Hey, You!

I was sitting at an Internet terminal filling out a job application at the Central Library when two ladies in uniform, “security ambassadors,” approached me. One had a card in her hand listing the applicable library rule that I had violated. I was kicked out for “emitting an odor that interfered with the use of the library.” I am a bicyclist. That is my chosen method of transportation, and naturally when I bike somewhere, I sweat and then emit an odor. This policy is prejudiced against bicyclists and pedestrians, people who use their bodies to move about the city. In a time of dependence on foreign oil and global warming, it is absurd for a public institution to punish people for using alternative transportation. A number of my friends, local bicyclists and traveling backpackers, have been kicked out of the library for “emitting odor.” Hey, you, library security ambassadors: How long before it’s illegal to smell like a human being?

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