Venice Rhymes With Menace

So I’m westbound on Venice Boulevard this morning. I’ve made the light at Fairfax and once across it I’m cruising up to the next one, which is red. Not the light at Cadillac, but the one before it at the entrance to Kaiser Permanente’s parking complex. I get up behind another cyclist stopped there and as the light turns green I pass him on the left, exiting the bike lane by a foot or so for the 20 feet and the couple seconds it takes me to get by him.

Well wouldn’t you know some assclown immediately behind me on my left lays on the horn. By the time he’s able to lift his fat hand off the trigger he’s already past me and I’m already back in the bike lane and shrugging at him in bemusement at his ham-fisted idiocy. He responds with a flourish of ape-like gesticulations as he guns his silver bullet down the road — right into his place at the back of the stack of vehicles waiting to turn right at the red light at Cadillac, where of course I catch up to him.

Seeing the driver’s window go down as I approach the silver Toyota as seen above on the right, I know there’s an addenDUMB he can’t wait to add to his already immaculate demonstration of impatience and stupidity, so I arrive beside him pointing out that I was just going around the other cyclist and I wasn’t even in his goddam way. Bluster he yells “You were out of the bike lane! Stay in the bike lane!”

Brilliant.

Arguing the finer points of CVC 21202 and my rights to the road with this mouth-breathing cro-mag would have been a total waste of time and energy and decidedly less fulfilling than any of several acts of violence. But instead I slowed a little more and surprised him with an apology.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, “I forget that the street is reserved strictly for road-hogging jerks. Thanks for the reminder.” Then if one can saunter a bike, I did up to the crosswalk beyond the range of whatever insults and expletives he was firing at my back.

A slowed-down image sequence is viewable here.