Sarah Goodyear wants your Kids on Bikes photos for her next Streetsblog slide show. Kids on their own bikes, kids in cargo bikes, kids on trailer bikes — show them what you’ve got. Tag your photos with “streetsblog” and “kidbikes” in Flickr. Get them to her by Tuesday, November 24.

The slideshow below is from the KidBike! photo pool at Flickr.

Dr. Christopher Thompson’s defense apparently will present a large pile of letters as character references to the judge during Thompson’s sentencing. Cyclist Dave Zabriskie has organized a letter writing campaign to help Los Angeles prosecuting attorney Mary Stone give her own evidence at the level of interest and outrage among cyclists nationally about Thompson’s assault in Mandeville Canyon.

Murph has already posted the letter he sent. I’ll compose and send my own letter shortly after I post this note. Please feel free to leave a link in the comments to your own letter.

Related:
* Doctor in cuffs: What’s the lesson?
* GUILTY all seven counts.
* Those cyclists had it coming.
* LAPD arrests Thompson.

Malcolm McMahon, a student at City College in San Francisco, had his bike stolen. He was upset enough about it to talk to police about a bait bike program run and financed by a volunteer posse.

More –> Bike vigilantes: Victims strike back.

It doesn’t look like McMahon’s “Concerned Cyclists Community Program” has gotten anywhere yet and his original Craigslist posting asking for volunteers has expired.

I don’t go up into San Francisco often, but when I do I see literally dozens of bicycles locked very poorly. It’s unfortunate that the newbies who don’t read bike blogs are the ones who often get burned.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency reports that their Market Street experiment to restrict cars has, so far, resulted in faster Muni service along Market. Bicycles are now 75% of traffic on Market Street, up from 60%. More at San Francisco Examiner.

The infamously sassy Veronica Moss of the Automobile User Trade Organization (A.U.T.O.) would be horrified, I’m sure, by this evolution of a busy motoring corridor, just like she is by the pedestrian friendly transformation of Times Square in New York City.

I don’t have an especially outgoing personality, yet I generally have little problem approaching complete strangers when we’re on bikes, talking with them and often enough shooting photos of them. I have little in common with many of the bike riders I see on Caltrain and the bus, but I know about their families, where they work, where they live, and what’s going on in their lives. I even know some of the train conductors and bus drivers by name, where they grew up, and their retirement plans. This guy — who I met at a Caltrain meeting — even rode his bike all the way over the Santa Cruz Mountains for my wife’s college graduation party. This guy has shown incredible kindness to me and my family.

I’ve assumed this was part of the magic of public transportation: instead of the forced anonymity of the single occupant vehicle, we have the social interaction of a lively public space. The old timers help the newbies, we share food and drink on the train, and sometimes might see the impromptou onboard bike repair clinic. A few of us are even joking about a rolling Caltrain onboard bike film festival some day, which might be a good way to weed the non-cyclists off of the bike car.

Murph describes the Caltrain love as he writes about the 49ers victory over the Chicago Bears last week.

I am of the Caltrain ilk, where everyone helps each other out, we share a bond formed through numerous Caltrain disasters that have forced us to finish our commutes like the Israelites heading out of Egypt, where we rely on each other. The cyclists form a paceline and head to Millbrae BART. Those without bikes gather ’round the twitter and call cabs to split to various destinations, or offer rides in their own cars when a loved one comes to the rescue. This all seems very natural.

In his latest blog post, Tom Vanderbilt (author of Traffic), though, mentions old sociology studies that observe the “civil inattention” on subways — the movie version of public transportation where your fellow riders are all strangers who don’t talk with one another. We have nothing in common, so we avoid all social interaction.

Or is public transportation an opportunity to meet people and even, as Vanderbilt concludes in his Slate article, a way to fall in love?

One recent study conducted by officials at the Paris Metro—which looked at “missed connection” ads placed by urbanites looking for love in the city—found that the Metro “is without doubt the foremost producer of urban tales about falling in love.” The seats closest to the door, it seemed, offered the best opportunities for falling in love with the proper stranger. “The Metro is not the emotional desert, the social vacuum, that we sometimes believe it to be,” observed the chief of the Paris Metro.

If you ride transit, what do you think? Do you avoid eye contact with the same group of strangers your ride with everyday? Or have you made friends among your fellow bus, train and subway passengers? Does it make a difference if you ride a bike or not?

I’m reviewing the Sanyo Eneloop bicycle — an electric assist bike — for Momentum Magazine. Watch for the review in a month or two.

I can’t say much about it here yet, but suffice to say that my wife absolutely loves it. She’s always been of the opinion that electric assist is cheating, but here she is trying it on a grocery run and having a blast.