The annotated image capture from Google Maps above isn’t entirely necessary, but I figured what the hell.
So yesterday afternoon I’m on my way from work to the Mid-Wilshire area to join my wife and some of her employees at a wonderful little place called Mamma Mia where we were to enjoy pizza and beer and a Lakers’ victory… well two out of three, then.
Biking over I decided to avoid Wilshire Boulevard and pedal along south of it not just because it would be quieter riding, but also because I’d never been in that residential neighborhood and I enjoy exploring new places.
So there I am eastbound on pretty much a car-free 8th Street enjoying the well-tended homes and homes I’m passing with nothing else around but some dog-walking or stroller-pushing pedestrians. I’m about halfway to the stop sign at Muirfield (1) when out of nowhere a blue coupe races up behind me then guns around me on the left. Going too fast to make the stop, the driver blows the sign and peels left, whereupon I crank it and cut a left too as I see 8th is dead-ended (2) about halfway past Muirfield. Then I go inside out and end up on his left side.
He sees me looking with pretty much unbridled scorn and contempt at him so being a glutton for punishment he rolls down his window (3) and I get my first good look at some young punk — probably a second-generation gater from the exclusive Fremont Place community nearby whose probably still waiting for all his pubes to come in. He sneers condescendingly at me so I ask him why he’s gotta drive like a dick much less act like one. And he responds “Why you gotta ride in the street?”
That’s a pretty valid question — if you’re a Tard from Tardistan — so I gave him my standard incredulous response: “Are you that ignorant that you think bikes aren’t allowed in the streets?” And he just shrugged and sneered again and tried to accelerate, but we were approaching Wilshire and a stop sign that he managed to figure out all by himself that he should not blow through so we stayed parallel and he was forced to listen as I rephrased my first question: “Even for the sake of argument say bikes weren’t allowed on the street. Where in traffic school were you taught that gives you the right to drive like a dangerous idiot?”
He blinks and pretends to ignore me.
Arriving at the stop sign pretty much simultaneously I do some rough calculations and point out how much time he saved driving so recklessly: “None, douche!”
He clearly wants to be rid of me, but cross-traffic is preventing his escape, so he appears to mull my inquiry over but then starts to roll his window up, before stopping midway and rolling it back down, whereupon he says to me: “You know what: fuck you then!”
And I say “So you talk like an idiot, too? I can do that: fuck you, too.” And he has enough and guns it into the space separating a bus and a Hummer and he thinks he’s shaken loose of me.
But he hasn’t. Because after venturing along Wilshire to the Ebell Theater I dropped back down Lucerne to 8th and kept heading east until who should I manage to encounter again further down the road heading south from Wilshire on Kingsley crossing 8th but the same bitch-blue coupe, driven by the same wet-eared punk.
The kid’s eyes went wide when he saw me as he passed and I shot him the “watching you” sign as if I’d known he’d be there. Looked like he’d seen a ghost.
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