Local comedy writer and hat model Willie Brown has penned a scathing rebuke of San Francisco’s homicidal cabbies, whom he depicts as homicidal maniacs hell-bent on destroying bicyclists.
“San Francisco’s new bicycle lanes are a disaster waiting to happen,” he writes in a recent dream journal. “I learned this on a cab ride from downtown to Salle Pianos and Events on Market Street … it’s a nightmare when the trolley stops and the cabs have to come off the tracks and into the bike lane.”
The ivory-tickling maestro goes on, “The bike lane is in the middle of the damn street! … it’s only a matter of time before the bike injuries start going through the roof.”
His implication is clear: taxi drivers are, like Odysseus’ men, powerless to resist the Siren song of the urban bicyclist, unable to prevent themselves from occupying even the same city block without wreaking a trail of destruction in their wake.
Cab drivers will, Brown appears to be saying, use any means necessary, including their own roofs, to destroy the helpless bike-riding public.
Fortunately, Brown has identified a solution.
“Why not go all the way and make some streets for bikes only,” he suggests, “and others for cars only.” He does not identify which of these two options he would prefer for his beloved Market Street.
We can only assume that Brown has familiarized himself with bike lane infrastructure such as physically-separated and grade-separated lanes, which protect bicyclists from murderers.
Common in Europe, the city of San Francisco installed precisely zero of these amenities on Market Street between the dates of January 8, 1996 and January 8, 2004.
In other news, Willie Brown is apparently buying a piano.
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