I'm aware our culture is imperiled by the worst kind of structural problems, and with that in mind I want to take a moment to pay tribute to and contextualize my feelings about the rider who was killed in SF yesterday by someone opening a car door. His name was Devlin O’Connor.

It's a weird time to talk about bikes. Racism and its lethal toxicity is on everyone's mind. We're mired and divided over a pandemic. A fascist idiot is president, piloting the US towards disaster. Women and the LGBTQ community remain embattled. Bikes seem trivial in some ways.

Also, I see a reckoning in bike culture. Thanks especially to WOC speaking up, many folks who label themselves advocates or urbanists are at last realizing infrastructure won't make streets safe unless structural problems are addressed. We need way more than protected bike lanes.

All this to say: Everyone, myself included, must make a reckoning about what they believe, what they stand for, how they will respond to this moment. For me, part of this is speaking up about injustice, trying to summon kindness and tolerance, to be a positive agent of change.

Anyway, I spent time online looking at Devlin O'Connor's life and I think his death was a complete tragedy and all the huge structural issues don't mean that we shouldn't honor his life and speak up that his death, like so that of many other riders, was completely preventible.

So here a just a few tweets to hopefully remind us all that Devlin O'Connor isn't a name in news stories, he was an interesting person leading a good life. Here he is on the day of his wedding last summer.

Here is Devlin at Downieville. He liked to ride dirt in the mountains and on tarmac in Marin. He commuted to his job in SF on a bike. On IG he liked to use the hashtag #outsideisfree

A lot of his pictures suggest that he really liked to ride the Marin Headlands alone and found peace surrounded by mountains, sky and sea.

Here's the Chronicle news story on O'Connor's death. At least the headline isn't shitty. There's this bit at the end mentioning that there's no protected bike lane on Frederick Street, where he was killed. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/30-year-old-cyclist-killed-in-SF-collision-after-15304522.php

I once lived near this crash site. I don't know if there's been an effort to put infra on Frederick. I know it's the kind of street riders should NEVER get killed on. But folks drive too fast, open car doors without care & officials are apathetic. Folks like Devlin pay the price.

I know I'm trying to meld two things in this thread: A sort of obituary for Devlin O'Connor, who died because our culture doesn't respect safety, with some thinking on how it's a strange time to advocate on these issues. I have data points rather than answers. I'm thinking on it.