Bicycle Austin forum

MichaelBluejay

Webmaster

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-05-26

Posts: 1,455

Website

Bicyclists "screaming at and harassing pedestrians"?

I'm catching up on reading old Chronicles, and came across this letter from 7/27/2019:

After NUMEROUS bicyclists on Great Northern Boulevard were reported for screaming at or harassing pedestrians, the Allandale Neighborhood Association’s hardworking and conscientious safety volunteer complained and asked for sidewalks....   [T]he cyclists got to city leaders first, apparently....  They either WANTED to force our neighborhood 11-year-old girls unsafely into traffic, or they are stupid, since that would have happened.

Uh, WTF?  The above excerpt is the most understandable of the whole thing, it's pretty vague and all over the place.  Anybody have any familiarity with this issue?

https://www.austinchronicle.com/feedbac … 7/2505958/

dougmc

Administrator

Registered: 2008-06-01

Posts: 623

Re: Bicyclists "screaming at and harassing pedestrians"?

Anybody have any familiarity with this issue?

Well, yeah, it's the same issue as always.

Somebody doesn't like some group of people.  They either fabricate or embellish a story about how something bad happens (but only vaguely bad -- it can't be *so* bad that the police must show up and actually investigate it, of course) and our hero was completely reasonable and the group of people were the bad guys and they poo-pooed his attempts to be reasonable and helpful.

(In most cases, the story is so vague that it would be impossible to fact check any of it, but occasionally they screw up and talk about a specific incident where there is proof of what really happened, and usually in such cases the entire story falls apart but sometimes the protagonist keeps on trying to salvage the narrative.)

Then somebody in a poisition of authority actually believes the other side's story, in spite of how reasonable/heroic/generous our hero was!  Or perhaps they ignored it entirely!  Either way, so unfair, so childish of them!

Then our hero reminds us again of how reasonable they were (and still are), and implores us to talk to the authorities to get this great injustice rectified.

Here, "some group of people" is cyclists, but of course there's many other options, but the general formula remains unchanged.

MichaelBluejay

Webmaster

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-05-26

Posts: 1,455

Website

Re: Bicyclists "screaming at and harassing pedestrians"?

Thank you, Doug.  That was pretty much my assumption.