Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood is a bike fan, and he doesn't care if that makes him look like a hipster, because he doesn't know what the word means.
In an interview with the Huffington Post, LaHood made some perfectly reasonable, and indeed heartening, statements about the importance of bike lanes:
And as head of the Department of Transportation, LaHood noted his “concern” over the “way that bikers are treated when they are on streets.”
“I’m concerned that people that are driving cars have a level of respect for bikers, and that’s the reason that we have these bike lanes,” said LaHood. “Bikers have as much right to the streets as anybody driving a car and I am concerned about [their safety]."
HuffPo, out of a deep commitment to ironic distance, asked LaHood if he didn't think his "heartfelt defense of bikers" sounded like "the musings of a run-of-the-mill hipster." Apparently nobody told HuffPo that hipsters don't do "heartfelt"? Well, nobody told LaHood, anyway, because he answered "I don't even know what that term means."
The man is 65 and lives in nearly hipster-proof D.C., so this was probably genuine befuddlement. But, like Gothamist, we'd like to imagine he was scoffing. As if only hipsters give a crap about bikes! What about the firefighters, and the politicians, and the celebrities, and the giant sperm?
