Mary Hansen of Stereolab and Moonshake has died in a bicycling accident in London.
This is terrible on all kinds of obvious levels. I will say that I haven't feared for my life on the streets nearly as much as I have being a pedestrian in London. Being American (and Californian to boot) it took me at least a week to get used to which direction I needed to watch for oncoming cars, and even then, I never got over the fact that pedestrians have no right of way on the streets, so, if a car is bearing down on you, you're expected to run out of the way (in California things are decidedly different, and while you might get yelled at, and shouldn't assume you aren't going to hit, drivers are still pretty curteous considering). When I'm in cars in London I'm always amazed that they aren't smashing into one another at every intersection. Part of the problem with driving in London is the feeling that all the cars are small, and the feeling of fear is reduced because everything else is small as well; there's almost an element of novelty in driving. Lights turn yellow before they turn green which gives cars a running chance. This is fun when you're in a car but terrifying when you're a pedestrian crossing the street. Two years ago we saw a cyclist get hit in Kensington and were told there had been three other people hit by cars that day. Somewhere I have a snapshot of an a-frame set up by the police on Waterloo Bridge requesting people who witnessed a pedestrian hit and run to call with information. I didn't see anyone get hit this year (by a car, anyway; I did see some girl bleeding all over Tottenham Ct. Rd. one night after a fist fight) but that's probably by chance.
Rant over. Mary's death is sad and might prefigure the end of Stereolab, or at least Stereolab as we've come to love them over the past ten years.