Sure, San Fransico has extremely high rates of crime, drug addiction, and homelessness. But a startup founder has identified the fundamental issue that prompted the social media meltdown:
The bike lane was blocked by an ambulance.
According to KTVU-TV, the video was originally posted on the account of @drivingmzstacey, the social media handle of Stacey Randecker.
In the video, which is a little under two minutes long, Randecker is seen having a hissy fit over the San Francisco Fire Department ambulance parked in a marked lane for bicycles.
“Here’s an ambulance in the bike lane. There is a business they can park in! They can block the car lane, they can block the nonexistent motorcycle park lane!” Randecker shouted in the viral video.
“I am not even half a mile from home on a rainy day. What the f***?! What the f***!?”
Then, with no trace of irony, she told the driver of an ambulance — a vehicle designed to park in an optimal location to save lives and stuff like that — that she was “killing” bike riders.
“Get out of the bike lane!” the woman exclaimed. “You’re killing us. Get out of the bike lane.”
“Unbelievable! They’re killing us! They’re killing us!” she continued.
The parked ambulance would eventually move to the other side of the road.
The incident reportedly took place outside a Room & Board furniture store on 7th Street in San Francisco just before noon on Thursday, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
Randecker told the British-based tabloid that while she sounded “crazy,” there were extenuating circumstances.
“I really admit I had lost it,” the 51-year-old startup founder said. “But I don’t think people understand what it’s like. You’re on a bike, in the rain, and the one path that you have is blocked over and over again in such a short amount of time.”
She also said she couldn’t have just ridden around it, considering white “traffic armadillos” — raised bumps that protect bikers from motorists — would have forced her to walk.
Randecker said that when she posted the video, she “didn’t even think about it. I got to the coffee shop where I was headed, I was still p***ed, and I just posted it, I didn’t even listen to it.”
The ambulance, Randecker said, was the fifth vehicle in a half-mile she’d seen blocking the bike lane. She claimed the driver of the ambulance was on her cell phone at the time of the confrontation.
“If it had seemed like she was stressed or whatever, I wouldn’t have posted it, I would have calmed down, but she was just texting, contrary to what the fire department is saying,” Randecker said.
Yeah, see, that’s the issue: Randecker’s version of the meltdown has been contradicted by the San Francisco Fire Department.
“Thank you for sharing this. The crews did not say they ‘were on a break’, they were finishing a medical emergency with a patient care document from a call at that location which is why they moved to the other side of the street rather than engage with you,” the SFFD’s media team said in a tweet, before ending it in the ultimate Bay Area passive-aggressive sorry-not-sorry manner: “Have a safe day.”
Thank you for sharing this. The crews did not say they “were on a break”, they were finishing a medical emergency with a patient care document from a call at that location which is why they moved to the other side of the street rather than engage with you. Have a safe day. https://t.co/3eI8mYU7Wk
— SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA (@SFFDPIO) December 29, 2022
You see, it’s common knowledge that most people have 1) extremely horrible days, 2) social media accounts, and 3) that we occasionally use the latter to document the former in ways that don’t always work in our favor, especially when the findings are widely disseminated.
A not insignificant amount of mercy should be granted to someone whose poor day is made worse by a case of overshares. In such circumstances, the occurrence is worth discussing since it shows a specific phenomenon, in this case, the fatally misguided priorities of Bay Area residents.
Randecker, however, seems determined to stand by her claim that this meltdown was wholly unnecessary because she was so certain the EMT had no justification for being in the bike lane.
She said that “the furnishing store had just opened,” that “the business’s parking lot was 20 feet away from where the vehicle was parked,” and that “most of the office buildings were empty due to the holidays.”
“If you work for the city and there’s an active emergency, good God, no I wouldn’t have said anything, are you kidding me? But to be texting on your phone and you work for our city and it’s not urgent – if it’s urgent, you got to do what you got to do, but it was definitely not urgent,” she said.
Oh all, in that scenario, Randecker obviously has more knowledge than an EMT with training. She is definitely aware of what was entered into the phone. And it’s obvious that she still believes that, despite how “crazy” she may sound, she had every right to tell the ambulance to move. There was no dire situation! If you get in the way of Stacey Randecker as she rides her bike to the coffee shops, you’re “killing” her.
One hopes that Stacey Randecker won’t be an indignant, entitled bicyclist who forces an ambulance to park down the road if and when she needs one, which, God forbid, won’t be anytime soon.
That may wind up being the lesson that everyone learns from this, given the distorted value structure in San Francisco.
