A plan to put bike lanes alongside Connecticut Avenue is inflicting controversy as soon as once more, after a newly elected ANC commissioner posted a photograph making an offensive gesture to an indication towards the lanes in entrance of a Cleveland Park enterprise.
On election night time, Commissioner-elect Hayden Gise tweeted a since-deleted image in entrance of Brothers Sew and Vac along with her Advisory Neighborhood Commission colleagues giving the center finger. The caption stated: “The ANC 3C Majority has something to say – we’re doing bike lanes. F’ the ops.”
Jose Ventura has labored at Brother’s Sew and Vac for 30 years. Over the final three a long time, repairing vacuums and operating the Cleveland Park retailer, he’s seen plenty of adjustments alongside Connecticut Avenue.
Now he says bike lanes will suck the air out of their enterprise by blocking foot visitors.
“They’re going to take away all of the parking that we have on the main street,” Ventura stated.
That’s why, he stated, the proprietor put an indication within the window just a few weeks in the past from the group Save Connecticut Avenue’s marketing campaign towards Mayor Muriel Bowser’s plan to add practically three miles of protected bike lanes alongside the busy road.
The proposal is applauded by bike advocates, however bashed by people like Ventura. And now the hot-button situation has landed some newly-elected native leaders in scorching water with their constituents.
The problematic submit additionally didn’t sit effectively with enterprise homeowners like Christopher Stadnyk. His father opened Frame Mart Gallery on Connecticut Avenue in 1968.
“You know what we’d like their help and the best way it seems to be, we aren’t getting it,” Stadnyk stated.
On prime of being towards the bike lanes, he stated the picture is a slap within the face.
“How privileged it is that they can saunter down to someone else’s basic establishment and give the bird and flick them off. No one here is going up to their house to flick them off,” he stated.
Gise didn’t reply to interview requests from News4. She tweeted an apology over the weekend, saying the message she conveyed was disrespectful to these with differing views.
“I think elected representatives should be listening to their constituency, more than posing for pictures,” Stadnyk stated.
