Cyclist Pooping Starts Fire and Heels and Pencil Skirts Deter Bike Share According to People Unfamiliar With Bike Share

Big movements in history:
The Enclosure Movement
The Iconoclasm
The Industrial Revolution
The End of Motor Vehicle Hegemony.
Evidence of the latter movement - bicycle autobahns in Munich, the town where they build BMWs.
You are witnessing history.  So document it in less than 100 characters for all posterity.  Or just smile and ride.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/28/end-of-the-car-age-how-cities-outgrew-the-automobile?CMP=share_btn_tw

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/07/bike-autobahns-could-be-coming-to-munich/399410/?utm_source=SFTwitter

Everyday heros can be hard to spot.  But Bicycling Magazine found one.  A teacher in Kansas who got his whole class riding a bike.

http://www.bicycling.com/rides/get-someone-riding/kansas-pe-teacher-gets-entire-class-riding?cid=social_20150725_49699686&adbid=624942262309392384&adbpl=tw&adbpr=17900130

biketowork-tips.com

The Weekly Standard reported this week that women make up half the population of NYC, but only a third of bike share riders.  The writer blames pencil skirts and heels for the failure of women to ride bike share.  I quarrel with this sort of unscientific assessment.  Heels and bicycles go together just fine, unless you have to climb a super steep hill.  You can still do it in Ferragamos, but Christian Laboutains for whatever reason, can be slippery.  Pencil skirts have to pass the dropped change test before they are bicycle safe.  The question is, if you dropped some change, could you bend your knees and pick it up without the skirt tearing.  If you can, please go ahead and wear the skirt.  Ride with your knees in a bit, however.  Not that anyone can see anything, but you want to counter some people's overly fertile imaginations.
I hope my counsel removes any deterrence to women riding.  As to the vapid content of the Weekly Standard written by someone I suspect has no bike share experience, that I cannot help.
PS, fit and flare dresses are great for bikes, and skinny pants are ideal and chic.  Both look fabulous on bike share.
Could it be none of this has anything to do with why women don't ride?  Could it be that they are raised to be overly dear and to worry constantly about how they appear?  Hmm.  In an intelligent counterpoint, you might want to read this piece in Bicycling on 10 ways to get women into bike shops, whether they are in heels or flats.

https://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/bikeshare-bias_996600.html
http://www.bicycling.com/maintenance/bike-shops/10-ways-bike-shops-can-welcome-women

So we cyclists are on the karmic high ground.  Legally, however, we break the law in equal percentages to motorists, according to a survey.  I'd like to see how the survey was constructed and administered.  Could it be that some motorists tried to be "helpful" by giving answers they thought cyclists would give for themselves?

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-18/survey-finds-bicyclists-and-motorists-ignore-traffic-laws-similar-rates

A design museum is celebrating the bike boom with a new exhibit.  Hopefully it will show cycling as revolution designed to permanently change how people live, and not as some mere reflection of the zeitgeist that is as fleeting as fashion.
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/design-museum-to-celebrate-bike-boom-with-cycle-revolution-exhibition/018147

Bike helmets.  If you ride on the open road in the suburbs or the countryside, your risk of a head injury is pretty high compared to your risk in dedicated bike lanes on city street.  But did you ever think of mandatory helmet laws as a failure of policy?  That's how some people see it.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3048883/the-case-against-bike-helmets-and-for-better-bike-infrastructure

It gives a bad name to cyclists when one defecates and starts a destructive and massive brush fire.  I want this story to be false for any number of reasons, including because I do not want to picture events leading up to the conflagration.  But alas, it is true.  In attempting to burn his toilet paper, he failed to snuff out a small ember.  You get the picture, whether you want to or not.
http://mashable.com/2015/07/25/pooping-cyclist-starts-fire

So, if I see you in the bike lane, in heels and a pencil skirt, and you are on a bike share bike, I will consider you a good American, and we should both be very smug.
Elisa P.