In the shadows beneath the overpass that runs above Logan Boulevard and Western Avenue, a spray-painted white bike is chained to a street sign a few feet away from where Tyler Fabeck was struck and killed by a car last month.
The bicycle stands silent sentry on the southeast corner of the busy intersection, flashing brightly in cars’ headlights as they pass. Known as a “ghost bike,” it was assembled by friends and family of Fabeck and is the latest addition to at least eight such monuments left by Chicago cyclists where they lost one of their own.
“In the biking community, we kind of look at it as the equivalent of a cross on the side of the road,” said Joshua Horsley, 29, who helped build the bike last weekend. “For friends that knew he rode all the time, even if they don’t ride themselves, they would understand.”
Fabeck’s death, combined with the deaths of three other cyclists in Chicago in the last eight months, has shaken the city’s rapidly growing cycling community and raised interest in grass-roots rituals like the ghost bikes and memorial rides.
On Wednesday night, four intersections where fatal crashes occurred were visited as part of the Chicago Ride of Silence, the local version of a yearly tradition observed by cyclists in cities around the world.
In addition to Fabeck, 22, the deaths also include Amanda Annis, 24, and Blanca Ocasio, 19, who were killed six months apart at the same Logan Square intersection, and Matthew Manger-Lynch, 29, who was killed at Lincoln Avenue and Irving Park Road during a February street bike race.
Wednesday’s memorial ride visited those three sites before ending at Western Avenue and Cortez Street, where the first ghost bike was installed in 2006 for Isai Medina, 50, the victim of a hit-and-run accident.
On Sunday, people who knew Fabeck gathered behind West Town Bikes, a workshop in Humboldt Park, to build their friend’s ghost bike.
After adding a memorial sign with Fabeck’s name, dates of birth and death and the phrase “Never Forget,” the bike was chained Monday night to a sign on Western Avenue. Howard Kaplan, who helps coordinate the building of ghost bikes with the families and friends of crash victims, said that some bikes are removed within days, either by thieves or city workers, while some survive for months or years.
For the builders of Fabeck’s ghost bike, the monument would send many messages. Jason Fabeck said he hoped his brother’s memorial would remind people to bike safely, while Kaplan saw the tragedy as another sad reminder of Americans’ over-reliance on cars and an opportunity for the cycling community to come together.
“It gives victims a voice, but it also helps the rest of us feel like we’re connected,” Kaplan said. “You don’t have to feel like every time a car passes you too close that you’re alone.”
