Taxicab v. Bicycle

Idea. T-shirt line. Taxicab v. Bicycle. Expound: a t-shirt line devoted to the eternal battle between these two outcasts of the streets. Outcasts? Or truest of patrons? Of the earth, it has been said.

But what of the road.

The taxicab driver: not breaking-even until around the 7th hour of driving, typically picking up assholes who are too worried, shy, drunk, or lazy to take public transit. The taxicab driver: sitting all day, back aching as his right calf grows progressively stronger than his atrophied left, counting the minutes until he can make a stop at his favorite toilet or White Hen, hoping that he doesn't get an asshole, praying that he gets a tip. Listening to yet another cell phone conversation.

The biker: pursuing a harmonious understanding of a planet in which one can get from point A (Lakeview) to point B (Randolf and Dearborn) by the sweat of his brow and the technological ingenuity of gears and spokes. The biker: dodging side mirrors and ignoring impatient honks as the roads provide and then do not provide designated lanes (into which open driver's doors will still fly). With every single stop sign he carefully glides through -- and let us be honest, most bikers slide through most stop signs -- he questions: would a police officer really waste time on me? It is a perilous existence -- the least sheltered of all commuters.

It only follows that these two honorable souls, the biker and the taxicab driver, these people of the asphalt, would share a fondness for one another. A bond. A brotherhood of liked minded pilgrims.

And yet, or so the myth goes, on the eighth day the taxicab driver Cain killed his biker brother Abel by pulling -- without warning -- intoa bike lane on Clark to drop off or pick up (the scrolls have deteriorated over time) a silly band of Depaul sophomores with their freshly intoxicated legality. The naive Abel thought himself invincible: he had his head light, he had his back light, he had his shiny reflectors, his helmet. No laws of the Department of Motor Vehicles nor the laws of mortality itself would apply to a fine young non-polluter like himself. And so, as he gazed at the beast that blocked his path, he decided, "Ah, hell. I'll plow right through it."

This rest, my friends, is historical fiction. Bloody, ugly, historical fiction.

Daily on the streets of Chicago, the war continues.

It is a subtle war.

Most commuters misunderstand it as a mere annoyance, that kind of annoyance complete strangers share when they pass on the streets and dislike one another's hair cuts, or shoes, or gait. Even the bus driver -- that lofty profession dared only by the patient and the desperate -- does not fully understand. He does not fear the biker, because us his enormity; and the biker does not fear him because of his lackadaisical sway from one stop to the next.

But the uneasy feud between the taxi and the bike is one of great risk and one of great worry for both.

In the end, there can, of course, be only one.

And it is time to pick sides.

It is time for action!

(and/or t-shirts)