Thought for Food

neighborhoodr-eastvillage:

You’re doing it wrong.

Scenes from the 1st Avenue Bike Lane.

Hello and welcome to my commute. This is a fact of life, I suppose — the natural order of New York City is the use of all available square footage, legal or not, neighborly or not. I’m pretty sure if you walked around with an empty stroller  for long enough someone will put their kid in it. That’s hot property right there. Make a bike lane, trucks will use it as a parking lot, skateboarders will use it to practice tricks, and Freelance Waste Management Technicians will use it to extend the life cycle of aluminum (that last I approve of, heartily; thanks, guys!).

So you get good at spotting a bottleneck from a block away and you drop compunctions about weaving into traffic to avoid them. Someone in my lane? Sorry, Mr. Taxi Driver, you gots to move over.

The people I have zero patience for, who I’d run off the road if I had a little more fight in me, are the bikers without helmets (and there are a lot of them). How am I supposed to take you seriously? No, you cannot merge in front of me. This lane is for bikers not suicidal maniacs, thanksverymuch. Now give that bike to someone worthy of its wheels and go home and knit me a helmet coozie. Winter is coming and I intend to bike straight through it.