Showing posts with label social comm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social comm. Show all posts

12 February 2024

The Birth Of Evolution

 The 12th of February.  When I was in elementary school, this day was a holiday, in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

Less commonly known, at least in the US, is that he shares a birthdate—in 1809–with someone who changed the course of history, if in a different way.

I am talking about Charles Darwin.

Now that I think of it, they have more in common than having been born on the same day. Darwin’s theory explains how life forms adapt and change in response to their conditions.  Lincoln’s work was both a cause and effect of the ways in which his country was changing and in which human minds and spirits were changing, and still must change.

So, perhaps, we could say that while Darwin gave us the theory of physical evolution, Lincoln understood and worked for mental and spiritual evolution.


I would love for this date to be celebrated as Lincoln’s birthday.  And I dare Texas, Florida or any other state—or this country—to commemorate Darwin on this day!



30 January 2024

They Didn't Take Only Bike Lights

 A year or so into the COVID-19 pandemic, some bicycle shops—including Harris Cyclery, Sheldon Brown’s “home” shop—closed for business. They were, ironically, casualties of the COVID-19 Bike Boom:  When their inventories sold out, no new merchandise was available because lockdowns disrupted supply chains.

Now a long-established bicycle shop may close due to a lack of inventory. Its situation, however, has nothing to do with the pandemic.

About two weeks ago, Najari Smith opened the doors of his shop, Rich City Rides, as he had every day for the past ten years.  However, that day’s shop opening would be unlike any other. 

He saw, “all the display cases emptied out.” Looking around, he noticed “all the inventory we had on the wall,” which included lights, locks and other accessories, “was gone.”

Now, his shop is far from the first to experience a burglary.  But losing about $10,000 worth of merchandise “hurts on a different level,” he explained, “because we’re not a big box store.” The impact is so great that Rich City Cycles will have to shut down “for the foreseeable future,” he declared.

Such a theft not only affects the livelihood of Smith. It also has a negative impact on a community. Smith has organized and led numerous rides.  Also, he has been in business long enough that “kids you meet at 15, they have their own kids now.”  In other words, he is a mentor and probably a friend to many in his community.

Moreover, the shop, like others, “represents a culture,” according to Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, who represents the district. That culture is one of health, environment, working with young people and young adults,” he elaborated.

Such values are badly needed in Richmond, California the shop’s locale. The city, on the northeastern shore of San Francisco Bay, seems to have been untouched by the tech fortunes that have transformed San Francisco, Sm Jose and other community in the area. While Richmond includes suburban-style middle-class neighborhoods, it also has the notorious “Iron Triangle” and other areas afflicted by crime and poverty—and few options for healthy food and recreation.

Smith and his business partner hope to re-open their shop—and provide its tangible and intangible benefits it has provided the community.

Here is their GoFundMe page.





15 January 2024

Would He Have Been One Of Us?


If Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were with us, he would be 95 years old today.

Although I believe he would be on the right side of just about any cause you can think of, I try not to speculate too much because, well, we can’t know for sure.  For example, many in the LGBTQ community, and our allies, have made him into one of our would-be advocates. I think he would have spoken up for us, but he would have joined with us slowly and carefully, as he did when he voiced his opposition to the Vietnam War.  He was, after all, a pastor in a church that included many socially conservative congregants and clerics. Even many of his more secular political allies saw homosexuality, let alone any sort of gender variance as a pathology or even a form of criminality.

I have little doubt, however, that he would have endorsed, or at least approved of, bicycling for transportation as well as recreation. After all, he was known to ride—and he looked happy on his bike. But more important, I believe, was his growing awareness that he was working for economic justice. (This is a reason why some believe that he might have joined forces with Malcolm X had they not been assassinated.) 

He probably would have seen the bicycle as a vehicle, if you will, for achieving those goals. Not only are bicycles relatively inexpensive and accessible, they help to reduce the environmental ills that disproportionately affect people of color and with low incomes. Also, cycling, like other forms of exercise, helps to combat diseases that—wait for it—also afflict the poor and people of color.

Hmm…Perhaps Transportation Alternatives and other cycling-related organizations should have a portrait of Martin hanging in their headquarters.

03 November 2023

Bike In The Bus Lane

One valid criticism of bike lanes, and bicycle infrastructure generally, is that they’re constructed mainly in gentrified or gentrifying neighborhoods. Whenever someone suggests that the lanes, bike parking facilities and bike share programs into neighborhoods populated by people who are darker or poorer than those in Williamsburg or Chelsea, the excuse for not “sharing the wealth ,” if you will, is that “people don’t ride bikes” in areas like Jamaica, Queens.

That is a point Samuel Santella makes on Streetsblog.  He lives in Saint Albans, a southern Queens community that is a “transportation desert:” it is not served by the New York City subway system and only a couple of bus lines traverse it. So, its residents—nearly 90 percent of whom are Black—either drive or, like Santella, ride their bicycles, whether to their destinations or to the subway in nearby Jamaica.  



Many New York City neighborhoods like Jamaica have a “downtown” that is a commercial district and transportation hub. Santella, as he recounts in his piece, rides to Jamaica to take the subway to Brooklyn.  He shows how it’s difficult to cycle safely on any of the thoroughfares that lead to the train stations. Hillside and Jamaica Avenues are essentially “stroads,” while Archer Avenue has a bus lane that are, technically, illegal for cycling. And all of those streets are chaotic messes of delivery vehicles and “dollar vans” that ferry people from neighborhoods like his to the subway and Long Island Rail Road (yes, it’s spelled as two words) stations.

I know what he’s talking about: I sometimes ride those streets. As a matter of fact, I cycled them almost daily for seven years, when I worked at York College, in the middle of Jamaica.  I experienced some of the pandemonium he describes, which is undoubtedly worse than it was when I was making the commute in pre-pandemic, pre-Uber days when SUVs, while growing in popularity, didn’t dominate the roads as they do now.

16 August 2023

What The Bollards?!

 In previous posts, I’ve written “lines of paint do not a bike lane make.”

I admit it’s not Shakespearean.  (Then again, what besides Shakespeare is?) But I think it sums up at least one major flaw in too much of bicycle infrastructure planning.

Now I have to come up with another catchy line—for bollards.



I was greeted with this scene at the other end of my block.  The city’s Department of Transportation probably believed cyclists like me would be thrilled to have a bike lane running down our street.  But I, and some other cyclists, are among its most vocal critics.The lane isn’t wide enough for two-way bicycle traffic, let alone the eBikes, mini-motorcycles and motorized scooters that, most days, seem to outnumber unassisted pedal bicycles.


Moreover, as you can see, bollards offer little more protection than lines of paint.  On more than one occasion, I have seen drivers use the bike path as a passing lane—when cyclists are using it.  I can understand ambulances or other emergency vehicles passing in the lane (as long as bicycles aren’t in it, of course) because Mount Sinai hospital is on the lane’s route. But some drivers, I think, pass in the lane out of frustration or spite.

The situation has been exacerbated by the recent construction in the neighborhood.  I suspect that the bollards were crushed by a truck pulling toward or away from one of the sites. I also suspect that the destruction wasn’t intentional:  In my experience, commercial truck drivers tend to be more careful than others and when they strike objects—or cyclists or pedestrians—it tends to be because the drivers didn’t see them.




Anyway, what I saw underscores something I’ve told friends and neighbors:  Sometimes, the most dangerous part of my ride is the lane that runs in front of my apartment!

15 August 2023

At Least He Won’t Get Away With Murder—We Hope






Today, I am going to give you some advice you probably didn’t expect to find on this blog.

Here goes: In North America, if you want to get away with killing someone  run over that person with a car, truck, bus or other motorized vehicle.For one thing, dead victims can’t tell their side of the story.  So, even with the worst lawyer (or no lawyer), the most egregiously aggressive or careless driver can make him or her self seem blameless. 

For another, North America has had a “car culture” for a century.  Roads and intersections are therefore built or re-configured to convey motorized traffic as quickly and efficiently as possible.  Such a mentality among planners has inculcated a few generations of Americans with the not heir physical fitness—is somehow a second-class citizen, at best.

Such attitudes, combined with anger at whatever or whomever or with any other mental disturbance, often lead drivers to believe they have the right to run down cyclists.  Such an attitude, I think, nearly turned Sacramento cycling advocate Sherry Martinez into such a victim.

“I have four broken ribs, a fractured clavicle, a partial collapsed lung from a collision “I can’t remember,” she said from her hospital bed.  Fortunately for her, there are people who remember it:  members of the small group of cyclists with whom she was riding, as well as other witnesses.

Their testimony, and witnesses’ photos, confirmed the charge against 30-year-old Caleb Taubman: He deliberately drove his pickup truck at Martinez.

In other words, he’s been charged with assault with a deadly weapon.  Members of Sacramento’s cycling community have engaged in a letter-writing campaign urging the district attorney to prosecute Taubman to the fullest extent of the law.

Taubman has been released and awaits his first court date.  Whenever it is, he is on a more certain timeline than that of Sherry Martinez She has no exact date when she!l be well enough to discharged from the hospital. And I imagine that when she’s released, she’ll still have a long road to recovery ahead of her.

At least Caleb Taubman won’t get away with murder—we hope.




10 June 2023

What Did Your First Bike Cost?

 Someone, I forget who, told me, “The really rich never pay for anything.”

I guess Harry and Meghan, even though they stepped away from some of the Royal life’s trappings (which really trapped some!), qualify. Their son just got a new bike for his birthday and neither his mum nor his dad had to shell out shillings, dole out dollars or proffer their platinum (or whatever level of credit card accrues to Royals).

You see, a shop in their current hometown—Montecito, California—gave the bike, gratis.  This act of generosity came to light when the shop publicized the “thank you” note the couple (or one of their assistants) sent.

Such a move, of course,’ garners publicity. Most of it was positive, but some believe that the shop should have donated the bike to a kid needier than lil’ Archie.

Call me wishy-washy,‘but I can sympathize with both sides.  Businesses gift celebrities everything from bagels to ‘Benzes and gardenias to gala gowns. The publicity usually pays off and, I imagine, enables some creators and entrepreneurs to give their wares to those less fortunate. Still, if someone has to choose between giving to the rich or the poor, I would rather that the gift goes to someone who might not have it otherwise.

Then again, I can understand why—alert from being in their hometown—why the shop would give a bike to a royal tyke: It’s called Mad Dogs & Englishmen.



29 May 2023

Memorial Day By Bicycle

 Today is Memorial Day in the United States.  In other countries, it’s known as Remembrance Day—which I think is more fitting.

Bicycles have played an important, if unsung role, in various conflicts during the past century and a half.  Perhaps they were most prominent in World War I.


Anzac Corps soldiers in Henencourt, France, 1917



Let us not forget how useful and necessary bicycles have been to people who are trying to escape the horrors of war, like this Jewish teenager—Pessah Cofnas (yes, he survived)


From the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 


or as a way of getting around when highways are blocked, gasoline is unavailable and other modes of transportation are disrupted or destroyed.

Let us remember those who served and sacrificed.  But let us prevent more such tragedies.

28 May 2023

The Colors of My Memories

 Once upon a time, I was a wannabe, unsuccessful, and then a manqué, racer. I wore jerseys—and sometimes shorts and helmets—that were veritable riots of color.

These  days, most of the Lycra bike outfits I see are in carbon-bike hues:  stealth black, carbon-neutral gray and the like.

Oh, I miss the good ol’ days!




02 May 2023

One Person’s Trash Is Another Person’s Lifeline

 If one were to ask most Americans which possessions they most fear losing, their cars would be high on their lists.  Especially in areas outside city cores, away from mass transportation networks, people depend on their automobiles to get to work or school and for many everyday tasks.

For people who don’t own or drive cars—whether by choice or circumstances—bicycles can be their connection to the rest of the world.  I am one such person.  Others include a club in which I hope not to become a member:  people who don’t have housing. 

In New York, where I live, and in other cities, one often sees battered, grimy and rusty machines among tents, sleeping bags, shopping carts, boxes and shipping crates sprawled under bridge and highway underpasses, train trestles and in any public space with something spread, hanging or standing over it that can provide at least a partial shield from rain and other elements. Because those spaces are often squalid, through no fault of their inhabitants (Americans never have been very good at taking care of public spaces), whatever ends up in them—including their inhabitants’ possessions and the inhabitants themselves—are seen as disposable.

At least, that seems to be the attitude (mis)guiding some City of San Diego officials.  They, who fancy themselves the finest of the self-proclaimed “America’s Finest City,” went into encampments (Would they enter someone’s house or apartment without knocking on the door or ringing the bell?) and tossed unhoused people’s bikes into garbage trucks.

As activist Jacob Mandel pointed out, “For unhoused people, a bicycle can be a lifeline, providing low-cost/free transportation to employment that could break the cycle of poverty.”

He added, “The city is destroying those lifetimes.” Not to mention that if anyone else did what those officials did, it would be considered theft.

06 May 2022

Sweeping Their Bicycles

 About a month and a half ago, Mayor Eric Adams ordered “sweeps” of homeless people’s encampments in my city, New York.  He claims, rightly, that sleeping on park benches or under overpasses is “no way to live.”  His real motive, I think, is to appease moderate and conservative voters who believe that the city is descending into the “chaos” of the 1970s and 1980s.

He’s been telling homeless people that they should go to the shelters.  So far, 39 people—roughly one per day since the program started—have heeded his call. 

Frankly, I’m amazed that many have moved in.  The shelters are seen as dangerous places because mentally ill and violent people are cheek-by-jowl with people whose luck simply ran out.  Also, I can hardly imagine a better incubator for COVID or other transmissible diseases.

Probably the most wrongheaded part of the sweeps is the destruction of tents, partitions or whatever else people might be using to shield themselves—and whatever possessions they may have.  Those possessions sometimes include bicycles.


Something similar is happening in San Diego. A video circulating on Twitter shows police officers confiscating and trashing bicycles owned by homeless residents near Petco Park.

I don’t know whether San Diego’s mayor is following Adams’ lead in trying to coax people into shelters.  It might be more difficult  in the self-proclaimed “America’s Finest City,” with its year-round mild climate.  But, whatever the condition of its shelters, people won’t be enticed into them if the city takes and destroys their perfectly good bicycles.




Hello I don’t know whether San Diego is trying to move people into shelters as Eric Adams is in New York.  Even if the shelters are cleaner and safer, I imagine it might be even more difficult to convince folks in San Diego, with its year-round temperate climate. In any even, confiscating and destroying people’s possessions—especially bicycles—doesn’t seem like much of an incentive, whatever the climate or to move people into shelters as Eric Adams is in New York.  Even if the shelters are cleaner and safer, I imagine it might be even more difficult to convince folks in San Diego, with its year-round temperate climate. In any even, confiscating and destroying people’s possessions—especially bicycles—doesn’t seem like much of an incentive, whatever the climate or conditions in the shelters

17 March 2022

A Joycean Parade of Cyclists

 Today is, of course, St. Patrick’s Day.

Since I am not Irish (at least, not to my knowledge!), I will not tell you whether or how to celebrate this day.  I will say, however, that so much of what we’ll see today is what I’ll call Celtic Kitsch. (Confession:  I was in college before I knew that the “C” at the beginning of “Celtic” is pronounced like a “k.”  Until then, I’d been pronouncing the word as “sell-tick,” like the basketball team in Boston.) The truth is, few can agree on what is “authentically” Irish. Although schools teach the Gaelic language, nearly everyone speaks (beautifully) the language of their colonizers.  And, apart from Roman Catholicism with a strong monastic tradition—which the young are largely abandoning—we actually know little about pre-Anglo Irish culture and history.

James Joyce understood as much.  Although all of his writing is set in his native country—which he lived away from for most of his adult life—he is not part of a “Celtic revival.” Instead, he used Ireland—Dublin, mainly—as a lens through which he could explore how people move through life, and how it moves through them—and, perhaps most important, our minds re-assemble it all, whether in images or language—or simply deal live with it as the chaos it is.  

Some have said that Joyce’s works—specifically Dubliners and Ulysses—are therefore to literature what Picasso’s Cubist paintings are to art.  Others have called him the first “cinematic” writer.  I agree with both, and would add that his narrative style is like a bicycle ride:  Whenever I take a ride, even one I’ve done hundreds of times, I see not only people and things I haven’t seen before, but a building, a city block, a tree or a seashore from an angle or in a different kind of light (or darkness) from what I saw on that same ride on a different day.

Martina Devlin, Darina Gallagher and Donna Cooney seem to understand as much.  On Sunday, they participated in a Dublin St. Patrick’s Day parade that includes a procession of 100 cyclists dressed in Ulysses-themed Edwardian clothes. They took spectators on a journey through places in the book.


Martina Devlin, Darina Gallagher and Donna Cooney (Photo by Norma Burke)


Cooney, the artistic director of the Dublin Cycling Campaign (now there’s a job I wouldn’t mind having!) said this year’s bicycle procession and St.Patrick’s Day parade are particularly special because February was the 100-year anniversary of Ulysses’ publication.  But the essence of the event might have been best summed up by Devlin, a writer whose speech included an excerpt from the novel and began with this:  “One of the landmark days in my life was when I learned how to ride a bike.”

“I felt as if I were on the road to somewhere.”

As were the cyclists and marchers in the Dublin parade, 100 years after Ulysses came into the world.

06 February 2022

WWMS: What Would Marshall Say?

 Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message.” 

What would he have thought of this?:



I encountered it while riding down Driggs Avenue, one of the north-south thoroughfares of northern Brooklyn. The corner gifted with that message is South 2nd Street, just a couple of blocks from the bridge named for the neighborhood.





Given that Williamsburg, Brooklyn (at least the part north of the bridge) is the world’s capital of trust fund kids posing as hipsters, I have to wonder whether it’s one of their lame attempts at being “ironic.”

14 January 2022

Egyptian Art Deco Catholic In Jackson Heights

 Jackson Heights is five to six kilometers from my apartment.  I have ridden through it, many times, along various routes.  Still, a ride can lead me to some interesting corner or structure I’d never seen or noticed before.



This is one such building.  At first glance, it doesn’t seem out of place: Like most of what is now in the neighborhood, it was built during the late 1920s:  around the same time as the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. Also, many palatial movie theatres were constructed during that time, just when movies were becoming the most popular form of popular entertainment.  So it would be easy to take this building for a Loews or RKO cinema, especially when you look up.






Those “movie houses” often combined the line structures and geometric shapes of Art Deco with Egyptian motifs. They sound like an odd pairing until you look at them—and you realize that Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamen’s tomb in the early 1920s, setting off a fad for all things Egyptian just as Art Deco was becoming the most influential style in architecture and design.




That is why this building doesn’t look out of place in Jackson Heights and would look right in parts of the Bronx or Miami Beach, which were also developed around the same time.

What makes this building so unusual, is this:




I grew up Catholic and have entered all sorts of church buildings and cathedrals here, in Europe and Asia.  I can’t say, however, that I’ve seen any other Catholic Church building—or, for that matter, any other house of worship—that looks quite like this one. 

And to think:  I came across it just because I decided to make a turn, and ride down a street, I hadn’t before.  That is one of the joys of cycling!

08 September 2021

125 Years After Major Taylor, She’s A Milestone


 The Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche has become one of the premier women’s bike races. Since its first edition in 2003, èlite cyclists and teams have used its long climbs in the Alpes Maritimes and high-octane sprints in the Rhône and Ardèche valleys as late-season preparation for the World Championships, held in late September.  The race has also served as a window to up-and-coming riders and teams.

That is why it’s significant that Ayesha McGowan is making her debut in this year’s edition of the race, which begins today.  For years, she has ridden for teams of the Liv brand in the US.  On 1 August, she was promoted to Liv’s top-tier racing team, which competes internationally.

Understandably, for McGowan, “there will be tears of joy” because “the hard work is now paying off.” Last year, Cyclingnews  named her to its Power List of the 50 Most Influential People in cycling.

She was named to that list for, not only her cycling accomplishments, but also her advocacy for more diversity in the sport’s brands, organizations, teams, events and media.  If I were her, I might be crying other kinds of tears for having the need to call for more inclusion, a century and a quarter after Major Taylor won the World Championship and was acknowledged (if at times grudgingly or even with hostility) as the world’s greatest cyclist.

16 August 2021

Accessible, But Not Affordable

 Yesterday I followed the shorelines of Queens as closely as I could.  Close to home, I chanced upon a vista that encapsulates some of the waterfront’s visual variety.





I remember when the southern part of Hunters Point, in Long Island City, consisted of industrial waiting rooms and necropolis—and when the Twin Towers stood where the Liberty Tower now looms. Back then, much of the waterfront, and its views, were inaccessible.

Now there are pedestrian and bike lanes, food trucks, cafes and some rather nice gardens—alongside “affordable” apartments for people making $125,000 a year.

08 July 2021

What If He’d Seen This?

 Yesterday morning, I pedaled along the North Shore.  On my way back, I stopped in Fort Totten.  Like many military bases-turned-recreational areas, it sits on some “mighty fine” real estate.  The site makes sense when you get a glimpse of the panoramic views:  Continental troops could have seen Royal Navy ships approaching from a good distance away.

Were they stationed there yesterday, they would have seen mist.  Would enemy warships have veiled themselves in it—and drawn closer than they might have otherwise?




Yesterday the mist portended something odious, if less sinister:  humid heat.  Very humid and hot, in fact—if less so than much of the West Coast last week.

Of course, being a writer and English teacher, I have to ask: What if Jay Gatsby had gazed across the cove and seen mist instead of a green light lover Daisy’s dock?




Now, I could get all pseudo-intellectual on you and blather about how hopers (Is that a word?) and dreamers, and the desperate, see that faint veridescence on the horizon and not the fog that shrouds it.  Too late! Oh well..

At least I had a nice ride—and picked up some fresh Greek yogurt from Kesso  on my way home.