They Got It Back--Wrecked

In another era--or was it another life?--I wrote for small-town and community newspapers.  In that role, I looked at police reports and blotters. It's a vice in which I still indulge, occasionally.

Sometimes those reports make me laugh.  How else could I react upon reading something like "a caller reported a man yelling and swearing on Street X"?  

On the other hand, I mutter "What fools!" when I read some items, like the one about the woman who left her wallet in a shopping cart.  (It didn't stay there for long.) Or the one about the woman who reported that checks and deposit slips were stolen from her car.  

Then again, I'm from New York, where one of the first things you learn is not to leave anything in your car, or cart!

Perhaps my Big Apple-induced jadedness extends even further than I thought.  In the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune, the police blotter reported that a caller complained about "kids on bicycles who kept on going into dumpsters." (Someone called the cops for that?)  But my favorite item is this:  "A Wisconsin Rapids man reported someone stole his child's bicycle...and then brought it back destroyed."

Hmm...Taking something from someone and giving it back destroyed.  For a moment, I thought, "That's what my country did to Iraq." 

(Also check this out.)

 

Bike Infrastructure: A Path Out Of Poverty And Pollution

I share at least one attitude with poor black and brown residents of New York, my hometown:  a dislike of the bike lanes.

Our reasons, though, are very different.  My criticisms of those ribbons of asphalt and concrete are that too many of them are poorly conceived, designed or constructed.  The result is that such paths start or end without warning, aren't really useful as transportation or recreational cycling conduits or put us in more danger than if we were to ride our bikes on nearby streets.

On the other hand, members of so-called minority groups see bike lanes as "invasion" routes, if you will, for young, white, well-educated people who will price them out of their neighborhoods.  I can understand their fears:  When you live in New York, you are never truly economically secure, so you always wonder whether and when you'll have to move. (Those Russian and Chinese and Saudi billionaires with their super-luxe suites don't actually live here; when Mike Bloomberg famously called this town "the world's second home," I think he really meant the world's pied a terre.)  Also, as I have pointed out in other posts, cycling is still a largely Caucasian activity, or is at least perceived as such.  

My experiences and observations have made, for me, a report from the United Nations Environment Programme's "Share the Road" report all the more poignant, and ironic.  In one of its more pithy passages, it pronounces, "No one should die walking or cycling to work or school. The price paid for mobility is too high, especially because proven, low-cost and achievable solutions exist."  Among those solutions are bike lanes and infrastructure that, in encouraging people to pedal to their workplaces and classrooms, will not only provide cheap, sustainable mobility, but also help to bring about greater social and economic opportunities as well as better health outcomes.

Tanzanian girls ride to school on bikes provided by One Girl, One Bike, a non-governmental initiative.

All of this is especially true for women and girls in developing countries.  Far more women are the main or sole providers for their families than most people realize.  I think that in the Western world, we think of such domestic arrangements as a result of marriages breaking up or the father disappearing from the scene for other reasons.  Such things happen in other parts of the world, but in rural areas of Africa, Asia and South America, for example, a father might have been killed in a war or some other kind of clash.  As for girls, very often they don't go to school because a family's limited resources are concentrated on the boys--or because it's not safe for girls to walk by themselves, or even in the company of other girls.

Now, of course, bike lanes in Cambodia or Cameroon are not a panacea that will resolve income and gender inequality, any more than such lanes by themselves will make the air of Allahabad, India as clean as that of Halifax, Nova Scotia.  But bike infrastructure, as the UN report points out, can help in narrowing some of the economic as well as environmental and health disparities between rich and poor countries, and rich and poor areas within countries.  

Of course, it might be difficult to convince folks of such things in non-hipsterized Brooklyn or Bronx neighborhoods.  Really, I can't blame them for fearing that, along with tourists on Citibikes and young white people on Linuses, those green lanes will bring in cafes where those interlopers will refuel themselves on $25 slices of avocado toast topped with kimchi and truffle shavings glazed with coriander honey and wash them down with $8 cups of coffee made from beans fertilized by yaks and infused with grass-fed butter and coconut oil.

(About the avocado toast:  I can't say for sure that anyone actually makes the combination I described, but it wouldn't surprise me if somebody does.  On the other hand, the coffee concoction is indeed mixed in more than a few places.  I tried it once.  It tasted like an oil slick from the Gowanus Canal.  Or maybe I just couldn't get past the oleaginous texture.) 

The Sacrilege of Cycling In The Park

Once, I rode through a gate of Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.  I'd visited the necropolis before:  Two of my relatives, as well as some far-more-famous people, are buried there.  Being the naif I was, I figured that if pedestrians and motor vehicles were allowed, so were bikes.

Well, I was a few bicycle lengths into the graveyard when someone on a motor scooter pulled up alongside me.  "No bikes allowed," he bellowed.

"Oh, sorry.  I didn't know..."

"This is sacred ground, you know."

Well, that part I didn't know:  I figured that since Greenwood was non-sectarian, it wasn't "sacred."  Also, since I've slept in graveyards twice in my life and the residents didn't seem to mind, it didn't occur to me that any of Greenwood's denizens would object to my quiet two-wheeled vehicle.

Apparently, that "sacred ground" rationale is used to ban bikes from cemeteries all over the world.  I don't understand how a bicycle is more sacrilegious than, say, a van with "Puppies" and "Free Candy" painted on its side. 

It's also the so-called reasoning behind the Frankfort (KY) city commission's vote to ban bicycles from Leslie Morris Park, the site of the US Civil War site of  Fort Hill .  The Commissioners, with Mayor Bill May casting the deciding vote, cited Fort Hill's status as "hallowed" ground: A local militia deterred an attempted raid by a Confederate cavalry unit in 1864.  Although Kentucky didn't secede from the Union during the Civil War, an attempt was made to set up a Confederate government in Bowling Green.  Had the raid succeeded, Frankfort--which was staunchly pro-Union--could have fallen to the Confederates, and Bowling Green would then have been the capital of the Confederate State of Kentucky.  While such a turn of events might not have tipped the war to the Confederates, it almost certainly would have prolonged the war and delayed a Union victory.

In any event, cyclists had been riding on the rudimentary trails around Fort Hill.  Some of those trails were little more than traces formed by deer that populate the 120-acre park, and most were laced with thorny bushes.  Some cyclists, like Gerry James, enjoyed the challenge they posed.  More important, he says, was the opportunity to ride so close to his downtown home.

What makes the new ban so galling to him and others is that it came in the wake of another plan, recently scuttled, to develop those paths so they could be used by runners and joggers as well as cyclists and others who want to spend some time outdoors.  In fact, an elaborate plan was developed that would have kept those lanes at least 300 feet from any historical, environmental and archaeological sites.  Moreover, its costs were minimal and some of the work would have been done by volunteers, including Scouts who were trying to attain the Eagle rank.

A Civil War commemoration at Leslie Morris Park, site of the Fort Hill monument.  From the Frankfort State Journal.

The project, which had many proponents, was seen as a way to make an historic site accessible to more people and connect it to the downtown area.  It was also viewed as a way to encourage exercise in a state with some of the worst health outcomes (though, interestingly, one of the lowest rates of chlamydia) in the nation.  Business leaders, too, liked it because they believed that it would bring investment to an area that, while economically stronger than the rest of the state, still does not attract or retain young talent.

One reason why the young leave the city and state is because projects like the Fort Hill trails are cancelled, or aren't even conceived in the first place. Of the vote, James--who founded the Explore Kentucky initiative--said, "It makes Frankfort look like an anti-progress city."