A plan to install bike lanes along Connecticut Avenue is once again causing controversy, after a newly elected ANC commissioner posted a photo of him making an offensive gesture at an anti-lanes sign in front of a DC business.
On election night, Commissioner-elect Hayden Gise posted a since-deleted photo in front of the Sew and Vac brothers with her Neighborhood Advisory Commission colleagues giving the middle finger. The caption read: “Most ANC 3Cs have something to say – we’re making bike lanes. F’ oops.”
Jose Ventura has worked at Brother’s Sew and Vac for 30 years. Over the past three decades, repairing vacuums and running the Cleveland Park store, he has seen many changes along Connecticut Avenue.
Now he says the bike lanes will suck the air out of their business by blocking foot traffic.
“They’re going to take away all the parking we have on Main Street,” Ventura said.
That’s why, he said, the owner put a sign in the window a few weeks ago. It was part of the Save Connecticut Avenue group’s campaign against Mayor Muriel Bowser’s plan to add nearly three miles of protected bike lanes along the busy thoroughfare.
The proposal has been applauded by bike advocates but criticized by people like Ventura. And now the hot-button issue has landed some newly elected local leaders in hot water with their constituents.
“You know what we need their support for and it seems like we’re not getting it,” Ventura said.
Business owners like Christopher Stadnyk didn’t like the problematic post either. His father opened the Frame Mart Gallery on Connecticut Avenue in 1968.
On being against bike lanes, he said the photo is a slap in the face.
“How privileged that they can go down to someone else’s base facility and give them the bird and send them away. No one here goes to their house to send them away,” he said.
Gise did not respond to interview requests from News4. She apologized on Twitter over the weekend, saying the message she sent was disrespectful to those with different views.
“I think elected representatives should listen to their constituency, more than pose for pictures,” Stadnyk said.
The group behind the signs started an online petition that has already gathered nearly 2,400 signatures.
As for what the bike lanes will actually look like, that won’t be known until the project moves into its design phase, which should begin in the spring.
