Ghost bikes are poignant and tragic reminders of a liked life misplaced. They’re positioned at areas the place a bicycle rider died in a site visitors collision. So when one seems at a brand new location, individuals discover.
For the previous week or so now I’ve been getting messages and cellphone calls about a number of such bikes. Folks have seen them pop up at a number of areas round north and northeast Portland. To this point they’re all kids’s bikes, painted completely shiny white. The 2 issues all of the bikes have in widespread are a big peace image and plastic doves/birds perched on the handelbars.
Up to now few days alongside they’ve been noticed at: N Prepare dinner and Borthwick, N Williams and Multnomah, NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd and Shaver, and N Albina and Prescott (in photographs above).
The great and unhealthy information is that these are undoubtedly not ghost bikes.
I’m nonetheless attempting to trace down the one who’s locking these up round city, however till then, listed below are my guesses about what is likely to be occurring:
- That is the work of a grassroots peace activist doing a little kind of anti-war marketing campaign.
- Somebody is unhappy and mad about our document excessive highway deaths final yr and that is their approach of reminding people to be secure.
- A hater is trolling us only for a prank.
Maybe this individual doesn’t know what white bikes at intersections imply to many people. Ghost bikes set off loads of emotion for superb purpose. I personally can not see a white bike on the road with no robust visceral response. No matter what this individual is doing, I want they might discover a totally different approach — and even only a totally different colour — for his or her marketing campaign.
When you’ve got any clue about who’s doing this or why, please let me know by way of e mail maus.jonathan@gmail.com. I’d love to resolve the thriller.
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