Do you know anyone who has registered their bike with the local police department? In my 137 years on this planet, I've NEVER heard of such an act–frankly, if I did hear of someone doing it, I'd laugh at their weenie submission to government overreach. Yet that's the law in SanTana, the OC city with perhaps the county's liveliest day-to-day cycling scene–filled not with weekend packs of Lance Armstrong wannabes or scenes of beach cruiser bliss, but with people who rely on bikes, whether they be hippy dippy activists who have forsaken the car, Mexican immigrants who can't afford one, kiddies popping wheelies, or hipsters with their fixed-geared treasures going on a pub, um, cycle.
But in the past couple of weeks, SanTana cops have launched a war on bicyclists in the downtown area, the likes of which I've never seen and which are rather desperate.
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Anyone familiar with the city knows that Broadway and Main Street are the city's main thoroughfares for bicyclists–hell, I take Main as often as I can whenever I emerge from my bunker in Anacrime to head out to Weekly world headquarters. It's been a scene like this for years, if not decades, with bicyclists speeding past cops in the past with nary an incident.
That is starting to change. After having never seen a cop ticket a bicyclist, I've seen at least five incidents in the past month alone. In all cases, the incidents were the same–they were riding a bike, and they were Mexican. They weren't ticketed for riding without a helmet; that's not against the city's municipal code. They were targeted because they hadn't registered their license with the city.
Hmm…so since SanTana cops can't take away the cars of unlicensed Mexicans, they're now targeting bicyclists? Or is it because the city is so strapped for cash that they're rather issue tickets at $10 a pop than crack down on cholos? Pathetic.
I've yet to see cops ticket hipsters on their bike, nor do I want to–NO tickets should be issued, because one shouldn't register your bike in the first place. Anaheim, for instance, repealed its bicycle license requirement bullshit back in 2004. There's been talk in the downtown area of uniting wabs and hipsters once and for all to make up for gentrification–here's your uniting cause, cabrones.
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