John Corcoran (1962-2024)

Critical Mass Boston rides in memory of John Corcoran on Friday, 27 September 2024.

The latest local death of a cyclist, following Kim Staley, and Minh-Thi Nguyen.

"Bicycles deliver the freedom that auto ads promise." 

View fullsize

Photo: Peter Cheung

I rode with the Critical Mass Boston ride on Friday. Felt the feelings. It was a joyous expression of community on two wheels, backlit by the sad fact of another cyclist’s death. Let me excerpt my piece from my Cambridge Day gig:

Nothing fires up the machinery of reflection like loss and grief.

If you identify as a human being, and not simply a driver trying to rip through Cambridge as fast as possible to claim your next parking spot, then you feel something like loss and grief at news of the death of John Corcoran on September 23.

The Newton resident was a husband, father of two Harvard students, and last Monday he was a cyclist who was killed by the driver of a black Mercedes SUV along Memorial Drive. Killed on a sidewalk, of all places.

You feel grief with greater or lesser intensity in proportion to your powers of empathy and social proximity to the space of loss. Maybe you knew John Corcoran personally. Maybe you know his family from time spent together at school, at the office, or church. Or maybe, like me, you have no point of contact other than being a local and understanding the paradoxical draw of cycling.

I’m a cyclist. “Avid,” as they say. Not so much the spandex-and-shades variety these days. If I had more free time I’d love to go on purely recreational rides. But I don’t have that free time. I’m more like the lunch pail contingent, who depend on transportation by two wheels to get a job done.

What I was thinking in my moment of grief is the following: this job I do at Cambridge Day, writing up a weekly music column, would be impossible without a bicycle.

How do I get to the vast majority of the music shows I cover? By bike. For at least three reasons: time, expense, and joie de vivre.

In short, I get where I’m going faster, cheaper, and with greater joy by bike than any other form of transport, be it car, train, or bus. Stand on the sidewalk along Mass Ave. during rush hour as $250 bicycles whiz past $75,000 over-sized luxury cars and trucks stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic and you’ll see what I mean.

As long as this column relies on first-hand observation of the local music scene (and I can’t imagine any other way to write it), I’ll be relying on my two-wheel transport. And I am acutely aware of the dangers that come with sharing the road with car and truck drivers who don’t want to share the road with you, and let you know as much through constant verbal abuse, aggravated honking, parking in the bike land and roadway tactics that serve no other purpose than to bully, harass, and endanger cyclists.

All that and I still want to get on my bike to see a show? It must be true what they say: "Bicycles deliver the freedom that auto ads promise."

I do love riding my bicycle through the streets of Cambridge. But if a driver hits me one of these days and I go the way of John Corcoran, or Kim Staley, or Minh-Thi Nguyen, please don’t say “he died doing what he loved.” Say, he died “needlessly.” Don’t use the passive voice or euphemisms to describe how reckless drivers murder cyclists and pedestrians. Put the murderer in jail. And use your political voice to build a future without predictable and preventable traffic fatalities.

I read back through that and see edits I wished I’d made, but I’ll leave the piece, in the words of embattled NYC Mayor Eric Adams, “perfectly imperfect.”

---

Photo Gallery