Sausalito councillors may limit bike tourism

CC BY 1.0 Lloyd Alter, from the Sausalito ferry after bike ride
When I first rented a bike from Blazing Saddles in San Francisco and rode over the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito, I thought I had died and gone to heaven, it was the most beautiful ride I had done in my life. There was a song in my head that I adapted to “I wanna live in Sausalito.” I continued to tour Mill Valley, then on to Tiburon where I missed the ferry by one minute because I had stopped for ice cream, and then pedaled back to Sausalito and caught the ferry there. I did the trip again with my daughter, although that time we just went to Sausalito, spent a lot of money on lunch and took the ferry back. It is a truly glorious experience that everyone should do. I never even took out my camera until I got on the ferry, hence this bridge shot is my only photo.
http://abc7news.com/video/embed/?pid=554603
Except if Sausalito councilwoman Linda Pfeifer has her way, you won’t be able to what I did. She says that there are too many of us and that the town is being overrun with tourists on bikes. She tells ABC “That’s 1,000 rental bikes a day coming into our small town, and it’s just unsustainable to have those numbers exponentially increase every year.”
Ted is right. There are thousands of tourists of all kinds coming into Sausalito on a nice day, most in big cars and taking up a lot of space in big parking lots that are all over. They spend money and have big trunks on their cars to put stuff, but cyclists spend money too, and have big stomachs to fill after the ride. They pay for their ferry ride home, too.
Councilwoman Pfeifer says cycling is dangerous: “We’re trying to ensure that people, who our our guests, will have good memories, not sad memories of bicycle accidents”. But perhaps there might be fewer accidents if she put a limit on cars, not bikes.
The ride to Sausalito is a truly transcendent experience that everyone should put on that horrible list. Councilwoman Pfeifer should try it and who knows, she might change her mind.
We have no choice but to drive into Sausalito. I have no issues with bikers who obey the street rules like cars. It’s the tourists on bikes, who don’t know CA bike laws, that I have the urge to run over. I have been walking there and yelled at them citing the various laws they just broke, as they almost hit me. Sausalito is a tourist town. It’s gorgeous and the city lives off that tourism, no matter how they get there.
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I didn’t know you hung out there! I went to high school in Mill Valley, lived in Muir Woods while a runaway, and only left due to attitudes as things got more crowded, in 1975….
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Wouldn’t say I hang out there, but I have been a dozen or so times over the years. It is simply beautiful and the little shops are so welcoming. With all the tourists though, prices are insane there. We rarely eat there, just like we don’t easy at Pier 39.
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I miss there.
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It’s an all day event when we go there. We used to go to downtown Santa Rosa for dinner when our friend owned a restaurant there.
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Old home, I miss it all. I used to ride my bicycle from M.V. to Mendocino, and loved all of those towns there. They were smaller back then. Next time you go take lots of pics, and share them!
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Will do. We should go before tourist season kicks in. My goal is to take more pics as I am out n about on the weekends.
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You can hide me in your bags, and take me too. My wife won’t like it, but somebody never likes something.
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Lol
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