Obnoxious drunken, nicotine spewing blowhards make it their business to insert themselves in a stranger’s business and tell him that he shouldn’t be “minding other people’s business”.
Last night, a cyclist nearly hit a van blocking the L Street cycletrack and decided to report it to the police. That’s when he met Fred and Fran Smith, the husband-and-wife heads of a conservative think tank who started berating him for “minding other people’s business.”
Rob, who tweets as @the_baseband, captured the interaction on his helmet camera and posted it online yesterday. It not only shows the need for more public education about cycling laws in the District, but also the divisive attitude some have towards cyclists, even when they’re following the law.
Rob was turning left from 19th Street NW to L Street when he almost slammed into the back of a white van parked in the lane. He walks his bike onto the sidewalk and can be heard calling the police, when a woman approaches and asks if he’s going to report the van.
As Rob reads out the license plate of the truck over the phone, an older man in a suit walks over and the two begin screaming at him. The two are later identified asFred Smith and Fran Smith, founder and board member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that promotes free-market economics and denies global warming.
The interaction is brief, but it says a lot about lingering attitudes towards cycling and cyclists in DC. While the driver of the van broke the law by parking in a bike lane, it happens so frequently that people like Fred Smith either assume that it’s acceptable, or that it’s not actually a bike lane.
When Rob explains that he almost hit the van, Fred yells, “The truck is not in the bike lane at all!” He walks out into the street, points to the striped buffer between the bike lane and the general traffic lanes, and says that’s the bike lane.
It’s also interesting the way that Fred and Fran immediately try to paint Rob as the aggressor for trying to report the driver, chiding him for “minding other people’s business.” Fred makes multiple assumptions about Rob, saying he “hasn’t worked a day in his life” and is “mad” at the driver for not being a cyclist.
I won’t go into whether someone who goes to a”think tank” every day actually knows about real work.
“Sir? You’re not going to report that ……” means that they knew exactly where they were parked and what they’re doing. BTW, Michael E. Mann is suing these people. They seem to make a hobby out of picking on people who “don’t work for a living”. Maybe Fred ‘ll lose a few pounds on the hot seat if he winds up testifying. Shameful!
Nick, the Smiths weren’t parked there. It was this little bald guy who was trying earn a living selling flowers at his makeshift wooden flower stand on the street corner. The Smiths were just sticking up for the little guy, as usual.
I’m glad that the cyclist didn’t hit the van. I want to see Michael Mann get top dollar for that vehicle when it is auctioned off to help pay the libel lawsuit damages that Mann will almost certainly be awarded.
caerbannog666, that van doesn’t belong to the Smiths. It belongs to a little bald guy who is trying earn a living selling flowers at a makeshift wooden flower stand on the street corner.
Mrs. Smith appealed to Rob F to show the little guy some compassion.
“Sir, excuse me,” she said, when she saw Rob dialing the police. “You’re not going to report that person, are you?”
“I absolutely am,” replied Rob.
“That guy works every day, doing his flowers and such,” pleaded Mrs. Smith.
But it was a waste of time. Rob cares nothing about a little man trying to earn a living selling flowers. He continued calling the police, and told them a poppycock tale about nearly colliding with the “very dangerous” parked van.
Where I come from, lying to the police is much worse than a mere parking infraction.
The Smiths showed they are good-hearted people who care about the less fortunate. Rob F showed that he’s a heartless liberal jerk.
My bad — I definitely jumped the gun here. That being said, I hope that Michael Mann takes the CEI to the cleaners and ends up owning all of their stuff.
There was a guy here where I live who used to come up really close to bicyclists and honk his horn behind them, riding up close to them and basically bullying them with his van. That is, until he actually killed one performing these antics. Now he’s in prison.
I used to ride with my kids in a trailer and people would bully me too, or cut in front of me making a right turn and forcing me to screech to a halt. They didn’t give a crap that there were little kids in my trailer.
Yes, we DO have rights, the SAME rights as cars. Even though your car is bigger than my bike.
Nick Carter, it sounds like you think the Smiths were the owners or drivers of the white van. Did you listen to the rest of the recording? Mrs. Smith said “that guy” (presumably the van driver) “works every day doing his flowers and such.”
I don’t think she was talking about her husband.
And how about Rob’s claim that he “nearly hit” a parked van? Seriously?? Did his helmet cam fall down over his eyes or something?
{sarc} Imagine how dangerous it would have been to poor Rob if something in the bike lane had been moving. {/sarc}
Rob “@the_baseband” is a yuppie crybaby jerk, wasting the time of the police (who have more important things to do), because he’s annoyed that some working man violated a parking ordinance which Rob knows is so widely ignored that some people don’t even know about it. Here’s proof he knows it:
The Smiths’ sense of justice was rightly offended. Mine would have been, too. They sympathize with the gardener who’s trying to do his job, instead of the yuppie jerk with the helmet cam who thinks that his own trivial inconvenience is more important than some pleb’s ability to earn a living.
Rob has now deleted his 31 July tweets:
https://twitter.com/the_baseband/status/362707020748570627
https://twitter.com/the_baseband/status/362698082674155520
But no worries, I have a screenshot:
http://tinyurl.com/the-baseband-tweets-31Jul2013
BTW, did y’all notice that Rob omitted the helmet cam footage of his supposed near-accident from this video? I suspect that’s because he lied to the police, and there actually was no near-collision with the parked van.
That tweet actually supports the position that the truck was parked in a dangerous position and whether or not someone deletes tweets is irrelevant to the fact that the truck was parked illegally. I would be curious to know what other illegal activities you condone for people to make a living? Perhaps I could park in the park right next to the children’s swings and work hard selling kites? Maybe because I work so hard and have little time I could drive at 150mph to and from my place of business? It really is a very slippery slope.
By the way, feel free to also cyberstalk me and screenshot my tweets. I don’t find it at all creepy or obnoxious.
I didn’t realize this till some time ago, but there is a whole youtube genre of “smoking cyclists” videos, wherein you try to blow as much exhaust, or otherwise annoy or intimidate cyclists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JkvGS6sdKQ
there are a whole lot of sickos out there who are genuinely angered by people doing something positive for themselves and society.
That’s disgusting.
However, sometimes it’s selfish jerks like Rob “@the_baseband” who provoke such hostility. The video’s description says, “the cyclists would not move over for some time, which earned them the black cloud of death.”
It’s still wrong, of course (though not as wrong as the infamous “knockout” game). Small discourtesies provoking a larger retaliatory discourtesies, etc., is how relationships fail, and sometimes how people get killed.
A pastor friend told me (with no use of names, of course) about counseling a couple whose marriage was in trouble. He “unwound” the accusations and counter-accusations, back to the original infraction, which was a dispute over whether plastic bottles should be rinsed before recycling them. That’s a good illustration of why scripture teaches the opposite of escalating retaliation.
In Los Angeles, we have laws against vocally bullying, honking, or other ways of menacing of cyclists.
However, the current practice is that if a driver accidentally kills a cyclist, as long as they aren’t drunk, run from the scene, doing an illegal turn, or otherwise being malignant, the officer may not even ticket them! This kill-cyclists-for-free practice is derived from the fact that on those cases that have made it to a court room, the jury (a jury of car drivers) has been sympathetic to the driver, and in most cases the driver is not punished. Because of this overwhelming ‘that could have been me in my car, accidentally killing the cyclist’ attitude of jurors, cops and prosecutors don’t even bother trying to convict drivers for the death of a cyclist.
Compounding this problem is that some cyclists feel they don’t have to follow basic traffic laws, running stop signs, etc. and this tends to group cyclists as a whole into the ‘it’s their own fault’ category in the minds of folks unpracticed in thinking…
1. The guy who owned the van has a florist shop on the corner where he was parked.
2. He has been told many times that he should not park in the bike lane
3. He feels fully entitled to do so.
4. Smith has not a clue about what the bike lane is (see the video)
5. The guy on the bike was calm and polite to Smith and Ms. Smith throughout
6. Not visa versa
Here’s more proof of liberals’ disdain for the truth: nine thumbs-up votes for a blatantly false comment.
This is pure fiction: “1. The guy who owned the van has a florist shop on the corner where he was parked.”
But liberals don’t care: thumbs-up to the lies, as long as they are liberal lies, and Charles is the only liberal here who has shown even a hint of sympathy for the guy with the makeshift flower stand.
The Smiths’ being who they are probably think all cyclists are greenie hippie types, and because they aren’t burning oil from the companies that pay for idiotic right-wing thinktanks, that cyclists are fair game.
I would suggest that those who try to defend the ridiculous actions of the Smiths and the van owner may infact be obnoxious blowhards.
The Smiths seemed more emotional than thoughtful. How dare a community bike lane (and the riff-raff that use it) compromise a righteous flower shop owner’s parking convenience? 🙂
Charles, there’s no flower shop, and no flower shop owner. There’s a makeshift wooden flower stand, with a tattered umbrella-style sunshade, and a little bald guy trying to make a living selling flowers on the streetcornder, who needs to load it all up and take it home at the end of the day.
The fact that it’s a sidewalk shop and that the owner is bald makes him a more sympathetic character. I understand your point of view Dave. There are ethical trade-offs. However, note that the street view photo was snapped before the bike lane was established. There is street parking on the other side of the 19th St. crosswalk.
At 0.54 “This guy is obnoxious.” Who is she talking about?
She’s talking about Rob, the yuppie jerk with the helmet cam who thinks that his own trivial inconvenience is more important than some pleb’s ability to earn a living.
BTW, does anyone here think that Rob was actually telling the truth to the police, when he claimed that he’d almost collided with the “very dangerous” parked van? If so, then why do you suppose he omitted that part of the helmet cam footage, when he posted it on YouTube?
Thanks for clarifying that for me dave. I thought for a moment she was referring to her discourteous ignorant obese slovenly loud-mouthed jaywa;lking husband.
You didn’t answer my question, topspin123. Do you think Rob was telling the truth to the police, when he claimed that he’d almost collided with the “very dangerous” parked van?
If so, then why do you suppose he omitted that part of his helmet cam footage, when he posted it on YouTube?
Dave still won’t quit—he asks:
“Do you think Rob was telling the truth to the police, when he claimed that he’d almost collided with the “very dangerous” parked van?”
“If so, then why do you suppose he omitted that part of his helmet cam footage, when he posted it on YouTube?”
I’ll answer with some questions of my own for Dave.
Do you ever ride a bike, Dave?
Do you ever ride at night and realize how hard it can be to see?
Especially in the city where you have lights, reflections, many moving vehicles, and other distractions?
Do you expect people TO OBEY THE LAW and not park dangerously? (The root cause of this whole episode)
Do you understand that most bike-pedestrian-vehicle accidents occur at intersections where people are starting and stopping, crossing traffic and making turns, and that’s why the parked van was correctly characterized as “very dangerous” by the cyclist?
Do you really think it’s the bicyclist’s fault that the van driver is a jerk?
Do you always grasp at straws and beat dead horses when you mindlessly persist in pursuing lost arguments?
Can’t you find something else to amuse yourself this morning?
=BTW, does anyone here think that Rob was actually telling the truth to the police, when he claimed that he’d almost collided with the “very dangerous” parked van?=
There’s no evidence either for or against it; it’s useless to speculate. Nor does it change the fact that the van was illegally parked.
I don’t even see clear evidence for labeling the biker with a particular political ideology. Are you visiting a blog the guy wrote or something to assess his political views? The only thing I can tell about him is he doesn’t like cars in the bike lane, based on looking at a video on his Youtube channel.
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There’s not even any evidence that the bikers in the ‘smoke blowing’ video above were blocking the road, or if they were, for how long they were. You could apply your own method of speculative questioning to the ‘smoke blowing’ video above and ask, ‘Why do you suppose the smoke blower omitted any footage they may have captured of the bikers ‘blocking’ the road?’.
But if wild speculation if fair game then I can easily counter, ‘What is more probable: 1) the bikers were unfairly blocking the road for an unreasonable amount of time and the person in the passenger seat who just happened to have their camera rolling caught it on film but they cut it out in the editing process; or 2) the people in the truck saw the bikers, held back on purpose to allow time to power up their camera, then blew past them with the smoke for their own pleasure?’; the second scenario explaining why there was no footage of the bikers uncourteously blocking the road.
Indeed the only thing not speculative here is the irony that when bikers allegedly block the road for a few moments, you find some means of justification for the driver’s behavior by regaling us with a story about how small discourtesies can (albeit unfairly) lead to inflated retaliation (and thus folks should behave cautiously), but in diametric fashion, when a driver blocks a bike lane the talk of ‘justified’ (albeit unfair) retaliation dissolves, and then it becomes of the injustice of retaliation. There is a contradictory quality here.
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But getting back to the van video: I reckon the ‘danger’ has nothing to do with this particular situation: it has to do with the law of large numbers. If that guy parks illegally in the same fashion every day and night for 20 or 30 years, whilst all the Fed-Ex, Pepsi van, carriers, etc. do the same, and on each instance of doing so a given number of bikers have to obtrusively leave the relative safety of the bike lane and ‘uncourteously’ contend with moving vehicles in the ‘car’ lanes, such increases the likelihood of traffic accidents in general: It increases the risk of property damage, of rising healthcare costs for the area (treating more accident ‘victims’), and provides an uptick regarding morbidity and mortality of cyclists (and drivers) – both of the conservative and liberal variety.
The idea of ticketing these illegal parkers is to motivate them to start using the alley based loading facilities when available to reduce the overall number of accidents per unit time. Yes, it’s something new they didn’t have to deal with before, and it’ll take time to reset boundaries, but if progress never occurred from time to time we’d all be feudal peasants or Egyptian slaves or the like. Let the man nail some wheels to his cart and push it down to a legal parking zone every day; after all he’s not afraid of working hard as Fred Smith points out.
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Imagine if vans started parking on the sidewalks in a manner that pedestrians had to walk out into traffic to get around them. It’s easy to see why that’s a bad idea (it’s especially unappealing in one’s mind, considering the curb is several inches higher than the road, with inspires thoughts of putting a curb between the bike lane and the car traffic where applicable).
Or imagine if this flower guy drove to work one day and there was either a parked car in his spot where he parks to unload his flowers or there was a parked car on the side walk where his cart normally is placed. It’s generally a bad idea to park in spaces not deemed fit for parking.
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This is odd. Here’s the Google Street View of L Street at 19th, and there are plenty of bike racks and flower planters, but no bike lanes on either street.
There’s a sign which says “2 hour parking” during daytime hours, M-F, just up the street from where the van was parked, and here’s another one just about exactly where the van was parked. My guess is that D.C. only recently converted the parking lane to a bicycle lane.
Contrary to what you posted, there also appears to be no florist shop on or near that corner in the Google Street View, Eli. There’s an M&T bank there, and an optician’s shop next door. Across L Street there’s the “Corner Bakery & Cafe.” Across 19th Street NW there’s a Staples. Diagonally across the corner there’s a sandwich shop.
However, in the view from 19th St (obviously taken at a different time), there’s a makeshift flower stand on the sidewalk.
I thought the guy with the white van was probably a gardener, tending the numerous flower planters. But I’m pretty sure that was wrong. He was probably the guy with the little flower stand, and he was probably loading up his stand and flowers at the end of the day.
That’s got to be a hard way to earn a living.
Here’s another view. The flower stand guy is probably the little bald (Asian?) man standing to the left of the flower stand.
Does anyone think it was a greater imposition on Rob F. to have to steer his bicycle around the van than it would have been for the little old guy with the flower stand to lug his wooden stand and flowers down the road to the parking garage?
(Nor is the flower stand guy the only one with that problem. Here’s the view of the Staples, across the street.)
Does anyone else here have any compassion for the little guy trying to earn a living? Or am I the only one?