May all jackets be visible from space henceforth
I haven’t owned a car since 2006, which I guess shocks people. The more shocking statistic is that I live in Chicago, a city where 40% of residents don’t own cars – and that percentage is increasing.
I used to say that now is always the safest time to bike in the city. The city has gotten progressively safer every year, as new infrastructure is built, the city becomes denser, traffic increases (and hence cars move more slowly), and as a higher share of residents use bikes or public transit.
That changed in 2020. Roads have cleared out, palpably more people are driving dangerously, and more people are ignoring red light cameras. More people are being killed by drivers in Chicago than ever, including the major bike thoroughfare that runs literally behind my house – and drivers are almost never held accountable. I cancelled my subscription to the only truly great local news publication when they came out as anti-biker last year. Bike Lane Uprising’s database, the only real effective tool bikers have for adequate driver accountability, was deplatformed. Bikers are, correctly, radicalized & protesting. In response to the protests, IDOT & CDOT are doing nothing; they only do things after bikers are killed. See, for example, the intersection that bikers still call “death junction,” because duh. It took dozens more crashes over the span of a year before the right thing got built.
On my own end, I have gotten into more conflicts with drivers in the past two years than in the prior 10 combined. I have attended two biker funerals this year. I now carry a knife on most rides.
99.9% of my commutes proceed without incident, but “I biked home from a show in the dark and smelled the trees and felt alive” is far less interesting than, well, this. We tend to magnify the bad, right? And I’m still alive. Any ride you walk away from is a good one. For now, that must be enough.
It is still worth biking in Chicago for almost all of the year, despite all of this. It is important to bike in Chicago. One stands and is counted. And I’m good at shaking off disturbing shit on my bike. It takes about a block – and then I’m back in it, pulse back down, centered, in flow, grateful, alive, knowing this too shall pass.
It is in the spirit of this that I have made a great and totally reasonable fashion decision. This text is not about biking, really. It is about the jacket. Bike Lane Uprising made this to raise funds for their operations, and they keep selling out every time. Mine arrived yesterday.
The jacket looks, on face, like a regular gray windbreaker. It is good at repelling the rain. It insulates well. And it is made entirely from reflective tape material. It really is as bright as you think it is from the pictures. I’m writing this text from a lounge chair in my front room, looking at it on the coathook ten feet away. In the indirect sun it shines like something alien or undead, like an overexposed part of a photograph.
In another dimension, the jacket would track as something hypebeasty and esoteric. In this reality, it is part of my taking a stand, a tool for staying safe when on the road, and a way to tell stories to others. I cannot wait to take this to a bar and explain it to confused onlookers. I suspect every time I do, Bike Lane Uprising will sell another jacket. Good.