I'm back and my computer is good as new, awaiting the dribs and drabs of old data I must add to complete its rebirth as the repository of my diseased thoughts. In fact, it performs much more nicely since its recovery from trauma--kind of like Regarding Henry. Don't remember that stinker? Someone in Hollywood will remake it; it's just a matter of time.
This brings me to my subject for the day: reinventing the wheel. I've been told that I have a tendency to do that. I've always possessed a natural stubbornness that resists the advice of the experienced, which I see as bullying. This urge to blaze my own path can be a boon to my writing but plays hell with my cooking.
The screeching of tires should accompany this tortured segue for reasons that I hope will become clear. Tomorrow marks the second day of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Summer Streets program. It will "temporarily close Park Avenue and connecting streets from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park to motor vehicles and open it up to people...."
Apparently, motorists are no longer considered people. The program is for bicycling people, people who want to do yoga on Park Avenue, people who feel entitled to interrupt the flow of New York City's traffic with their big fat behinds.
Are you working in a delivery truck? Are you moving into a new place along the route? Too bad. You have been supplanted by spandex-clad cyclists, stroller Nazis and parents using their offspring to subvert the purpose of a busy New York street instead of toting them a few blocks to Central Park.
One bright spot? The city is sponsoring an event, The New York Knicks Groove Truck on 12th Street. It's billed as an opportunity for children to win prizes for 3-point shooting and free throws. It would be a thrill if the Knicks players showed up for an impromptu game with the kids. They might stand a chance of winning.
This program is meant to encourage a greener, healthier New York, with less traffic and more room for pedestrians and cyclists. Don't worry. The Summer Streets website also provides you with directions to get to the closed off streets...by bus, subway and taxi. Make sure you leave your sense of irony at home.
But wait, there's more! Janet Sadik-Khan, Bloomberg's Transportation Commissioner, seems to think her mandate is not to make traffic flow more efficiently but to bring it to a grinding halt. To this end, she has closed off a swath of Broadway. She's done it cheaply, painting the asphalt and putting up very little seating to avoid having to go through normal political channels for a permit. The hope is that the "experiment" will prove so popular that by the time she is forced to submit it as a proposal, it will be a fait accompli.
This section of Broadway used to be New York City's thoroughfare, an electric canyon down which to drive visitors at night so they could take in the whole spectacle. It also functioned as an important traffic artery for business. Even if you think Robert Moses was a dick to turn New York into a city of highways, you have to question the sense of this. Some say it is elitist, pandering to those who expect the congestion, noise and pollution of a busy city to part around them like the Red Sea.
I've gotten over Times Square being changed into Disney World's Main Street. I don't long for the junkies, pimps and dealers, the movie theaters filled with crack smoke and ejaculate. I wish they hadn't been replaced by portly families trundling from McDonald's to Madame Tussaud's and natives hawking bus tours. But who am I to judge?
When I visited last week, the change was startling. The street was dotted with beached--sorry, benched--tourists. It was brutally sunny, not an optimal condition in which to view Times Square. The heat intensified the scent of midday party puke on a nearby corner. Observing from the far side of the barrier I got the impression of a shuffling human zoo, confusedly occupying an improvised habitat not its own.
Another key ingredient in Mayor Bloomberg's plan to green the city is the demarcation of bike paths throughout the city. Here in Queens, where there is no room for them, they've been superimposed on the actual car lanes, like magical thinking in white paint. There are also signs put up especially for cyclists, stating things like "Best Route North" and "To Waterfront." They might be more helpful if they said things like "Pedal Fast Through the Projects" and "This Way to the Sanitation Truck Depot." To heck with it; just paint "This way there be dragons" on the asphalt and let them fend for themselves.
A friend told me yesterday about someone she knows who got hit by a car while biking to work. He's now in a coma. Which begs the question: How big a carbon footprint does life support leave? Does being a vegetable count as an offset? In my world, it does.
Related post:
Bloomberg Declares Burberry Day: WTF?
Labels: bike paths, Bloomberg, Brian Austin Green, Janet Sadik-Khan, kathcom, magick sandwich, summer streets nyc, Times Square, traffic