June 2, 2010

Naked Justice Rolls On

Update: a local news station picked up the story... as its top story of the night? Really?

Guess this shit is important to more people than we realized. Expect this kind of advertising free journalism to come equipped with a "donate" button.



A year ago a sweet bike party was going down in the humble burg of
Vancouver, Washington. "The Couve" was full of fun loving bikers and people enjoying the awareness of their bodies in motion... and booze, we were consuming booze.

But then, just when everything seems so perfect and all things are right with the wold tragedy struck. As a naked biker turned the corner he heard screams and cheers from the sidewalk, so he took 3 quick lefts and came back around again to see what was up...
"why are all these people on the sidewalk at midnight in Vancouver?" we are paraphrasing).

Turns out a gathering of teens going to a club were totally excited by a 40 yr old biker.

WHAT? DID YOU CATCH THAT?!? As if we needed more proof to the health benefits of cycling, you can still get encouragement from the most cutthroat of demographics even into your 4th decade, provided you live right and are traveling under your own power.

Cops, who were reported to be on the scene to deal with some sort of teenager drug overdose saw the naked biker, pulled him over and then, after the biker had stopped his bike, the cop decided to run into the cyclist... for good measure we assume.

Read the various stories at the Vancouver's daily paper, the Columbian or on BikePortland.org

Defendant Matthew Vilhauer said naked biking fun way to socialize with other cyclists, but he also believes nudity draws exposure to the vulnerability that cyclists feel sharing the road with vehicles. He said he has been hit, so he feels strongly about promoting bicycle awareness.

This begs the question, did the cop actually see the naked biker? And chose to hit him? Was the cop incapable of operating his car safely? Possibly his emotions got the better of him... if so shouldn't a sit down with the officer to make sure that latent homophobia is not present, cause no one wants a loose cannon on the streets.

It is terribly frustrating that the officer has the power to commit vehicular assault without fear of repercussion. Such is the nature of police work these days. Of course most cops DONT want to hit a vulnerable road user, and then there are bad apples who make every other cops job a living hell.

Way to fight the good fight Matt!

4 comments:

  1. Rev. Phil:

    The alleged "contact" between the officer's patrol car and Vilhauer's bike disappeared from public discourse months ago. There were rumors that someone in the crowd recorded the incident on a camera phone, but I have yet to see it.

    As for vilhauer himself, he seems to fluctuate between claiming the incident was a First Amendment protected act or just a "silly" stunt.

    Either way, the incident and its fallout tanked the idea of putting on an official WNBR in Vancouver this year. The idea was to have Vancouver's WNBR at the end of Pedalplooza to compliment Portland's ride.

    The hung jury voted 5-to-1 to aquit, so 8#% of the jury agreed simple nudity is not indecent.

    ReplyDelete
  2. well the annony post does beg a lot of questions. Some of which were addressed, thank you matt. But not everything posed by annoy was mean spirited.

    Can a silly stunt also be protected by 1st amendment? to which we ask, can a stilly stunt NOT be protected by the 1st amendment?

    what we have seen in the jaded halls of the internerd is that people want to believe that the actual truth is somewhere between the 2 sides. We have been taught that with a long history of our 2 party system that the middle is safe and probably more fair. But what is frequently the case is that one side understands this behavior and makes the most outlandish claim possible and the other side is duped into believe that just being truthful is going to make the difference.

    the same phenomena is happening with politics and with countless financial negotiations right now. the only difference in this case is that many of the people sharing their opinions dont really have any stake in the outcome and are just relying on the safety of the middle.

    The middle is where you get squeezed, dont trust it outright.

    ReplyDelete
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