Who Paints Boston's Ghost Bikes?

To many people, ghost bikes are the thing you drive by without noticing, or the curiosity that catches your eye as you walk past, then forget. Cyclists can't help but see them, and remember.

The white-painted bicycles, erected at or near deadly crash sites, are one way that cycling communities worldwide channel their grief when a biker dies. It pays tribute to those lost. It reminds drivers and cyclists to pause, and to be aware. And there's too many of them around Boston.

Paul and Rebecca Larrabee-Albrecht are responsible for painting and preparing four of those bikes in the last six years alone, here in the Boston area.

Paul is about process, able to methodically detail the careful steps he takes to prepare each bike to properly memorialize the victims. Rebecca takes a different view, almost a mystical one — that ghost bikes are a way the fallen cyclist can "keep riding in the afterlife."

She knows that's not exactly true, but part of her wants to believe it, or at least to seek some consolation in it.

"It's a tribute to the person that died, and also for the friends and family members to have something tangible to help them in the grieving process," Rebecca said.

The couple's work started in 2009, when Tracy Milillo, 22, died in a bike crash on Longwood Avenue, just blocks from their Brookline home.

It went right to Rebecca's heart. The young victim was around her children's age at the time, and she felt compelled to do something.

She and Paul, cyclists themselves, had an unused bike at home. Paul stripped it down and added several coats of white paint; Rebecca put white silk flowers in the basket; and then they mounted it, quietly, near Coolidge Corner. In the years since, Rebecca has diligently adorned her own bike with flowers in a subtle, ongoing tribute of her own.

In 2009, the installation of ghost bikes seemed like an under-the-radar practice to the Larrabee-Albrechts. Paul said he saw them popping up around town, but didn't initially know what they were for. They were put up by friends, family, even strangers, like Paul and Rebecca.

"Most people don't know what ghost bikes are until they walk up and see the plaques (with the cyclist's name on them)," he said.

But the practice in Boston has evolved over the years, and now the installation of the white-painted bikes has become a structured form of public mourning. This Tuesday, more than 100 gathered in Porter Square for the dedication of a ghost bike for Bernard "Joe" Lavins, near the site of his death last week.

Less than 24 hours after a tractor-trailer hit and killed Lavins near Porter Square, Peter Cheung was getting to work, his first time painting a ghost bike (pictured in progress above). Cheung, an organizer for the Boston Bike Party's community cycling events, said it was more convenient for him than for the Larrabee-Albrechts to pick up and paint the donated bike this time around.

"Plus," he said via Facebook Messenger, "I want to give them a break from making them."

The Larrabee-Albrechts have played a central role in multiple previous dedications, called upon by the Bike Party's ghost bike committee to prepare the memorials. Paul is the one who does the work, as Rebecca says, "with a lot of love."

He walked Patch through his process — stripping the bikes down thoroughly, removing derailers and other rust-prone parts, installing new handle grips, applying a rust-proof coat of primer, then two coats of white paint. The wheels are done separately, and take a little more attention, he said.

Paul says he isn't thinking about the cyclist, per se, as he works. Instead, he's laser-focused on doing a quality job, making sure the paint and primer are layered well enough for the bike to hold up and serve as a fitting memorial for years to come.

It's a sign of respect, Rebecca said. There's also the chance that, as people become more familiar with the concept of the ghost bike, seeing one will make drivers and cyclists more conscientious of safety, Paul said.

In the six years they've been helping with the memorials, Paul and Rebecca have been pedaling back to visit their ghost bikes, tidying them up or adding another coat of paint where it's started to wear thin.

But that job will soon fall to someone else.

The Larrabee-Albrechts are soon moving to the Netherlands — somewhere, Rebecca says, that is much friendlier to cyclists.

Photo courtesy Peter Cheung