Urban cattle and swooping bikes are back!

It's spring and they are back, or have been back for a while – the urban cattle and bike-riders. The former are clogging the sidewalks again, shambling along in small bunches, wandering into traffic, gathering in pedestrian bottleneck and making them worse, or creating bottlenecks where there were none before.

The bike-riders are out in great numbers, often a danger to the urban cattle (they swerve around them), to other pedestrians (zooming by at high speed, no warning) and to themselves (few helmets, bells, reflectors or lights after dark)

Don't get me wrong, I understand the need to ride a bike – it is cheaper than public transport, much cheaper than driving, good for physical fitness, the (urban) environment, etc.etc. All that is correct and I have friends and workmates who ride bikes. But I also see bike-riders in Riga as a hazard. There is no bike-riding culture, one could almost say that Latvia lacks both the infrastructure (bike paths) and the level of civilization to have the same level of urban biking as in Copehagen or Stockholm. Maybe in 25 or 50 years, but not now.

As for urban cattle, they are everywhere, almost a universal phenomenon. There were some in London, shambling along as one tries to purposefully go somewhere. In Stockholm, as I may have written before, the local urban cattle specialize in what I call “ stand and stare” – gathering where others want to pass and simply staring into space or at some signage that normal, conscious people can read in seconds and move on. Tourists are often behaviorally indistinguishable from the local urban cattle, but then again, being a tourist is being – urban cattle in foreign city, moving about in small herds, aimlessly, though not always wandering into traffic or boorishly blocking the movement of those walking with purpose as the local cattle do.

I bear no ill will toward bike-riders as a whole, though I sometimes wish a evil fate on those who narrowly miss me at high speed. There is no reason to zoom down a sidewalk at 40 Kph. However, it seems few urban riders are injured or worse. Most fatal bike accidents occur in the countryside, it seems – shitfaced motorist takes out equally shit-face bike rider, riding as if in the middle of a wartime blackout (no lights, no reflectors, no helmet).

So one faces another summer of trying to walk from point A to point B, getting past or through clumps of urban cattle heading for a point best designated by an imaginary number, and glancing over one's shoulder to see if any bikes are swooping down. Enjoy, I suppose...

Narcotic summer effect and a two-wheeled jolt to reality

This is the time of year when Latvia, indeed, the entire Baltic-Nordic area blossoms into summer with long bright evenings and never-quite dark nights. The Midsummer or Jāņi festival is the pinnacle of "Latvianness" with its Līgo songs, beer, traditional cheese, bonfires and celebration. Everything looks rosy and this year, there was a long holiday weekend of four days to take a break from work.
With the sunny streets filled with tourists and the often glum population looking a little better, the summer in Riga can have a kind of narcotic effect, exaggerating the things that are good about life here and putting the deep, fundamental crises in the economy, politics and society in the background.
This evening I was shocked out of the mild euphoria when, while crossing at a green light (for pedestrians) on a one-way street, a burly man on a bike whizzed by narrowly missing me and turning into the street in the wrong direction.  I was so startled that I yelled after him the Latvian equivalent of "watch where you are going, motherfucker!" (Skaties kur brauc, mauka! -- the English translation expresses the emotional gist and is not literal). Anyway, the dude actually circled around to mutter something at me, but that was the end of it.
I have written about reckless cycling earlier and how it brings out a lot of contradictions. On the one hand, bike riding is "green" and makes economic sense for those who don't want to pay upkeep on a car or public transport fares.  A number of my work colleagues ride bikes and I would never wish them ill. I  may have earlier written (after some near misses by two-wheeled assholes racing and weaving down sidewalks) that I regard news of bike riders being knocked down by cars as "one less" (temporarily or permanently). That is a bit harsh, and the irony is that the urban bike cowboys usually aren't the ones who get taken out by motorists, they are usually someone out in the country, alone on a dark dirt road who gets mowed down by the local shit-faced (lopā for my Latvian readers) country boozehound weaving down the road in a car.
There has been a campaign to alert drivers to the increasing numbers of bike riders and their "invisibility", but I would not risk anyone's life on the assumption a series of TV ads will change the generally savage (though less than some years ago) attitude of Latvian drivers. In any event, there is really no place for bike riders. There are few bike paths and the riders forced on to the sidewalk by traffic probably have no choice. They do have a choice about their speed and the possibility to use a warning bell to indicate they are approaching to pedestrians.  Unfortunately Riga is not, in terms of infrastructure and societal behavior, nor will it be for decades, anything like Copenhagen or Amsterdam or even Stockholm, where there is a civilized order for both motor vehicles and bikes. Bike riders will continue to be a threat to the rest of us and some of the rest of us (in cars  and trucks) will menace those on bikes. The low-intensity conflict will go on, with casualties on both sides.