Drive Like You Care, #SanFrancisco

It is incredible, and unshakable, how a simple, yet thoroughly preventable traffic impasse can spiral out of control between two people too stubborn to let it go and too committed to keep it goin’, even when they find themselves heading in the same direction and keeping ridikolous pace with each other. And how it can reverberate through the hours.

Look, it’s pretty fucking simple: If a pedestrian is already crossing the road – if they can see how you’re griting your she-devil teeth in undeserved indignation (lady, just because you look like you do it don’t mean you automatically get to play the agrieved party) and, if they can see you clenching your steering wheel with dem red-gloved hands and release ’em in real time to offer undeservedly indignant hand gestures – then, they👏🏽have👏🏽the right of👏🏽way (bitch, I don’t care if the light behind me right now is flashing red or red, already…I am walking exactly where I’m supposed to be, and I wouldn’t be crossing the street when it’s not my turn because I know how to behave in public). Read up on it.

Me with my extensive vocabulary will tell you so every fucking day of the week. Do not try to shift the responsibility on someone who is halfway done crossing the street on foot.

Drive like you know how to drive, #SanFrancisco. Drive like you know better. Like you care. There’s no need, ever, to thrust your car onto a pedestrian. Relax. You will get there – you’re in a friggin’ car.

In a day and age in which we are all under some sort of attack or another, let’s try to remember where our rights end and someone else’s begin. Set a daily reminder, OK. Words to live by, and to falter by, too. So how ’bout we don’t not make one another feel unsafe, especially while operating heavy machinery.

Lest you wanna get read. Loudly. Publicly. Fruitlessly, but bitch if I ain’t gonna let ya have a taste.

Don’t ruin someone else’s and your own day.

I know it’s not nice to call names, but since that’s the mood of the country and what me and my people have been getting, do not be surprised when we give back what we’ve been getting. What I’ve been getting. I see everything. When I’m out there walking the city to get to where I’m going, that’s how I have to be. Vigilant. How we have to be. And not only for the hoofbeats but, apparently, for one another because some of us can’t be bothered.

If you are in a car, you have tons of materials protecting you (in theory) and speed on your side, so there is zero fuckin’ need to try to outpace or to outmaneuver pedestrians or to make them feel unsafe.

Safety first, bitch. Showing such disdain for a shared road tells me you’re over it. That the as-little-as-possible mentality is real. That you don’t care. So I feel zero qualms telling you to – and here I paraphrase Blanche Devereaux – eat shit and die a hasty death, trash.

Every day is a challenge. #SpareaLittleChange – for your own sake, too. Don’t be so contemptible. Because yo ya no me callo la boca, and I’ll keep it going into the middle of see you next Tuesday.

I’m getting loud. I’m getting louder. I have to since y’all are not paying attention.