Storing the bike away seems like a wrong turn

In the grip of decluttering mania, I requested a spot in my building’s bicycle storage room. I spent years as an avid bicycle commuter, but due to a variety of factors, my bicycle was spending far more time in my living room than the streets.

Rather than letting it continue to block my plants and disrupt the flow of my space, I told myself I’d be just fine — more than fine! — if I relegated it to a storage area.

Because all kinds of space is at a premium in San Francisco, a full year passed before any spots became available in my building. When I got an email last week, informing me that my request had gone through and that I needed to pay a fee, my initial response was amnesia.

Once I’d recovered my memory of the previous year, my second response was shock. What had I been thinking?

In my adult life, I’ve moved apartments 11 times without once resorting to longterm storage. I was inordinately proud of myself for this record, because let’s face it — renting long-term storage space is a special kind of failure.

It means admitting that you possess more things than you actually need. It also means admitting that you’re psychologically incapable of disposing of these things.

Instead of holding a garage sale or listing your excess possessions on eBay, you’ve decided to pay a monthly fee to let them collect dust in a grim, moldy space.

While there are far worse failures in life than contracting for a storage space, few of them seemed to me like they were so easy to avoid.

Now here I was, faced with the evidence of my failure. Making matters worse, the possession in question was my

bike. Everyone knows that your bike isn’t really a possession in San Francisco, it’s a statement of who you are (healthy, fit, efficient, nimble, clever enough to avoid traffic and free-spirited enough to take your life into your hands every time you walk out the door). Putting it into storage meant abandoning an entire idea about myself.

Never mind that I’d had very good reasons for putting my bike aside.

I was sitting on my bike at a Sixth Street stoplight a few years ago when I was slammed by a Department of Public Works truck making a wide right turn.

There’s never a shortage of people lounging around on Sixth Street, and a number of them reacted to the incident with outrage. They chased after the driver, and they shook their fists at him as I crashed to the ground.

Unfortunately, the driver sped off without looking back. So they ran into the street to collect me — and then, when I was able to stand up, they directed me to their preferred contacts in the Police Department. (Truly, Sixth

Street is a special place.)

None of us had caught the truck’s license plate number, so it wasn’t shocking that SFPD failed to resolve my report.

But the experience frightened me off of my bike for a while. And from my perspective as a pedestrian and bus rider, it looked as if the experience of riding a bike in San Francisco was changing in ways I didn’t like.

There are more bikes on the streets now — a lot more bikes, thanks to all of the programs to make loaner bikes and electric bikes available for rent. The additional congestion makes bicyclists safer, since drivers tend to drive more slowly when there are more bicyclists on the street.

But it’s still not safe enough, or we wouldn’t be seeing stunts like the human-protected bike lanes that have popped up on Golden Gate Avenue and Valencia Street. While San Francisco’s Vision Zero plan has made a big dent in the number of traffic fatalities over the past couple of years, most traffic fatalities here are still pedestrians and bicyclists.

Meanwhile, bike lane planning is stuck in an endless loop of community involvement meetings, and “emerging mobility” companies with money to burn have set their sights on gamifying our streets.

The bike lanes are awash with people on scooters and electric skateboards. Courier vans and commercial ridesharing vehicles use the lanes as temporary parking lots. There are more cyclists in San Francisco than ever, and there’s never been less respect for cycling as a form of mobility.

So I haven’t been riding nearly as much. If I agree to put my bicycle into storage, I had to admit that I would be riding even less often (another failure).

I took a deep breath and started typing. “Hi! How long would I have to wait for the next stall to open up?”

I’ve apartments moved 11

times without

resorting to

long-term storage.

I was inordinately

proud of this.