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This is a work of fiction. If it weren’t a work of fiction, and if I were writing about actual events, the following might imply that I had foreknowledge of certain potentially criminal acts and could identify the perpetrators of same. And so, it is fiction.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Once upon a time, in a bustling metropolis not all that far away, there was a neighborhood bar. A modest place, it was home to only a few tables and chairs, and boasted none of the amenities of the flashier places down the street. It was stuffy and hot in the summer, and bands next door pummeled its walls with aggressive bass year-round. It was a curiosity for most who passed by its doors, but for those who stepped inside, it was home.

As the years passed, the little bar built a loyal following, and a community sprang up in its fertile, beery soil. Couples paired and split. Friends and strangers fed each other at potlucks. Birthdays and graduations were marked within its walls, all revelers welcome. Dogs milled about underfoot. Regulars died and were memorialized around its taps. And through it all, the steady stream of familiar faces filed to and fro through the little bar’s one door. They came on foot, on skateboard, and by car, but even more they came by bike. Sometimes there were rows of bicycles three or four deep, buffering the bar’s windows from the street. All along the block, bicycles were tethered to street signs, patiently awaiting their tipsy owners’ return. The bicycles, maybe more than anything, signaled that this place was a local’s place, a neighbor’s place. The happy faces inside called this little part of the city home.

And so it came to pass that one day, the long and clumsy arms of bureaucracy reached toward the little bar’s block. One day, all the street signs were hacked off at the knees, leaving a de-forest of three-foot-tall sign stumps poking out of mute concrete. For days, the spindly nubs stood in the sidewalk, conspicuously useless. And then even they were gone. Inexplicably, the City–capital C–razed every post on this one block that might be suitable for bike hitching. The traffic patterns didn’t change, but the traffic signs were suddenly deemed obsolete. On the little bar’s entire block, not one place was left to secure a bike while its owner sipped a brew with friends and neighbors.

Inside the little bar, the patrons speculated about the street signs’ demise. Plague was ruled out, as the street signs all around remained untouched. The systematic, stepwise manner of their removal likewise excluded tragic accident as a cause of death. It was bewildering, but it seemed obvious: the razing of the block was an act of aggression against the bicycles. Why else purge signage when their messages remained unchanged? The No Parking zones still prohibited stopping or standing; the Fire Lanes were still reserved for emergency vehicles. Why cut down these official reminders on just this one block?

For weeks, the little bar and its patrons adapted. Bicycles now waited for their owners blocks away, chained to some lonely post far from the reach of the bar’s lone neon sign. The beer continued to flow, and the drinkers still walked through the door to sip and talk and sip and talk. The denuded block didn’t change anyone’s behavior. But still, something didn’t seem quite right. Now the bar faced only lanes of car traffic, just like most other bars around. The hole where the bicycles used to be gaped wide, and the bar seemed to feel it. Without the bicycles, the bar had lost something.

One day, some bar folk came together to discuss how to close that hole. Being variously acquainted with the inept flailings of the bureaucratic arms, and the deafness of the ears to which they were attached, the citizens settled on a more direct approach. And so, on a particularly lovely fall day, certain of them donned orange safety vests (the better to fool the arms’ eyes) and set to work. When their hammer drill quieted, the block wasn’t so bare. In elegant curves of metal tucked up against the little bar’s wall, a simple rack welcomed back the bicycles. And, once built, they came. The next day, ranks of bicycles once again filed under the neon glow–road bike, mountain bike, commuter bike, they came. The bar community closed up a hole in the community bar, and the patrons are still toasting the feat.

One day the City might banish the rack to some scrap heap, in the name of preserving tidy sidewalks and civic order. Meanwhile, the village that congregates inside these walls flourishes, thanks in no small part to the untidy jumble of bikes arrayed at its door, ready to convey friends and neighbors and fellow travellers to or fro under some soft desert night.