The madness over bicycle infrastructure that continues in NYC keeps me thinking...not really good things. Saul Bellow once said "it's as if the country was stood on end and whatever wasn't screwed down properly rolled into southern California." Wrong coast, I know, but I can't get that image from my head when I think of NYC these days. The latest is
this commentary by CBS 2's Marcia Kramer who has exposed the proposed bike lane on 2nd Ave as a thoroughfare for terrorism. After all it does go right past the Israeli consulate, and everybody knows that people capable of hiding from the CIA for years and aiming 727's at office buildings would need a bike lane to find the Israeli consulate. Ignoring the idea that a city that size might be the source of better content for a journalist, this is really one of the more sane things I have heard from this mess. After all, this city, which can barely afford to pay its police and firefighters in the current fiscal crisis, is staking out Central Park for speeding bicycles and ticketing women for riding in skirts.
Here in the Midwest, I have been hearing objections against cycling infrastructure for years. People citing environmental damage or property infringement is common. A couple of my favorites were the protests that "it will become a major corridor for drug trafficking" and (my all time favorite) "gypsies will use it to kidnap children from our yards!" Fearing that a bicycle lane would become an international funnel for al Queda is relatively sane.
Saul Bellow was wrong, it's not just southern California
they're everywhere,
everywhere...they're everywhere!
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