Lookout!

There is a disturbing trend on the streets right now. I ran into an Apex rider on Monday who was looking kind of dazed and rubbing his eyes. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me a crazy story. He had hopped up onto the sidewalk off of Wacker Drive to cross the Wells street bridge to get to the Merchandise Mart. We all know that it is illegal to ride on the sidewalks, but sometimes you need to bend the rules a little, and I have pulled the same move. If you are going to the Mart from the loop, you either have the choice of crossing on the sidewalk of the Wells bridge, Going to LaSalle, which is the most dangerous bridge downtown, or going Franklin to Orleans, which takes you a half mile out of your way if you follow all of the traffic laws. Anyway, as soon as he got onto the bridge, a guy ran across the sidewalk, slammed into his shoulder, and knocked him off his bike. The Apex biker got up and yelled at the guy "What the f--- are you doing?"
The guy shouted back "You can't ride your bike on the sidewalk!"
Apex guy responded "Yeah, I know. But that doesn't mean that you can hit me off my bike!"
The next thing Apex guy knows, the pedestrian pulls out a can of pepper spray and gets him in the face. This was a totally unnecessary reaction by the pedestrian. Apex guy hadn't been trying to start a fight with him, and wasn't physically threatening him in any way, he was just yelling at him.
A similar thing happened to a Velocity biker earlier in the summer. A driver almost hit him pulling into a diagonal parking space. The biker stopped by the drivers window and yelled at him for almost running him over. The driver rolled down his window and pepper-sprayed the biker in the face.
I had been discussing these incidents with a friend who works for the city of Chicago bike program, and she told me that another case of a biker being pepper-sprayed happened on the north side of the city last week.
I don't know what the hell is going on right now, but if you ride a bike around in the city, look out. There are a bunch of lunatics out there. Sometimes conflict is un-avoidable, but try to think twice before retaliating against a driver who pulls a bad move, or getting into it with someone on the street. If you are a bike messenger in Chicago, you should keep the story of Thomas McBride in the back of your head at all times.
Everybody be safe out there.