Portland Sports Radio Station Tweets Video of Hosts Blocking “Jerk Bikers” From Their Parking Lot

A video posted to Twitter from Portland sports radio station 1080 The Fan (KFXX-AM) showing three station employees using planters to block a path used by cyclists has attracted criticism.

In the video, posted Sept. 5, the employees—who allege that "jerk bikers" are biking through their parking lot and not the bike path—are using black pots and ceramic planters to block the path through the lot.

Radio show host Jason Scukanec, who is on the left in the video, shows the camera a paper sign that asks cyclists to ride via the bike path and not through the parking lot, as well as a reserved-parking sign that has been taken out of the ground.

"The fine bikers of Portland are clearly respecting our authority here," Scukanec says.

Halfway through the video, the employees also discuss methods of blocking bikers.

"I think clothesline wire," Ropp says.

"Just strangle them? Just strangle them all?" says the cameraman.

In the replies to the tweet, people said that the video threatens violence against bicyclists.

BikePortland, a Portland bicyclist-news blog, first reported the story.

"These statements are deplorable, especially when you consider many people hear them while driving in their cars just feet away from the extremely vulnerable road users that are being targeted," writes Jonathan Maus of BikePortland. "It's also worth noting that in addition to last month's incident, three men were arrested in 2018 for purposely stretching a wire across the I-205 bike path with the intent of hurting bicycle riders."

Jason Scukanec and Isaac Ropp host Primetime, a weekday sports show on The Fan that runs from 3 to 7 p.m. Scukanec played football as an offensive lineman for Brigham Young University from 1997 to 2001.

"It was a joke," wrote Scukanec in a Twitter direct message to WW. "In the video we also talked about using badgers and snakes to block off our parking lot. [Our engineer] has been trying to…  keep bikers out of our lot for weeks for everyone's safety and we've been joking about it. It was 100 percent a joke. Maybe a bad one but still a joke. Nobody wants to hurt anyone, nobody is saying to hurt anyone. It was a tongue [in cheek] in a dumb video for Facebook. I'm a bike rider myself I respect bike riders and I repeat nobody wants anyone to be hurt."

On Tuesday, Sept. 10, The Fan tweeted a minutelong video of Scukanec telling Portland bicyclists and BikePortland that none of the three in the video wanted to hurt bicyclists.

"No one here at the station, not me, not Robb — maybe Mike Lynch," says Scukanec, turning the camera toward Lynch, who co-hosts the shows Sports Sunday and The Hot Corner. "Mike's evil. No one wants anyone hurt. No one is promoting any sort of violence. Everyone was joking. We poked some dog poo with a stick. We made some jokes. Apparently someone got offended by it. Gotta love the outrage culture. No one's serious about it, so to all of you people on bikes, we love you. We support you. Please don't ride through our parking lot, but even if you do… we won't hurt you. We don't want anyone to hurt you. How about that?"