Show me the Legalese: Rob Anderson's latest project? Our Bike to Work Day took us down the bike lane on Alemany Boulevard -- one of the last bike lanes striped in San Francisco before the injunction against the city's Bicycle Plan. (The lanes were striped in April 2006; the injunction granted in June 2006.) So we wondered, of course: on Bike to Work Day two years later, what is procedure buff and injunction mastermind......

We were there through the bitter season--the mud, the rain, the cold, the mid-afternoon sunsets. With dripping, grime-streaked rain gear covering our heels and neckties, we rode our rusting, filthy commuter bikes to the Caltrain station all through the winter, a sweaty, soggy bunch, smelling of mildew and Tri-Flow. And now, with the arrival of the easy, sunny days of spring, you’ve joined us. And we’re happy to see you, really. It’s Bike to Work......

A young girl riding her tricycle in her Pittsburg neighborhood on the 1000 block of Muir Creek Drive was inadvertently run over by her own mother yesterday afternoon. According to the Gate, Rachel Lopez was struck by her mom's car at 4:30 p.m.. It seems her mother "realized she had run over something, got out and saw her daughter pinned under the right front tire." Yikes. The young girl later died at Sutter Delta......

Pedaling to the train station this morning, we noticed a few fluorescent additions to the asphalt: bright stencils of monstrous creatures calling attention to the various pits and potholes of Townsend Street. We would have snapped our own picture of the menacing neon jaws and claws, but because we were booted from the 8:44 bike car twice last week, we preferred not to dawdle. There are more pictures on Flickr and video on NBC11's......

This monster pothole lurked on Townsend Street in the shade of the ramp connecting 6th Street to I-280. Under normal circumstances, we find the shrill complaints of motorists about pavement quality to be rather tedious. To motorists, we self-righteously sneer, "Why did you buy that SUV, anyway? If you want smooth roads, move to the country. Or Texas." The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition takes a broader view: poor pavement quality isn't just an inconvenience,......

Slate magazine claims to have found the "stupidest bike lane in America"... down in LoCal, of course. We here at SFist like to think that a bike lane is a bike lane, and that a short bike lane is still better than no bike lane. And no bike lane, of course, is what San Francisco has added since the City tried to short-cut environmental review and got nabbed by anti-bike gadfly Rob Anderson, whose......

Image: Adobe Tour Tracker Pro cyclist and former San Francisco resident David Zabriskie (shown above leading the chase in today's stage of the Tour of California) has announced Yield to Life, a non-profit dedicated to making roads safer for cyclists. This is good news for San Francisco: the most recent issue of the SF Bike Coalition's newsletter, the Tube Times, revealed to us that Bay Area cyclists feel that roads should be safer! The......

Ride your bike at the San Francisco Zoo without fear of ejection or arrest on the BikeAbout tour. ...

Bike valet parking is great -- but what we really need is a bike valet, someone to lay out our freshly laundered cycling duds, to provide discreet, expert service and adjustments to our gleaming bicycle fleet, and to suggest the appropriate bicycle for any given occasion. The good news: today’s used-bike-tube-ribbon-cutting marked the official opening of Warm Planet Bicycles, a free bike parking service and shop specializing in commuter needs, located by the San......

According to this sign in the Powell Street station, one of the 16 posted bicycle rules has been stricken from the record. Taking a companion bicycle on BART is now 1/16th less hassle, a savings of 6.25%! After close scrutiny of the redacted rule, we thought we could make out the word "confiscated" - we are certainly not sorry to see that word disappear from BART's bicycle-rule vocabulary. That is, if it has indeed......

After SFist (as well as a few others) specially called for this barrier, it has done gone up. Finally. Rejoice! Way back in early '07, we reported that after January's motorist/cyclist accident, "17 drivers on eastbound Market made the illegal turn onto the freeway during the 61 minutes from 8:00 to 9:00 AM ... [t]hat's a lot -- about one illegal turn for every two cycles of the intersection's lights." Ack. But will the......

Today's rally at City Hall in support of Bike Plan implementation...

The SFBC will have its annual fundraiser party this Sunday at 6:00 PM...

Our ride home from the Caltrain station takes us through the strange, anarchy-prone intersection of Division, 10th, Brannan and Potrero streets. The other night, as we gasped for air while sprinting for the green light on our 40-Year-Old Virgin-style commuter bike, we had an unfortunate encounter with a bug. Bitter experience tells us that when a cyclist feels the splat of a gnat on the back of the throat, there is little to be done......

News of a new law expanding the requirements for bicycle lighting. ...

Free bike light giveaway today only. ...

Photo of cars backing up on Fell Street...

The best sports, we say, combine beauty and ridiculousness, and that’s why cycling is a favorite of ours. But, like many others in the Bay Area--too many, it turns out--we’ve recently discovered cyclocross, a form of Pure Sweet Hell. Others have written eloquently on the attractions of this "bike-riding amalgam of roller derby, steeplechase, mud wrestling, and ballet" -- so let us just say here that, as a spectacle, it combines all the beauty......

Critical Mass bike ride turns 15 years old today...

A dicsussion of the illegality of iPodding while driving or cycling...

Photo of what may or may not be evidence of underground stolen parts bicycle workshops in San Francisco....

And now for another big city's mildly retarded view of San Francisco: Too much ink has been spilled and too much bandwidth used to praise/bury Critical Mass in length. Now the LA Times gets in on the action. We'd love to break it down for you, but it's a long article and we don't bike or drive; more or less, it's stuff you've heard before. So, we present to you some choice quotes from......

Hey, everyone -- once again, it's your contributions that have put the sheen on the apple that is SFist. Check out your editors' picks for Top 5 comments of the week -- and enjoy!...

On Saturday, the roads of west Marin and southern Sonoma counties were rife with those two-wheel vermin known as cyclists. Nearly 2500 of them. No, Critical Mass didn't make a drunken wrong turn on Friday night. This was an impressive gathering of the tribes known as the Marin Century.

You guys know what this is about by now: our readers' commentary is the sheen on the apple that is SFist, and we like to recognize those whose input has amused, educated, or otherwise titillated us every week. Our choices for last week's Top 5 follow....

Ahhh, du Galibier. Switchback after switchback of asphalt hell. Hell if you're on a bike, but heaven if you're watching the world's best cyclists do the work. For 18 kilometers, a ribbon of pain and lactic acid wobbles and weaves its way up the grotesque, treeless slopes of the great French kingmaker.

Yesterday in Stage 9, between Val-d'lsere and Briancon, the boys on the bikes rolled themselves up not only les col du Galibier and du telegraphe, but also the Beyond Category (HC)-rated Col de l'Iseran climb. Three rated climbs, 159.5 kilometers, more than 4 hours. Lots and lots of opportunities for General Classification (GC) contenders to attack and try to put time into their rivals.

Judgement day.

American sports fans, do you know what you're missing right now? -- the magical, the legendary, the completely captivating Tour de France. Yup. In fact, the Tour has already reached its first rest day after eight straight days of racing.

Let's face it: for cycling fans, the Tour is the pure Nirvana. Thanks to the Versus (formerly OLN) network, US fans (all 12 of them) of skinny tires, incredible bike handling, and human suffering can watch cycling every day for three straight weeks. It just doesn't get any better than this. It's like the NCAA tournament, the US Open, the NFL playoffs, the NBA Finals, and the World Series all rolled in to one. Every night -- every goddamn night -- cycling fans can kick back in their recliners (or on their stationary trainers), drink in the international flavor, and let the joy of cycling wash over them. Every night! For three straight weeks!

A hearing at City Hall on Monday, 7/9/07 regarding Octavia Blvd....

Photo and discussion of the news conference concerning ped and biker safety. ...

Let's face it, the great American cycling novel has yet to be written (not lately, anyway). And what cycling-related literature there is falls into one of three categories: inspiration, celebration, or perspiration. If you want to read about a one-legged mother of six who bicycled across the country to raise awareness about the papilloma virus, or Lance Armstrong's latest deep philosophical musings, or Chris Carmichael's detailed instructions for sprint repeats and heart rate monitor training, the world is your oyster. But if you're looking for compelling, engaging prose that explores the relationship between literature and cycling, well you're basically stuck watching Breaking Away for the 20th time (yeah, we know it's a movie).

Fear not for cyclerature though, because into the breech have stepped editors Paul Diamond and Erich Schweikher with a little ditty they like to call Cycling's Greatest Misadventures, a new anthology of original nonfiction cycling stories from Casagrande Press.