A graphic reminder for city's riders

Lee Peters didn't know Gordon Riker personally, but when Peters heard that the 22-year-old was killed April 4 while riding his bicycle along Huntington Avenue, he wanted to do something to "honor the person and remind other bikers that it's so scary out there."

Riker, a recent Massachusetts College of Art graduate, was killed at the intersection of Huntington and Forsyth Street when he reportedly slid under the rear wheels of a dump truck after a taxi clipped the back of his bike.

The following Sunday, Peters, a 1997 Massachusetts College of Art graduate who lives in Mission Hill, marked the site of the accident with a "ghost bicycle," a bike painted white that he chained to a post and to which he attached a small, stenciled sign telling passersby, "A bicyclist was struck here."

"It's a work of art," he said in an interview last week, emphasizing that the display is "really about the person rather than about me."

"Ghost bicycles" have gained momentum as symbols of a movement since 2005, when Visual Resistance, a group of about a dozen artists and activists, started creating similar memorials for New York City bicyclists killed by vehicles. That same year, a Seattle group mapped out 140 accident sites throughout the city and placed memorial bikes at 40 of them, after spending several months collecting online submissions from local cyclists. The displays are intended to serve as a reminder of the tragedy and as a quiet statement supporting a cyclist's right to safe travel.

Peters spread the word about the memorial on a website for local bicyclists.

Two other people showed up, he said, including a friend of Riker.

Of the display, Peters said he's "not sure that a driver would know what it is. The sign on it is certainly communicative, but I think they're driving too fast to even notice.

"I think a biker would probably take it to heart and understand that something serious happened at that location, and partly my intention was to signal to the biker to be as careful as they can, because when accidents happen, they're pretty serious."

RICHARD THOMPSON