A call for contributors to turn a cranky eye on their surroundings brought forth a photographic rant from Va-nu-pieds, France Revisited’s fetish photographer, who’s fed up with the sight of bicycle cadavers on the sidewalks of Paris.
There’s a certain kind of cyclist who thinks of himself as such an independent urbanite that he doesn’t have to pay attention to traffic regulations. He breezes through red lights with a ting-ting of his bell to let pedestrians know that he’s too free, too green and too self-sufficient to have to have to stop for them.
And the haphazard way in which he locks up his two-wheels to posts and fences is reminiscent of how car owners parked on the sidewalk before the crackdown (and posts) circa 1990. Except that the car owners would eventually move their rusting vehicles, whereas cyclists will leave their bikes agonizing on the street for all to see. Admittedly, some of those bikes have been vandalized—their seat or a wheel stolen, their wheel run over by a car or twisted by intentional fate, etc.—and are then abandoned by their owners.
Still, fed up with the sight of bicycles that no longer roam, that agonize before our eyes, that clutter the sidewalks, Va-nu-pieds says: “Ras le bol de ces vélos qui ne roulent pas, qui expirent sous nos yeux, qui encombrent tout….” as he lifts his camera and his foot to rant.
All photos © 2013, Va-nu-pieds
Also see The Cranky Parent, The Cranky Host, The Cranky Urbanist and The Cranky Foreign Resident.