Totally sucks from a what-seems-fair standpoint. I also think it was fair enough for you to point out the substance users (provided you're not exaggerating), but the law is the law, and $54 sounds just about financially painful enough to make someone think twice about it.
I don't see any civil disobedience reason to go breaking it, either. I'd be more inclined to join the crusade overzalously enforced FRAP and "impeding traffic" laws, since they work against use of the bicycle in ways that range beyond recreation.
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The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets. Christopher Morley