Was He A Provocateur?

 This is why you should get your news from more than one source.

No, I am not going to talk about the attack on Iran, although that is definitely an example of why.

Rather, I will mention something that happened in Brooklyn last night. It doesn’t have the same ramifications as the war Fake Tan Fũhrer started, but it does have implications for relationships between drivers and cyclists, based on common assumptions about the latter.

According to a Yahoo News story, a sixteen-year-old boy allegedly held onto a  B6 bus as it moved along Bay Parkway near East Second Street. ABC-7 News says he appeared to be holding on, which is somewhat different (in legal terms as well as semantics) but conveys more or less the same impression to most people. The New York Daily News headline, on the other hand, claimed that the boy “interfered with the driver’s route.”

(All italics are mine.)

Whatever happened, the driver—42-year-old Michael Brown—and the boy got into an altercation.  Now Brown is under arrest for punching him in the face, leaving him with a broken nose.

If we can accuse the boy of anything, it’s recklessness and maybe stupidity.  But neither makes him any worse than any other kid. (Confession: I did similar things at his age, and even later.) And it certainly doesn’t warrant what Brown did.

I hope the boy is OK.  I worry, though, that whatever he did could reinforce stereotypes too many people—including, possibly, Brown—hold about cyclists.

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And I Can’t Even Train One!

 Including Marlee, I have had six, and lived with eight, cats in my life. I have also petted, played with and fed others— more than I can count. But I have never been able to get even one to ride a bicycle.

Who trained them? Or did these fabulous felines teach themselves? Inquiring minds want to know.

Riding To The Rappers

 Sometimes I get on my bike just to ride. Other times, I have a route and destination in mind. But I don’t always know what I’ll see along the way.

As I the Randalls Island Connctor, I heard music on the Bronx side. That’s not unusual; I figured it was coming from somebody’s car. But then I heard…rapping.  And it didn’t sound recorded. So of course I had to check it out:

The words they chanted, shouted, stage-whispered and simply spoke resonated, not only because of their rhythms and rhymes: They were as skilled as any I’ve heard, but they didn’t come cheap:  The pain and frustration—and triumphs—pulse from them.

But even though their raps dealt with events in the artist’s lives and the world today—or, at least, they could have been today’s stories—I had the seemingly-odd sensation of going back 40 or 45 years.  I soon realized why:  Those young men with old souls were doing like the early hip- hop djs:  They set up sound equipment in a public space (the corner of East 132nd Street and Locust Avenue, to be exact) and opened themselves up to whoever chanced by.

The main differences were that the man who was the actual or de facto sound engineer was using a laptop which, of course, nobody had “back in the day.” And he didn’t have a turntable, which almost everyone had.

I will definitely check out their YouTube channel (Punchline Academy). Will I encounter anything like that impromptu concert on a future ride?  Before today, I probably would have said, “no.” But after today:  “I’ll never know!”