Ghost Bikes for Liz Byrne and Angel Quizphi
Posted November 29th, 2005 by rancor
In the past several weeks members of VisualResistance have installed two more Ghost Bikes. Thus far this year has witnessed 21 deaths in the NYC bicycling community. Each loss profoundly impacts friends and family, leaving an indelible mark on the community that they were just a vibrant part of. Annie Byrne wrote us from Seattle and asked if we could install a bike for her sister Liz Byrne who was killed on Sept. 23, 2005.
Here is a just a little of what Annie shared with us about her sister:
As for Lizzie, she was the ninth of 13 kids in our family (ya, I know, crazy right? Irish Catholic ; ) ). Anyway, Liz was an artist from the very beginning, and it was a huge deal when she got accepted to Cooper Union and moved from St. Louis to NYC in the late 1970’s.
After college, Liz worked professionally as a freelance designer (advertising and packaging design), but she did that just to pay the rent. Her true passion was painting and photography, and she continued to paint until her death last month. Liz was by far the most left-leaning in a pretty liberal family. Man did she ever hate George Bush. Not that that’s so uncommon of course. ; ) She moved to Greenpoint in the late 80’s and lived there ever since. Liz was also a serious cyclist, never owned a car. In fact, she was a bicycle messenger in the city during her years at Cooper Union. I’d say in the past couple of years she was riding something like 40 - 50 miles a week. To your point about the politics of this, I’m sure my sister would agree wholeheartedly in the cause of making our cities safer for people who choose alternative means of transportation. For her, cycling had a lot to do with her concern over the US’s dependance on and politically abhorrent behavior with oil producing countries. (She emailed me this summer about a bumper sticker that said “What’s our oil doing under their sand?” That makes me laugh even now.) Anyway, though I never talked with her about the Ghost Bike installations, I just know she would have loved the intent, and such a vivid form of social protest.
