BOSTON — Cyclists gathered at Boston City Hall last week for a somber vigil for Louisa Gag, the 36-year-old city transportation planner killed by a recycling truck on Tremont Street. Hundreds turned out in yellow "Streets Are Safe" shirts, cradling the sunflowers that have become the memorial symbol for cyclists killed on Boston roads. They came to mourn — and to be told the mayor had heard them.

Michelle Wu, who once employed Gag as her City Council policy fellow, stepped to the podium and vowed to crack down. Blocked bike lanes, blocked crosswalks, double-parking — her administration would step up enforcement, she said. She was assigning two senior aides full-time to the city's streets cabinet. Protected infrastructure was coming.

Cyclists in the crowd called it what they thought it was.

They had a reason to laugh. As Wu delivered her pledge, a City of Boston Mayor's Office Special Events van — official plates, city seal, "SPECIAL EVENTS" lettered down its side — was parked in a bike lane in front of Government Center, right outside the plaza where Wu was speaking.

The Reddit thread's original poster — who snapped the photo and posted it to r/bikeboston with a caption noting the van was not an EMS vehicle — witnessed what came next. The post drew nearly 400 upvotes within hours. When the van's driver eventually opened his door, he nearly hit a cyclist who was already swerving around the parked vehicle. The driver hadn't checked his mirror.

The scene captured a pattern that Boston cyclists said is anything but new.

"City hall uses the sidewalk on Merrimac as auxiliary parking," another commenter wrote in the top-voted follow-up. "That alone shows they aren't serious about enforcing parking/traffic laws." Another Bostonian responded that a household member — a white cane user — is regularly blocked on the same sidewalk by City Hall staff vehicles. Photos had been sent to Boston's transportation department, streets department, and disability commission. "They didn't seem to care."

By the end of the thread, cyclists were organizing to build a public database of city-vehicle parking violations, one commenter openly billing the effort as a way "to embarrass Mayor Wu."

Four thousand Bostonians signed the "Enough is Enough" open letter to Wu after Gag's death, asking for the same enforcement Wu vowed at the vigil.

Three days later, a Mayor's Office van was in a bike lane.