Mission Mission

We Built This City spotted this dude on 17th and Mission today.

[link]

Right on the illustrious corner of 6th and Mission.  What do you think, guys?  Is it still there?

Looks like it’s arrived early this year!  Be sure to be extra cautious during your ride tomorrow since there’ll be a ton of rookie riders making their tentative first commute on our city streets, and try not to get mad when you get repeatedly cut off by clueless first-time cyclists.  After all, the ultimate goal is for everyone to eventually stop being wussies and start biking to work every day, so let’s all try to be as supportive as possible!

And if you play your cards right, you might just encounter a magical moment like this:

Man, that’s awesome. I can’t wait for Bay Area Bike Share to start serving the rest of San Francisco!

[via kottke.org]

Doubt anyone’s going to mess with that. Of course, you’d better hope that whoever decides to park in front of you knows how to parallel park without too much trial and error.

[via The Tens]

No u-lock, no cable, not even to secure one of the wheels to the frame. Guy was just like “Kickstand and I’m out!”

In case you’re wondering, it was still there a couple hours later…

Happy Thanksgiving from Mission Bicycle, via SF Bicycle Coalition on Twitter.

Even though the SF bike coalition has put a ton of painstaking work into creating a thoroughly-detailed bicycle map of the city, it can appear pretty daunting to anyone glancing at it while trying to plan a riding route, and just plain overwhelming to newbie riders looking to adopt cycling as their primary means of transportation.  Fortunately, longtime cyclist Mat Kladney noticed this and decided to create a map that makes bicycling from one end of the city to the other look as simple as following a straight line:

“Need to get from Downtown to the Bernal Heights? Just follow the Blue Line,” he says. “This simplicity will re-frame the existing San Francisco bicycle lanes as the San Francisco Bicycle System and will help convince more people to saddle up and take to the streets.”

Instead of contoured lines denoting hill grade or the inclusion of every single city street, the map ends up looking like a subway system map, with popular routes like Valencia’s “Green Wave” called out.  So, the next time you’re trying to figure out the perfect route to that bike picnic at Baker Beach, just pick a color or two a ride!

[Link to map, via The Atlantic]

Ben explains his plight:

I am one of the residents displaced from my home by a fire at the restaurant Maverick a little bit ago. While most of my stuff survived the fire a little damp and smokey, in the time between the fire and when the building inspector said it was safe to return to the building to sift through our belongings, sub human scum broke into the units and took everything of value. While most of my stuff can be easily replaced the one thing that hurt the most was the theft of my beloved red bike. It’s a Surly Cross Check with the stickers removed. It has Paul brakes. In the rear there is one black brake arm and one silver one from a crash. The stem has an organic apple sticker on it that never fell off. Four years ago I used it to ride from Philadelphia PA out here to SF and it has a lot of sentimental value and I love her. I know it’s a long shot but if you guys could spread the word of this I would really appreciate it. And maybe she’ll find her way back to me.