“Finding Hell on Wheels” (9/29), purportedly one man’s account of “how biking in the District has hardened my heart,” was pure drivel. Apparently, this was Paul Ruffins’ gang-initiation piece, in which yet another soft-headed, emotionally confused, ambitious African-American journalist is initiated into the Washington City Paper by performing a print execution on the character of his “brothers.”

By Ruffins’ own admission, he has “chased and caught up with fools who had messed with [him] before.” One assumes that in his encounter with these “feral brothers” he in some way attempted to similarly assert himself and promptly got his domesticated ass chumped. Ruffins’ admission that he regularly challenges drivers on the road demonstrates both his stupidity (challenging cars and drivers on a bike is inherently stupid) and his emotional instability (“chasing and catching up with [motorists] who mess with him” suggests a pretty serious impulse control problem).

Ruffins’ warning to “homeboys” in which he tells us that white people are building cages reveals his deep-seated hostility toward his “brothers”—apparently a prerequisite for writing for the City Paper. Welcome to the gang.

(If the article is really just about biking and D.C., why spend so much time generalizing biking problems in Washington, D.C., to African-Americans?)

Le Droit Park