRC reboot: After some false starts, the Washington House of Representatives voted to put up $100,000 for new talks about replacing the I-5 bridge.
Truck collision: If you really want to see the moment a semi truck brushes past a man on a bike, crushing it but leaving him mostly intact, you can.
Bike lane blockers: A pair of Belgians have created a slightly less insane Brussels version of Casey Neistat’s famous video of biking directly into obstacles on NYC’s streets.
Distracted driving: In California, tickets for texting and telephoning while driving are down 25 percent in three years but no one knows why.
Fire bike: Yes, that’s a hose wheel built into the frame.
Finally, here are two videos of the week for you, one a graduate course in angular momentum from four young Slovakians…
and the other a 50 mph ride down a looping Norwegian roadway with a 10-degree grade … backwards.
If you come across a noteworthy bicycle story, send it in via email, Tweet @bikeportland, or whatever else and we’ll consider adding it to next Monday’s roundup.