Photo by Sarah Anne Hughes.
It’s a club no cyclist wants to be a member of. But once you’ve been wronged by the streetcar tracks, which the city says will allow the movement of actual streetcars carrying actual passengers by the end of this year, you’re in for life.
While membership in this brotherhood previously included scars, a story and maybe some medical bills, there’s now also a t-shirt.
The shirt is the brainchild of Amy Friedman and Sarah Waxman, both victims of the streetcar tracks. Friedman says her crash happened after the 2012 H Street Festival. “I fell directly into the street, and thankfully no cars were immediately coming towards me,” said Friedman, a 30-year-old self-employed CPA, via email, adding that she didn’t suffer any major injuries. Waxman, a 28-year-old children’s yoga and mindfulness teacher, crashed on her way to the Kingman Island Bluegrass & Folk Festival the following April and was left with a smiley face-shaped scar on her knee.
“We met up there and she was pretty banged up,” Friedman said. “I was waiting in line for a beverage when I saw a girl wearing an “I heart SF” t-shirt with an image of a biker falling off his bike, and I couldn’t believe the coincidence. I ran back to tell Sarah and it turned out that the girl wearing the shirt was actually a friend of hers. At that point we decided, we had to create something like this for H Street.”
The result was a design by Jeff Abelson, a friend of Friedman’s who works as an art director at an ad agency, which shows a cyclist flying over the tracks as a streetcar that doubles as the “H” in H Street travels down the corridor. “Making the ‘H’ the face of the streetcar” was an idea from Friedman’s fiancé, Chris Naoum of Listen Local First, she says.
Friedman and Waxman first sold a handful of shirts at the Kingman Island festival in April — “Once we got to the festival, were too busy having fun to focus on selling t-shirts” — and later at a DC Bike Party in May, where Friedman says they were a hit. They’re now on sale at Dangerously Delicious Pies on H Street NE for $15.
“Since then we have been contacted through word of mouth and have sold them to individuals here and there,” she said. “We still have some to sell individually and love that Dangerously Delicious is selling them as well. [It’s] so cool to have them available for sale at a store in the neighborhood they represent.”
Unsurprisingly, cyclists love the shirt, while Friedman says non-cyclists “have a harder time piecing it together.”
Friedman, who lives in Petworth, says she still rides on H Street NE, “but I am always super careful. Probably too careful.” She’s also still a fan of the streetcar, despite her accident.
“It will make the neighborhood a bit more accessible and also it’s a fun dimension to add to the city,” she said. “I also really like that it is a historical aspect of DC that is being re-created.” Still, Friedman says she hopes the city will consider using a panel system called veloSTRAIL to make the tracks safer for cyclists: “Let’s get on this D.C.!”
