Nah, Porsche, those are foot wells.

Also, I shall henceforth and ever more call my shoes “foot garages.”

Absolutely. I was walking around thinking “It’s going to take them 11 months to clean all of this trash up!” and then I saw how clean it was and freaked the hell out. 

The stripe is actually a white flag saying Nissan gave up.

I was riding into work the morning a woman got right hooked by a box truck on Addison and Damen. Drivers just flat out don’t have any awareness of bicycles unless they have a close call. The habit of doing something like looking over you left shoulder before you get out of your car just isn’t taught.

In rural areas you simply can’t exist without a car. And with cheap cars costing less than a new refrigerator, I disagree entirely that someone cannot be considered poor if they own a car. Some of the poorest people have way too many cars sitting in their lawn.

By the way, Patrick, the piece itself is wonderful, and should probably be required reading at drivers’ ed.

I’ve been a commuting cyclist in Chicago for over a decade. I’ve been hit a few times and had 2-3x as many close calls. I pass ghost bikes (white-painted memorials for cyclists murdered on the city’s streets) daily and it never gets any less haunting. What makes me ache even more about every preventable death…

Low income people don’t have cars (unless they’re forced into car-ownership slavery because they have no other option, like many Americans who live in transit-deserts). Many of these folks drive jalopies because they have no choice, and are one major repair bill away from financial ruin.

Since we’re generalizing to all cyclists and car drivers.... let’s remember that when a car driver does stupid shit to a cyclist, cyclist gets killed. When a cyclist does stupid shit to a car, maybe a dent.

yes, there’s very fine people on both sides

I live and bike commute in a midwest college town. Local cops park in the bike lane to speed trap. I gave a “what the hell?” arm wave one day when passing around a parked cop car that was particularly hard to see because of lighting conditions and dense morning car traffic. The cop followed me all the way into my…

Janky mods are actually pretty period-correct for the tuner scene back then.

Are you fucking kidding me?

As a life-long racer, I can say this has nothing to do with a dream. This is the nightmare we face every single time we roll to the start line.

My fav is a sophisticated blue / blue combo, although you almost never see it...

Every great idea gets its moment in the sun. 

Yeah, but the second time was revolting.

It’s shocking, really.

Thanks for this, Maddy. It’s stories like yours that will—hopefully—reach some of the folks who don’t understand why representation (and accurate/positive representation) matters so much.

The vast majority of protagonists in video games are straight white dudes. I don’t have to worry about whether or not my race, sex,…