If they haven’t come to a street near you, don’t worry; they’ll show up soon. Just like Uber, Lyft and those insidious racks of blue bicycles.
Electric Scooters. The NEW Urban Plague.
They popped up in San Francisco about a year ago. Parked innocently at the edge of the sidewalk. The black ones were “Bird”; the green/white ones were “Lime” (clever that). You started one up for a buck using an app on your smartphone, and 15 cents per minute there after. Or….you could have unlimited rides for $30 a month. And sooo convenient. Just grab the scooter, ride to your destination and and leave it for the next guy. What could be easier?
Anyone who thought that it would go smoothly in Poop City, U.S.A. has never dealt with the entitlement clowns with their “climate change” superiority in the Bay Area. It was no accident that the “South Park” episode dealing with hybrids brought Kyle’s parents and their smugmobile to San Francisco and depicted the residents as enjoying the smell of their own farts alongside a nice merlot. Case in point. BART trains leaving San Francisco are crowded from about 3:30 to 6:30. BART used to have a rule that bikes could not be brought on trains in San Francisco between 4:30 and 6:00 p.m. Then it “relaxed” the rule, allowing bikes but cautioning that bikes should not be brought on crowded trains. Well, apparently bike riders are in dire need of a dictionary, because I’ve seen these idiots attempt to ram their bikes into a car packed to the gills and then gripe because people are standing in the “bike space.” There’s barely people space, dude. They’re even obnoxious on uncrowded trains, sitting in the “senior” seats with their bike in front of them, blocking two seats at one time. Unless, you know, the bike bought a ticket.
So why anyone thought these electric scooter riders would be more mindful than bike riders had to have been smoking that cool legal weed we got going here in the Golden State. In anything it’s worse. Bike riders at least park their bikes and lock them at one of the myriad bike racks the City leaves out. THIS is how the electric scooter crowd defines “parking”.
If it weren’t bad enough that they dropped them all off in front of a fire hydrant, that white line on the left is a crosswalk. That yellow square next to the fire hydrant? Wheelchair ramp. In fact, they were dropping them anywhere and everywhere; it got so bad that the usually tolerant City government banned them. That’s right. BANNED. Can’t keep Market Street from smelling like an open air sewer or the Civic Center subway station from being a La Salle de Shooting Heroin, but those scooters have got to go. And for awhile the streets were safe.
Safe from idiots careening down the sidewalk at 20 miles per hour with minimal control over the device. I came around a corner in San Francisco and almost got mowed down by a kid who was not paying attention or realizing that he was not visible to, well, anyone coming from the other direction. I saw one idiot, about 12, literally smack into a lamp post trying to avoid a pedestrian. He popped off the scooter and straight into a parked car. Cue the ambulance. I imagine ER and triage physicians are making a killing these days, no pun intended.
Since I work in Oakland, I thought I was safe; then, a couple of months ago, a row of green/white slime was parked at the curb, in front of a parking space, in such a way as to prevent anyone sitting in the passenger seat from exiting a car. It’s the rule in Oakland that buildings who have improved sidewalks and take care of their maintenance get to make the rules regarding use of those sidewalks. They cannot prevent you from walking on them for sure, but they can wiggle finger you if you want to turn their sidewalk into scooterama. They repeatedly told them not to, they repeatedly ignored. They’ve given up. However, it turns out this sidewalk rule also applies in Los Angeles, The building owners at my friend’s downtown structure also told Lime to knock it off. Lime refused and kept lining up the scooters. Finally having had enough, the building purchased several cord bike locks, wove them in and around the parked Lime scooters and locked them. No one could ride them. When Lime came to pick them up (they track them via GPS), they found them on the other side of the parking garage gate, neatly chained together. They had to go through the building retrieve them. The building informed them that they were prepared to do this every day. Lime left and took up annoying a different building.
However, someone in my area had a more enterprising solution. Sick of the green menace, they utilized Lake Merritt to come up with their own enterprising solution:
By the way, if you try to move the scooter without “paying” for it, it starts chirping “notifying police, notifying police.”
Yeah right…..I’m sure Oakland P.D. will get right on that.
I had four trips to Austin this year. It is surreal to see dudes in skinny jeans &man buns scottering around.
The things seem to move pretty slow and the riders look ridiculous. Maybe a generational thing , but I do not yell at kids “get off my grass!” so there’s that.
Hey Barbarian, I left a note downstairs for you. Grassley has referred Monica McLean to DOJ for possible witness tampering.
We are overrun with Limes here as well. Now there are three different companies infesting the city of Auckland with scooters. The rules say that you have to be 18 to rent one but it’s never enforced and Lime et al hirers are the problem. Kids don’t have enough sense not to travel at 20 MPH on a footpath scattering pedistrians in their wake but the scooter companies don’t care. It’s almost that they know that local ordinances will shut them down so in the meantime they are making a killing while they can and to hell with the consequences.
Someone trailed Lime operatives back to their lair and then posted it online so that citizens with a beef could face them mano-a-mano. It was a warehouse in an industrial estate and they didn’t answer phones, or the door. Their offices were locked and bare when looking through the windows. There was movement inside but they refused to come out.
🙂
The axe is about to fall on e-scooters operators and they all know it but until then they are gouging the public for all they are worth. This too shall pass!
🙂
@ RIX:
The major users are ‘dudes’ and’ Kiddults’ who want to pretend to still be kids well into their late 20s and early 30s!
Was in LA on a business trip a few months ago and saw the bikes around. Didn’t see any of the scooters.
15 cents a minute seems kind of steep
You should try 30 cents a minute and a $1 hire fee on top that in Auckland. That’s $19 per hour to get to run down granny!
🙂
Hell you can hire a car for a day for that !
This is just a total rip off and is a passing fad with a very short half life!
🙂
Aussie Infidel wrote:
True
*Possum is waiting for these scooter things to be in Houston. Going to go around in my truck stealing them, zapping the GPS when I get them and taking them to my Possum Hole to strip them down and sell them for scrap*
@ Possum:
You are truely evil !
HEH!
🙂
Should be more of it!
🙂
Ah, job security.
@ Possum:
You go girl!
Those Bird scooters are a traffic menace in L.A. Manbunhipsters ignore traffic signals, cause sudden braking and swerving in street traffic.
The girls on the fluorescent pink rental bikes are okay with me.
@ eaglesoars:
I sincerely believe Monica McLean is the linchpin in all this. I think it was Rush that pointed out that Dr. Fraud was in Delaware, where McLean lives, right before she sent the letter to Dirty Dianne, and that Leland Kelsey was referred to using the pronoun “he” – which might indicate that McLean was the one who actually wrote the letter.
It was also MCLEAN who Fraud’s ex-boyfriend say was coached for her possible polygraph by Dr. Fraud, which of course McLean denies. Her hands are dirty in this whole episode up to the elbows.
Possum wrote:
I think San Francisco and Oakland would be willing to cover your expenses if you’d be willing to take a road trip.
eagles – I’m printing this out and will probably do Sunday’s column on it if I can digest it in time.
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018-11-02%20Kavanaugh%20Report.pdf
@ The Barbarian:
414 pages. Good luck. For your reading pleasure, scroll down to pg 410 and read the handwritten letter from the professor, Munro-Leighton in Kentucky. The handwriting is immature, there are a few grammatical errors. My guess is she was drunk. BUT. The letter was mailed from San Diego. Look at the postmark on the envelope. The writer maintained she was in Ocean Side CA, which was a lie. She was in Kentucky.
Who mailed the letter?
@ eaglesoars:
Well, that’s what I’m not sure about. Going back and looking at the various blogposts, I can’t tell whether she was stating that she was the AUTHOR of the letter and lied about the allegations, or she LIED in her email to the Senate Judicial Committee about being the author of the letter and then stated she only claimed authorship for attention.
All she needed to do was mail it in an envelope to a sympatico resistance feminazi a-hole in California and ask them to mail it for her to Kamala Harris, since Senator “Where’s Willie” had already proven herself to be an ally to whom truth isn’t a big factor.
@ The Barbarian:
She lied about the allegations.
Until I see clear evidence to the contrary, a ‘sympatico resistance feminazi a-hole in California’ is grounds for a warrant to examine all her electronic communications to look for a conspiracy. As in, she isn’t in this all by her lonesome ‘for the attention’.
@ eaglesoars:
Oh, I imagine she’s probably about to find out (a) that the FBI CAN confiscate all hard drives and all computer devices and (b) that there is NO such thing as a deleted email.
There’s some duplication on the exhibits in the memo. But there’s an incredibly long text message exchange that I’m dying to see what the context is.
DAMMIT!! I spent HOURS prepping for a mtg at 12:30 and they just called and said ‘sorry, we effed up the date, will need to reschedule’
GAH!!
@ eaglesoars:
Oooo, I hear that. I worked something like 30 hours of OT on a weekend preparing for a trial starting on Monday. At 5:30 on Sunday evening, the first-year associate came over to my desk and said “great news! We’ve settled!” All I could think to do was pick up a stapler, look him in the eye and say “RUN.”
@ The Barbarian:
but you still got the bill the hours, right? HA!
I need CW here.
SWIFT has implemented the Iranian sanctions protocol.
There is “all of a sudden” gold re-patriation going on.
Venezuela is one, altho they defaulted on a swap and lost some physical gold so they may be an outlier. But I’m seeing Aussie and ‘two others’ unnamed.
Are the SWIFT sanctions and the gold movement related? They need physical gold to make the trades?
just a wild hair thought
@ eaglesoars:
Oh hell yeah.
But I missed a fabuloso sailing excursion. I understand wine was involved.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/11/dnc-mob-leader-maxine-waters-says-trump-is-putting-target-on-her-back-hes-promoting-violence-video/
@ Gateway Pundit
You may think that Maxine is a rabble rouser, promoting mob action against Trump and his cabinet.
See, that’s where you’re wrong. According to Maxine, SHE is the real victim! Good Lord.
This memo is fascinating by the way.
Everyone involved with this should go straight to JAIL.
Do not pass go,
Do not collect $800,000 from GoFundMe.
Judging from the exchanges with the SJC, Avenutti KNEW his client was full of s**t. So did Katz.
@ RIX:
I’m not in SoCal, that being DG’s stomping ground, but I’d love to see Omar Navarro beat this beyotch tomorrow. I can’t say if there’s been any advertising as it would be local in L.A.
But I can tell you that the California GOP has not run a SINGLE ad for John Cox, who is running against Gavin Newsom for Governor. And Gavin is literally promoting the Sanctuary State we got the goodies for illegals mentality.
Oh, and by the way, did you know it’s TRUMP who is destroying the California schools? Not the classes full of non-English speaking kids or the deplorable excuses for teachers who refuse any type of professional continuing education or testing.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/11/frightening-video-from-mexico-shows-enormous-caravan-of-thousands-heading-towards-us-border/
@ Gateway Pundit
Take a look at this mass migration. It does not look like a pilgamage of starving philosophers yearning for a place to practice their art. Lot’s of young males traveling alone. What could go wrong?
@ The Barbarian:
This whole pathology of blaming Trump for everything is psychotic.
There is lots of Trump Derangement afoot in the land.
And yes when I was stationed in California back in the day public education was a mess then. Don’t see how that is Trumps fault, but clearly I am not enlightened.
@ RIX:
Betsy DeVos supports Charter Schools, who, along with home schooling, are turning out well educated graduates. This is all a pean to the California Teacher’s Association, who run the public schools and whose membership could not care LESS about the status of education in California as long a they have tenure and keep drawing those paychecks.
@ The Barbarian:
Cheat Sheet for you by the always wonderful Margot Cleveland
7 Top Takeaways From Grassley’s Report On Brett Kavanaugh’s Accusers
http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/05/7-top-takeaways-grassleys-report-brett-kavanaughs-accusers/
@ eaglesoars:
They lied. Every last damn one of them. And I am more than convinced that their lawyers KNEW they were lying.
The Barbarian wrote:
which I believe is called ‘suborning perjury’ which is grounds for disbarment
@ eaglesoars:
It sure is. Avenutti suborned Swetnick, but he most DEFINITELY suborned that “corroborating” declaration that he proffered – the one where the idiot said they knew BOTH Ford and Swetnick. I’m starting to think he’s just gone off the deep end and needs to be disbarred for the safety of his potential clients.
The Barbarian wrote:
sorry, anybody dumb enough to hire him is up for the Darwin award. But the guy pollutes the courts and needs to go.
Totally off topic.
Linkedin.
When I created a profile I thought the place was a waste of time. Actually I saw it as where persons unhappy with their current job posted their resume hoping another company would offer them a job.
Basically I thought it was a “Help Me, Employ Me!!!! ” site.
Well, I do not need another job. In fact no job would be ideal for me. Then I can live under a bridge in a cardboard box and feed pigeons with scraps I get from trash cans outside fast food places, and my two attack cats then pounce on the unsuspecting wild birds.
Converting trash to prime, succulent meat!
I digress, today a call into the office has now resulted in THREE companies with NO conflict of interest forming a possible, very lucrative, partnership.
Possum must take a shower tomorrow……
The Barbarian wrote:
When I was in high school I had summer jobs with the Chicago Public Scools. Absolutely the last thing anybody thought about was students.
I have only one election prediction.
The loser is: Oprah Winfrey.
She came out and campaigned for Stacey Abrams for Georgia Gov.
2 days later, Abrams got more support. From the Black Panthers. With long guns
Now if conservatives can be bloodied because the Proud Boys agree w/some of their positions, the same can be done to Oprah.
And will be. She will be associated with the candidate that was supported by militant Black Panthers that traipsed around with ‘automatic weapons’.
Good work.
I’m going to bed.
eaglesoars wrote:
You’d be amazed how many people go for high-visibility attorneys when my rule would be if my attorney’s on TV I don’t want him. Mark Geragos has lost just about every case he’s involved in. Smartest thing Michael Jackson did was to fire him and hire Tom Mesereau to defend him. Mesereau cares about his CLIENTS.