Photo of the day: INVASION OF THE BIKE SNATCHERS
Photo of the day: INVASION OF THE BIKE SNATCHERS – According to the Napoleonic dictatorship of Mayor Bloomberg, New York City can be made in to a country village of happy bicyclists that will not interfere with this bustling city. These bike share racks are an under the table deal arranged between Bloomberg and Janette Sadik-Khan, the transportation commissioner and Citibank. Ms. Kahn is assured a rosey retirement thanks to this delusional deal. Citibank floods the city with it’s peddling meddling logos and and Ms. Kahn will rest even more comfortably.
The docking stations, they claim, were organized with the neighbor leaders, the neighborhoods remember no such meetings. Instead they have replaced much, much needed parking spaces, loading and unloading zones in this city of millions of commercial establishments, tour bus stops, and have even been placed in front of private residences blocking cabs and most urgently – ambulances. The ambulances will be needed since the bikes carry no helmet requirements.
Many of these ‘day trippers’ have no regards for the rules of the road and ride against traffic, on the sidewalks and come barreling through the traffic lights. The bikes have no substantial racks to carry your belongings and I would like to know how this will replace public transportation in the sleet, rain and snow storms to come.
Go up 6th Avenue! I have in private tours all weekend. The trucks are TRIPLE parked because of those damned bike lanes with no one in them! Garbage trucks can’t get close to the curb either. Try navigating your bus or car around triple parked garbage trucks! But the most egregious placement of the bike racks is the deliberate elimination of public art spaces. Emperor Bloomberg is clearly wearing no clothes.
From the gallery: DOWNHILL RACER
DOWNHILL RACER: The Summer Streets Program of New York City closes down nearly seven miles of main thoroughfares 3 Saturdays in a row each August. It is one of the best people watching events in town. Everyone from toddlers to grandparents come out to enjoy places like Park Avenue free of traffic.
One of the best spots to view people is in the Park Avenue viaduct underneath the Helmsley building adjacent to Grand Central Station. You enter on 40th Street and rise up the ‘bridge’ to approach Grand Central Station looming above you, circle around and then enter the Park Avenue viaduct underneath the Helmsley building as it empties out onto the ritziest part of Park Avenue and it’s 1960’s architectural marvels followed by the ‘well to do of upper Park Avenue’.
You turn the corner and zoom downhill ‘towards the light’.
So I parked myself there along the curb for a while and photographed the reactions of the people marveling at the view and speeding up as they rapidly descend down the ramp. Bicyclists, joggers, bicycles-built-for-two, strollers, scooters, unicycles, tricycles, skateboards, roller skaters, race walkers, stilt walkers pass by – and then she came around the corner. This Edie Beale like figure from Grey Gardens in her wheelchair, stoically racing downhill. My day was made.
NEW YORK CITY - IN THE WIT OF AN EYE 