Ghost Bikes

TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2009

A cousin to the Roadside Memorial is the Ghost Bike, or Ghostcycle. Ghost Bikes are memorials to those killed while riding their bicycles, and are placed at the scene of the accident. Ghost Bikes began is St. Louis and have spread as both memorial and protest, all over the world.

http://nymag.com/news/features/47819/

In June 2005, Kevin Caplicki was biking down Fifth Avenue in Park Slope when he came upon the body of cyclist Elizabeth Padilla, who, minutes before, had been killed by a delivery truck. Caplicki belonged to the street-art collective Visual Resistance, and at its next meeting, they decided to construct a memorial for Padilla. The group took a spare bike, painted it white, and chained it to a sign post near the accident. The installation no longer looked like a bicycle as much as the negative space where one should have been, as if it had been cut out of a photograph by an X-Acto knife. It became New York’s first Ghost Bike.
The idea can be traced to Patrick Van Der Tuin, a St. Louis bike mechanic who in 2003 installed a Ghost Bike at the site of an accident he witnessed in the neighborhood of Holly Hills. (The victim ultimately survived and befriended him.) After Van Der Tuin and his friends created fifteen more Ghost Bikes in the St. Louis area, the project was featured in Dirt Rag, a national cycling magazine. He was inundated with e-mails. “Some people were adamant that this was a bad idea,” Van Der Tuin says. “They thought that we were discouraging people from cycling.” But others were moved by the spectral sight of bicycles repurposed as tombstones. Ghost Bikes started to appear in Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh and have since spread to 35 cities around the world. “I had no idea it was going to be a viral thing,” says Van Der Tuin. -from New York Magazinehttp://nymag.com/news/features/47819/

http://www.streetsblog.org/2006/12/05/eric-ng-memorial-bike-ride-this-saturday/

Eric Ng Memorial Bike Ride This Saturday
by Aaron Naparstek on December 5, 2006
There will be a memorial bike ride for Eric Ng, the cyclist killed by a drunk driver on the Hudson River Greenway last week. Details below. Also, here is a note from the Visual Resistance blog. VR are the guys who make the "ghost bikes:"
I've been making ghost bikes for strangers for a year and a half. Eric's is not the first that made me cry, but it's the first that made me hurt. A big group of Eric's friends spent the weekend mourning, talking, and, finally, making. We made a ghost bike for him on Saturday and sunflowers on Sunday. Eric's memorial plaque reads "Love & Rage” no resting in peace for this rock star.
We are planning for a memorial ride this Saturday, December 9th, meeting at 1pm in Washington Square Park and then proceeding to the site of Eric's death. Non-bikers can head straight to the site, on the West Side bike path near Clarkson St. Please bring flowers (especially sunflowers), sidewalk chalk, paint, whatever you want. There will be a memorial service after the ride with music and a slideshow, and a party later that night.

-from streetsblog http://www.streetsblog.org/2006/12/05/eric-ng-memorial-bike-ride-this-saturday/

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/40414-Kelly-Wallace-1983-2007/?rel=inf

Kelly Wallace, 1983-2007

Kelly Wallace was killed on May 6, after her bike was hit by a car in a crosswalk at the intersection of Cambridge Street and Harvard Avenue, in Allston. Near that spot, a stark white “ghost bike” stands in her memory, adorned with handwritten notes and a profusion of blooming flowers.http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/40414-Kelly-Wallace-1983-2007/?rel=inf

http://www.ghostbikes.org/photos?page=1

Here is an explanatory excerpt from the Ghost Bike site:

Ghost Bikes are small and somber memorials for bicyclists who are killed or hit on the street. A bicycle is painted all white and locked to a street sign near the crash site, accompanied by a small plaque. They serve as reminders of the tragedy that took place on an otherwise anonymous street corner, and as quiet statements in support of cyclists' right to safe travel.

The first ghost bikes were created in St. Louis, Missouri in 2003, and they have since appeared in nearly 75 cities throughout the world. For those who create and install the memorials, the death of a fellow bicyclist hits home. We all travel the same unsafe streets and face the same risks; it could just as easily be any one of us. Each time we say we hope to never have to do it again -- but we remain committed to making these memorials as long as they are needed.http://www.ghostbikes.org/

San-Zhr: Ghost Town

4/02/2009

http://www.craigfergusonimages.com/2008/01/a-return-to-the-san-zhr-pod-village/

The difference between Mythology and Religion: What we believe is Religion and what someone else believes is Mythology

Much of what we do and refrain from doing in life is based upon our conception of what happens to us when we die.  The rationale behind where we live, how we life, how we form our families and maintain our familiar relationships,  why we go to war, or resist war, where and how we deal with our dead, and where we lay them to rest, are based, in large part, upon our beliefs about the afterlife.  

In nearly every culture, and since the beginning of recorded history, we have had special places to lay our dead to rest.  These are special places that are not usually shared by the living.  Until the Middle ages, in Europe the dead were always buried outside the city walls.  Later as proximity to the relics of saints was seen as instrumental to salvation, the dead came to be buried within the church, and in the church yard.  The advent of cemeteries, much later, continued the separation of the dead from the living.   Although this age old taboo is now unravelling, with people keeping the cremated remains of loved ones with them in their homes, and scattering them in every kind of place, for many in the world, keeping the dead away from the living is a basic and important rule.    

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cypherone/2960082494/in/set-72157600694356865/

Photo by Cypherone

In large part, the historical separation of the dead from the living had to do, in many traditions, with the idea that the spirits of the dead could be malicious, or at least bothersome.  The dead should therefore, be placed away from the living, and in some cases, steps were taken to trick them into going away, or staying away from the rest of us.

I present this idea to provide perspective on the following story.  In Taiwan, there is an abandoned housing project where no one ever came to live, because it was feared that the spirits of dead construction workers were there.  On it's face, this may sound to us to be a silly superstition.  However, if we think back to how many things we do because of OUR ideas about the afterlife, the rationale behind this ghost town in San-Zhr might make as much sense as the tenets requiring baptism or forbidding murder. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cypherone/2960082494/in/set-72157600694356865/

Photo by Cypherone

Here is the story of San-Zhr village, related by photographer Craig Ferguson (many of the photos in this piece were taken by Mr. Ferguson as well).

Just before arriving in Sanzhi, there’s an interesting site hugging the shoreline - an abandoned hotel/apartment complex that looks like somewhere ET might call home. I first heard about this a couple of years ago, but it was only recently that I was able to get out there...

http://www.filemagazine.org/projects/taiwan/

San-Zhr Pod Village by Craig Ferguson

Accounts vary on the origins of this complex, and indeed, as to whether it was meant to be a hotel development or a housing development. Apparently, it was constructed in the 1960s and included/was to include a dam to protect it against sea surges, floors and stairs made of marble and a small amusement park. The site was commissioned by the government and local firms and there is no named architect.

http://www.filemagazine.org/projects/taiwan/

San-Zhr Pod Village by Craig Ferguson

 Local papers at the time reported that there were numerous accidents during construction which caused the death of some workers. As news of these accidents spread, no one wanted to go there, even to visit, and the project was subsequently abandoned. The ghosts of those who died in vain are said to still linger there, unremembered and unable to pass on. The complex was left in its unfinished state because no amount of redevelopment will bring people to the area due to superstitions about ghosts, and it can’t be demolished because destroying the homes of spirits and lost souls is taboo in Asian culture.  When I was there, I met four young university students who were passing by and stopped for a look. They didn’t want to get too close to the buildings for fear that the ghosts would take them. They told me there was “heavy evil” in the buildings.

San-Zhr Pod Village, by photographer Craig Ferguson,

http://www.filemagazine.com/galleries/archives/2008/03/sanzhr_pod_vill.html

http://www.filemagazine.org/projects/taiwan/

San-Zhr Pod Village by Craig Ferguson