Happy holdays everybody. And happy new year as well, for that matter.
After a lengthy sabbatical from blogging, I have decided to return to posting about shit I find here or there that piques my interest or earns my ire. Of course that presupposes my having mountains of cool stuff worth looking at which (while perhaps I do now) is not always the case; especially after divulging it in large heaps on a daily basis.
Since my last post, I've had a life filled with both tumult and elation, though (for better or worse) more so of the tumultuous.
I spent Christmas in Washington State with the folks and opened some really great gifts between traipsing around the verdant wilderness of the northwest, which I must add, is just as foggy and moist as one would expect it to be.
The non-gift highlights of that trip were finally getting to see some of Seattle, including the Pike St. Market and the space needle.
Worth mentioning is the EMP/SFM. While its collections were totally rad, the "architecture" in which it was housed was bile-eliciting to say the least. I found it humorous that the first thing people said to me when I told them I wouldn't discuss my distaste of the building with them was, "It's supposed to look like a smashed guitar from above."
Fortunately for Frankie, it's adjacent to the space needle so that perspective is available, though I find it odd that one would design a thing to be viewed from another thing altogether.
This is certainly a topic for the Philosoraptor to tackle at some future date.
Anyway, returning to the city (new yorkers are so insular that they feel it unnecessary to preface 'city' with 'new york'), I turned my attention to several pressing matters that required my immediate attention, most importantly, the rapidly advancing first race of the [road] season.
Noting that my bicycle was in dire need of some sexification, I proceeded to spend countless hours at "work" perusing competitive cyclist (the most verbose and simultaneously selectively stocked bike-parts website), posting inane questions to bikeforums, and fantasizing about all sorts superfluous bells and whistles for my ride (as a figure of speech only, every roadie knows that bells are needlessly heavy and can easily be replaced by whistling.... with one's lips, that is).
Anyway, I'll save the bike-upgrade discussion for a later date, just wanted to say, "Hello, I'm back."
If you live in Brooklyn and ride a bicycle, it is likely that Bedford Avenue is not only convenient for you, but downright necessary. That's why when the city had 14 blocks of it ripped up from Flushing Avenue to Division Avenue last week, pretty much everyone on two wheels got pissed.
A lot of strong words and sweeping accusations were made as to the reasoning behind the bike lane's removal, but in the 'end' nobody's gotten a straight answer from either the Hasidic community through which the lane passed, or any city agencies (It should be noted that the stretch of removed lane lies squarely within the portion of Williamsburg most densely populated by the Hasids) directly responsible.
The silence of the City, to say the least, is rather troubling. I for one don't like knowing that the government (at any scale) has the blatant disregard for its own citizenry to refuse to explain what it is doing, especially when what it is doing has a dramatic and adverse effect on its "green" ambitions and public safety.
For better or worse, hundreds if not thousands of cyclists ride this road every day to access both manhattan via the bridge and North Williamsburg; so it is to be expected that some bored hipsters would get it in their heads to retaliate with the only weapons they have -- art supplies and oodles of free time.
Rumor had it that these "gorillas" (whatever that means) were stopped by the Hasid community watch (Shomrim) who then notified the NYPD, who then arrested those involved. Of course, that rumor came from a Hasidic blog and turned out to be completely false. While both the Shomrim and NYPD showed up, nobody was arrested and nobody was even issued a summons. then again, nobody ever said Hasids held ideals of virtue and truth too high...
Despite what I just wrote, I don't like to pass judgment on a people before I know all I can about them and their customs. I have spent a great deal of time trying desperately to understand the mentality of Hasidic Jews and why they do the seemingly illogical and anti social things they do...
Unfortunately, I have had little to no luck on this front, thanks in large part to the tradition of strict isolationism they practice; so I am left only with speculation. However, there are a few things one can surmise peering in on their society from without:
First, Hasids have a deep-seated belief in "god" (aka yaweh), and must be so convinced both that he exists and that they are his chosen people, they have absolutely no fear of death, which is evidenced by the alarming frequency and heedlessness with which they jaywalk on every roadway that may stand in their way.
What's even worse is the fact that cavalier attitude toward very dangerous traffic sets an extremely bad example for their children, who flit in and out of the roadway with even less care than do their parents.
This is annoying because their principal argument for the Bedford Bike lane's removal is safety for their children, which given their pedestrian habits (pun very much intended) is complete bullshit. Their other argument is that girls on bicycles riding through their neighborhood dress in too racy a manner for their taste, and that for the preservation of their chauvanistic culture, the lascivious display of ankles and shoulders must stop, lest it give their women some crazy idea that they have a right to make decisions for themselves.
Secondly, Hasidic Jews openly dislike anyone falling into their "goiyem" category, and are socially encouraged to extort, defraud, and generally cause indirect financial hardship for anyone not like them.
For people so concerned with persecution and acceptance (nearly every jewish holiday has something to do with their ancestor's problems in Egypt, Palestine, Europe, etc...) they're really quite blind when it comes to reflecting on their own actions.
At any rate, what I found interesting in my research into these religious zealots is that within their hermetic enclave, they have divided into rivaling factions that have such animosity that they can be expected to vote against anything the other votes for. Roughly half of the Hasids in this neighborhood identify either with this guy, Zalman Teitelbaum;
Or this guy, Aaron Teitelbaum.
The particulars of these brothers' connection is complex and largely apochryphal, so i'll just leave it that Zalman, the usurper, hates the Bedford ave bike lane and so naturally, Aaron loves it. So it turns out that several members of the A. Teitelbaum sect were slated to come out to help the hipsters reinstate the bike lane, but made only a token appearance.
Since there is no clear way to make cyclists, hipsters, and Hasids happy; I wonder if something drastic could at least help move things in a positive direction.
What if there were no such things as bike lanes? I had previously tried mightily to rate and explain the pros and cons of bike lanes, though quickly came to the realisation that all bike lanes everywhere suffer from the exact same problems, no matter how they are designed or where they are implemented:
Bike-Salmon,
Double- or otherwise illegally- parked cars,
and pedestrians,
If you think about it, cordoning off a stripe of roadway is extraordinarily convenient for everyone except the cyclists it is supposed to be for. It is a secure area for salmoning where if it did not exist, the salmon might be too frightened to ride upstream. It is an out-of-the-way spot for taxis, delivery trucks, and the Police to park while conducting their business. It is a great place for pedestrians to walk while waiting to jaywalk or hail a cab.
In short, all of these problems might be at least partially solved if bike lanes simply didn't exist. People who double park might feel more self conscious about blocking a dedicated traffic lane as opposed to a bike lane since bikes apparently don't belong on the road anyway. Pedestrians might stay on the sidewalk or at least be more cautious about leading out from between parked cars to jaywalk...
Of course this would stymie our collective effort to get as many people on bikes as possible (as a "green" initiative only), as many riders inexperienced with riding in real traffic would simply opt to take the subway instead out of fear. But imagine for a moment if, due to the lack of bike lanes, thousands of people continued to ride their bicycles, though in traffic and not cowering at the roadside waiting to get sideswiped.
I think it would literally force drivers and pedestrians to once and for all take us seriously as legitimate road users. Also, motorists wouldn't be able to bitch that we're robbing them of a lane anymore, so we'd simultaneously be disarming our most vocal opponents of their most tired tirade.
Though this will never happen. Bike lanes are now the barometer of "green-ness" and if the government can't fool people into thinking it has their best interests in mind with sad little bike lanes, how will we then be fed self-satisfaction?
Sorry about the rant.... and the title-bomb... just had to get this off my chest
So this engineering student is walking through MIT when his classmate rides up on a sparkling new red bicycle.
He says to him, "Wow, that's a really great bike! how did you come by it?"
"Well," his friend explains, "I was going for a walk the other day and this beautiful woman rode up to me on this bike. She threw it to the ground and then ripped off all of her clothes and threw them aside as well. She looked at me and said, 'Take anything you want!'"
After thinking for a moment, the first student says, "I see you made the right choice, her clothes would never have fit you."
Since today is the national day for recalling why we're more fortunate than we would readily admit on "normal" days and food, I thought I'd regale you with a list of things I'm particularly thankful for in the past year...
1. My folks, The best parents a son could ask for! I have them to thank for just about everything, including, but not limited to: my love of bad jokes and even worse puns, an analytic frame of mind, putting up with flighty teenagers for fifteen years, paying for college, and having faith in me to pursue my own interests and convictions.
2. Mr. Bernard B. Bunn. Partner in crime and co-contributor to this blog, me and mr. B are tight like that... This little guy has been inked up since day one, that's how hardcore he is. But he's shy at times too, so I'll tell you what he's thankful for: pets on his nose and stick.
3. Friends. All of 'em. Sorry guys but y'all deserve a shout out as long as it's going: The whole houston crew; Mpshl, Tavern, David, James Bus, Jeff, Rowan, Erika, John Martin, Pillsfuck, "Cole", and all the cool kids from high school. The Brooklyn crew; Ica, Mo, Button, Walker, Heath, the new roomies, the Brooklyn Kubb League, Tina, Dylan, Benjy, Grambo, Mon, Nick, Chris, Brandon, Kenya, Serb, Jimmay, Eric, Nathan "El Maestro" Rodriguez, Chris (diff one), Phil, Marc, Josh, Emily, Jamie, Matt, Zach, Philip, Duffy, and everyone else I missed.
4. My trusty steed: El Diablo Negro
5. NYC, the Imperial City.
6. Architecture, for giving me something to obsess over. And Mexico...
7. Chance encounters with stunning beauty.
8. The Brooklyn Brewery, Frank Lloyd Wright coasters, and cycling caps (white-guy fro is pretty unattractive).
8. The Beach (and beer and Mexico again)
9. Prospect Park. I'm in the best shape of my life largely thanks to the existence of this awesome place. Never gets old.
10. Art, the Met, and Shenanigans (those silly greeks, always playing "got your head, whatcha gonna do about it?")
Lastly I thought it appropriate to thank those adversaries that stir me to action, namely, salmon. Here is a tribute to the salmon I've caught on camera in the past year. In some the salmoning is more difficult to notice than others but all are egregious infractions of directionality:
Sidewalk Salmon, king of morons.
Crippled Djembe Salmon
The elusive musical San Juan Salmon
Dolly salmon (and bike-salmon, if you look close)
Dismounting Salmon
Pedestrian Salmon (this is almost acceptible because only an idiot would use Times Square as the a quick way to go south by bike, and space is limited there to begin with)
Salmon morphing into regular cyclist at 29th and 6th.
Leatherhead Salmon
Legal Salmoning.
Well friends, I'm going to go figure out who's Thanksgiving I'm going to crash, and maybe settle on a turkey sandwich and a couple bottles of vino. Enjoy the grub today and ride safe, turkey is known for breeding lazy peddlers!
Also enjoy this submission to the "Biking Rules" PSA contest:
I guess as long as the AutoCAD is fired up at the office, you may find the frequency of posting relegated to the "whenever I get a free moment/have something worth saying" status.
In a rare turn of events this weekend past, I actually went out and socialized with other people!
Three bars in two nights, check. $150.00 of bike-stuff money spent on booze instead, check. Splitting headache both Sunday and Monday mornings, check.
Seems like it was a pretty fun time, unfortunately I can't seem to recall the last and middle parts of those evenings. Since I typically stick with beer and am frequently broke as a joke, going to a bar or saloon (which only occur in the Southwest US and are marked by their double acting entry doors and unsavory clientele) is for me a rare opportunity to remind myself why I don't drink liquor.
I wouldn't go so far as to say I get blacked-out, but I definitely wake up in the morning panicking that a lamp shade may still be affixed to my noggin, or wondering how many people I offended with my tomfooleries. Since I'd consider myself fairly mild-mannered, the answer is likely none, but that doesn't stop me from ruing my decision to down that fifth or tenth shot of Jameson and shakily ride several miles home after reassuring the pensive crowd that I am actually quite skilled at handling a bicycle (that's the booze talking, just to keep you up to speed... And the "crowd" was probably just one disinterested stranger).
At any rate, I went out for a ride in the park Sunday afternoon and as usual, after five or so laps I noticed I had four remoras in my slipstream. I don't really mind if people want to subvert their workout by letting me work out for them, but I do find it pretty irritating when those guys (female cyclists, I find, are much more docile) decide it's alright if, after sucking my wheel for a few laps, to start yelling and generally ruining my nice, Sunday ride.
This particular instance really got me pissed:
As I crested a minor hill, remoras all still attached, I saw, about 100m ahead of me in the road, a couple lazily pedaling along on heavy looking cruiser bikes. I gave a friendly whistle and they turned, noticing the five of us bearing down on them from behind. Being gracious park-goers, they attempted to move to the left to allow us to pass on their right, which unfortunately is the wrong side for passing. Since I was already well to their left I called out, "on your left!" which caused the lady to wobble a bit and frantically veer to the right (well out of our way, mind you).
At this point the dickhead sucking my wheel decided to verbally abuse the poor woman who was only trying to be friendly and lend us some road space. I can't remember word-for-word, but I think his curt tirade went something like this: "GAWDDAMMIT! STRAIGHT LINE! AWWW JEEEEZ! FUCKIN BITCH!"
The reason I'm relating this unpleasant experience here is that it typifies precisely what happens every time I happen to be deeply interested in a given sport, hobby, profession, etc...
When I was a skater in my more youthful years, this same shit happened. Invariably I'd go to Southside Skatepark or the local spot, and there'd be a bunch of archetypal skate-rats fucking up a good time for everybody by living up to our negative stereotypes of malfeasance and anarchy.
Now having to deal with this crap in cycling, I'm getting fed the fuck up.
Fortunately I'm not alone, someone called Steevo recently cobbled together this humorous tete-a-tete between two hipsters looking to break into the cyclocross scene with their haughty sense of entitlement and fixed gear bicycles:
This reminds me of another alarming subcultural phenomena, hipsters ultimately destroying other esoteric activities like cyclocross.
Though I take solace in the fact that where I want to go in cycling is where hipsters are unwittingly coming from; namely, track racing. I guess actually using an object or tool for it's intended purpose is against the hipster code of ironic conduct, so I can feel confident that they will be delightfully absent from the velodrome come springtime (fingers and toes crossed, I don't wanna be lumped in with anyone anymore, least of all noobs or freds, even though technically I am one).
Speaking of track cycling (and of sitting around waiting to be accosted), I was delighted in the past few days to see that "TC" over at Fyxomatosis posted some sweet pics of the UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Melbourne, just at the time when my patience for roadies was wearing to it's thinnest yet.
If you're like me, and require your computer's desktop-way (which one never really sees any-way) to be cool and ever-changing, these two images are in super large format for just such a purpose. Check out the rest of the eye candy here, here, and here.
At any rate, it seems as though the anniversary of my birth is a mere seven days away, so if you feel compelled to congratulate me on being that much closer to death, please e-mail me directly or send a self addressed and stamped deep-fried turkey (ironically, deep-fried turkeys have a longer lead-time than 14,000 cubic feet of concrete, so good luck).
Until next time friends, steer clear of the zealots.
I practice architecture, cycling, loafing, and speculating on a daily basis. Writing this blog is, for me, a way to speak with myself and others about strange things I notice each day. While people may not always agree with my views, I hope that perhaps my rants and lame attempts at jokes encourage readers to take note of their surroundings and learn to laugh a little at the circus that is life.
