Daily News Goes Point-Counterpoint in the Bicycle Culture Wars
In the pro-bike camp, a member of the Daily News editorial board; in the anti-bike camp, a former cabbie with plenty of selective stories to tell.
In the pro-bike camp, a member of the Daily News editorial board; in the anti-bike camp, a former cabbie with plenty of selective stories to tell.
I ignore any post more than 20 lines long, helps screen out the crazies.
yea, well Transportation Alternatives disagree, they’re levelheaded and are slowly getting the message across to both sides. Perhaps you could try your hot-head screaming type approach as a adjunctive therapy to the situation.
Also, dittoburg: “cyclists” don’t need to realize shit, anymore than muslims need to realize that a bunch of wingnut muslims pulled an ugly stunt a few years back or Catholics need to realize that the whole child molester thing kind of tainted the faith.
Statistics, or it didn’t happen.
“On Prospect Park West live yuppies who couldn’t tell Marty Markowitz from a borscht belt yukster – and couldn’t care less.”
First of all: he is a yukster. Second of all: do we know that the residents of PPW are that checked out of local politics? I bet they aren’t. Third of all, I think that PPW proper is too expensive for yuppies at this point.
“They’re the ones doing the biking,”
Really? It looks like a through-fare to me. People from one side using it to get to the other. And there’s a lot of Brooklyn on either side. I don’t have any reason to believe that the people using that bike lane all live on the stretch.
“… the ones with no tangible roots to New York …”
Bullshit. Again, I want numbers. Prospect Park West is full of condos and coops (ownership! that’s tangible to me). The Slope is expensive because the schools are good. Who cares about schools? People with children. Also tangible.
“… who might finally spend that year in France – where, of course, they will bike from patisserie to boucherie to the wineshop in perfect pastoral bliss.”
Sorry. Wrong demographic. If you can spend a year in pastoral bliss, you’re either a college student or you’re fucking loaded. Not a yuppie.
So yeah. The “pro” piece? I don’t buy it. As for the con piece, again, statistics or it didn’t happen.
“As the car has increasingly become demonized in our urban culture …”
Why is that? Maybe because actual data shows that cars actually kill people? Look! Numbers:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2010/pr030-10.shtml
“…run red lights, emerge bassackwards without warning down one-way streets, traverse sidewalks as the spirit moves them and generally behave as though the laws of time and space don’t apply.”
Bullshit. I’d like to see some numbers on this. Cyclists get ticketed all the time. Usually in BS stings at quiet intersections as far as I can tell. Meanwhile, what I never see from my bike is drivers getting tickets for letting passengers out in the middle of the street or city officials getting asked not to park wherever the hell they please. http://nyc.uncivilservants.org/
The problem as I see it is that cyclists get a bad image amongst everyone because of a minority percentage of cyclist scofflaws. However, the cycylists seem to be oblivious to this and think the only people who hate them are road-entitled car drivers (becuase they, no doubt, are the people that they have the worst interactions with).
Cyclists need to realize that most of the people in the city don’t own cars, yet a bunch of them are still pissed at cyclists. Its a public relations thing.
I thought this article summed up the divide perfectly.
Textpert, those “yuppies” ARE making roots here in NYC. According to the News article, I’m one of them. We’re buying homes. We’re involved in the community. We’re joining the PTA. And our kids are going to grow up with their parents beliefs framing their perspective. They will disdain cars as much as we do.
Cars are inherently unpleasant for everyone outside of the car itself. Like dinosaurs, the age of cars is ending. Markowitz (and all those like him) is nothing but a T-Rex who doesn’t realize the temperature is dropping.
“I thought I was reading an article in the Onion.”
Exactly!
The “pro” bike piece isn’t very pro. Just unnecessarily snarky.
okay, I’ll start.
“It especially galled me that much of this harrowing trip was conducted along bike lanes,”
So, he was upset that he had to ride his bike in bike lanes?
“Most – including a good percentage of those that have been added by Mayor Bloomberg – are a mere painted line abutting moving traffic.”
huh?? what do you want them to be? lit up in gold glitter!
“Regardless of how slightly they’ve altered the landscape of the city”
Slightly altered!?!?!?!? LMAO
“On Prospect Park West live yuppies who couldn’t tell Marty Markowitz from a borscht belt yukster – and couldn’t care less. They’re the ones doing the biking, the ones with no tangible roots to New York who might finally spend that year in France – where, of course, they will bike from patisserie to boucherie to the wineshop in perfect pastoral bliss.”
AND here is the problem. Yuppies with NO tangible roots to New York! I say to to France, take your “bone-shaker or “dandy horse” and don’t come back!
“Those who live in neighborhoods like Brownstone Brooklyn and Greenwich Village are younger and almost exclusively college-educated. They work behind desks; on weekends, they ride bikes and taste artisanal beers and dutifully work their shifts at the Park Slope Food Coop.”
“The older generation of Americans doesn’t see it that way: They live in not particularly glamorous neighborhoods like Bayside and College Point, Queens, where American flags far outnumber American Apparel T-shirts.”
oh boy!!!!
These two above are a doozy. I wonder where Alexander grew up? In America? His parents are an older generation that worked hard in a blue collar job and lived in a not so glamorous nabe?
I thought I was reading an article in the Onion.