ArcaMax

"When you see this, do you think it's just fun? Or do you think that it's illegal?"

Um ... fun?

Wrong! "It is definitely the latter. Whether it's fun or not."

So begins a Facebook post by the Aspen, Colorado, Police Department. And what is this possibly fun but definitely illegal activity?

The photo shows a ponytailed girl riding a bike with a younger friend or sibling on the handlebars, or maybe it's a ponytailed mom riding with her child up there. They're on a suburban sidewalk, presumably in Aspen, with a wide strip of grass between them and the street. No one else is around. And yet ...

"Colorado law says that two-up riding on a single seat bike is against the law, and of course, bikes are not allowed on sidewalks. These 'Sidewalk Sallys' could potentially hurt themselves or others."

Now, if you had to Google "Sidewalk Sally," you are not alone. (Because it's not a real term. A daytime talk show seems to have coined and used it once.)

The police post goes on to tell Aspen's citizens not to be Sidewalk Sallys and end up with a "ticket or a trip to the emergency room," both of which seem like rather dramatic denouements for an activity that has been popular since the beginning of biking. Speaking of which, the post is signed by the Aspen Police Department, "protecting the Wild West on two wheels since the 1880s."

Which either means they have been using bikes for a century and a half, or they've been ticketing bicyclists all that time.

The post garnered over 300 comments -- far more than the department's other posts -- the general tenor of which was:

"Tell me you don't have real crimes in Aspen without telling me you don't have real crimes."

"'kids never go outside anymore!' Proceeds to police every single thing kids do."

"lol yes. Our children should really be playing IN the traffic. Not away from it. Got it."

That one really resonated. My mom MADE me ride on the sidewalks, so it's not so "obvious" to all of us that biking (not e-biking) on the sidewalk is a crime.

But what most came through is a fed-up-with-being-micromanaged streak, evident in comments like:

"So basically every kid since the bicycle was invented has broken the law!"

"Go find a crime to deal with or reduce your force."

"The more laws you make, the more police you have to hire to enforce new laws, the more police you hire to enforce those new laws, the more criminals you make. This pattern doesn't stop one day. It keeps growing."

All true. But there IS a cause for hope. In 2022 (with the help of my nonprofit, Let Grow) Colorado passed a Reasonable Childhood Independence law saying childhood independence is good and it is NOT illegal to take your eyes off your kids. In fact, here's Colorado Gov. Jared Polis discussing it with Bill Maher.

Any state that sensible should be able to convince Aspen that bikes, kids, sidewalks and sharing go together like sunshine and ski resorts in the summer.

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Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a contributing writer at Reason.com, and author of "Has the World Gone Skenazy?" To learn more about Lenore Skenazy (Lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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