’RRHOID RAGE: To the victors have always gone the last word as well as the spoils. Even so, the way history chooses to remember Manuel Micheltorena, the onetime California governor after whom a key crosstown Santa Barbara arterial was named, borders on gratuitous indignity. To the extent Micheltorena — a governor during the last flicker of Mexican rule in the 1840s — is famous for anything, it’s a raging case of hemorrhoids so painful he couldn’t ride his horse off into battle. Instead, he was forced to lay perched on his side atop a covered carriage. The battle in question took place at the Cahuenga Pass, where Micheltorena was defeated by a crew of insurrectionists backed by influential Yankee meddlers who had not yet set about taking over the entire state. At the time, Micheltorena was on his way to chase the Yankee intruders out of Monterey. His failure to make it that far — let alone purge the Yankees — is portrayed as the last gasp of Mexican rule and, somewhat self-servingly, the inevitable necessity of the subsequent American takeover. Given the inexperienced ragtag crew under Micheltorena’s command — from whom the term cholo derives — it’s doubtful the governor’s infamous ’rrhoid rage had any bearing on the battle’s outcome. Still, the tale persists. What should be remembered about that battle instead was how Micheltorena figured out the probable outcome before wasting any human life and ceded the field. At most, only a few donkeys perished. Given the contemporary insistence on heroic futility and maximum body parts, there’s much to be learned from Micheltorena’s approach.
All this useless ephemera came rushing intrusively to mind Monday evening as I attended a community workshop on plans to create five much-needed blocks of new green-striped bike lanes along both sides of Micheltorena Street. It should be acknowledged I have both a dog in this hunt and an axe to grind. As an unreconstructed bipedal supremacist, I tend to be rabidly knee-jerk when it comes to bike lanes, “Anywhere and everywhere” being my motto on the matter. And as a daily bicycle commuter, I ride up and down the wonderfully round rump of the Micheltorena Street Bridge twice a day, to and from work. To one side lies the infinity of the ocean; to the other, the infinity of the freeway. All these years it has yet to get old.
City transportation planners and bicycle advocates contend the proposed Micheltorena Street bike lane will provide a critically needed missing link to City Hall’s antiquated bicycle master plan by creating a safer, more hospitable crosstown route that will entice many of the would-be cyclists out of their cars and onto their bikes. (Actually, the political history is a bit more complicated. Initially, city planners pushed the idea of the Micheltorena bike lane, but after a couple councilmembers asked some critical questions and none of the other five said anything one way or the other, staff concluded they’d been given clear direction to back the heck off. Accordingly, they did so. Then a month ago, members of the city’s Planning Commission and Transportation and Circulation Committee — responding to a packed house of bicycle advocates — insisted that the Micheltorena Street option be put back in. So while city transportation planners believe the proposal to be sound, they technically are not backing it.)