When The Lights Went Out

From A Leslie Wong Blog

During my lifetime, all of New York City was plunged into darkness three times.  I was in the Big Apple for two of them, and there was no looting or any other kind of violence. Today, I am going to write about the third.

On this date in 1977, right around sundown, lightning struck a line that relayed electrical power to New York City. At least, that is the official explanation for why, on a sweltering night and day that followed, lights went out, trains stopped and fans and air conditioners didn't work.  As cellphones were all but non-existent and very few people had computers, about the only way to know what had caused the disruption was through battery-operated radios.

The heat is a partial explanation of why so many parts of the city plunged into lawlessness and general chaos for 25 hours in 1977.  Indeed, the blackout of 1965 occurred on a mild, clear Fall night and while the 2003 blackout came on an August night it wasn't, or at didn't seem, as stiflingly hot as that July night in 1977.

But the summer of 1977 was part of a particularly difficult time for the city.  Less than two years earlier, the city came hours away from bankruptcy; on the night of the blackout, many people were still without work or other ways of supporting themselves or their families.  Also, crime was increasing rapidly in the years before the pandemic:  The Son of Sam, who had been terrorizing the area for about a year, seemed emblematic. Some would see the crime rate as a cause of the general sense that nothing--not the schools, not any of the other city services--was working; others would see it as an effect.  Whatever the case, a sense of desperation and anger filled much of the city, especially in its Brown and Black neighborhoods, where much of the violence occurred.

I haven't been able to find any accounts of whether people navigated the streets by bicycle in the absence of street lights.  I can feel pretty confident in saying, however, that bike shops were looted, along with other businesses:  Really, just about anything of value was taken.

(Some have said that the 1977 Blackout spurred the growth of hip-hop, in part because some would-be DJs, ahem, acquired their equipment that night!)

So why wasn't I in New York?  Well, I was with my parents in New Jersey that summer--the last I would spend with them--and baby-sat that night for one of my mother's friends.  We didn't lose our "juice," but I saw accounts of the stores broken into (sometimes by attaching a rope or chain between the store's front gate and a car) and fires set on TV.  At first, I thought it was a trailer for some movie or another:  Science fiction was big that year. (If I recall correctly, Star Wars came out around that time.)  Now, if I had been in New York, would the 1977 Blackout have been as peaceful as the ones in 1965 and 2003? 

Don't Use This Bike Lane!

Lately, I've had to ask neighbors and friends not to wave or call me when I'm riding down the Crescent Street bike lane, which takes me directly to my door.  I've explained that for almost any ride I take--whether it's to run errands on Steinway Street or to Connecticut or Point Lookout--the Crescent Street lane is the most dangerous stretch.  It's less than three meters wide--for bicycles, e-bikes, mini-motorcycles, motorized scooters and pedestrians, sometimes accompanied by their dogs, who wander into it while looking at their phones.  

The thing is, unless I'm crossing Crescent Street from  31st Road, the lane is the only way I can get to my apartment.  There is simply no room between the traffic lane and parked cars on the west side of the street or the parked cars and traffic to the east side, where I live.  Before the lane was constructed, I could maneuver my way through traffic, which can be heavy as the street is one of the main conduits between the RFK/Triborough and 59th Street/Queensborough Bridges. Then again, I am a very experienced cyclist and didn't have to contend with the scooters, e bikes and other motorized forms of transportation.

In addition, and a couple of blocks up from me is Mount Sinai-Queens Hospital and the ambulances and other vehicles that embark and return.  Furthermore, there has been residential construction along Crescent, so trucks are all but continuously pulling in our out of, or parking in, the lane. Oh, and even when there's traffic, some drivers still seem to think Crescent Street is the local version of Daytona or Indy--whether they're young men who just want to drive fast and make noise or commuters or other drivers who want to beat the traffic jams on the 59th Street Bridge or the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

So, I would tell anybody who doesn't need to use the lane--as I do--to stay away.  It was poorly conceived and constructed and, to be fair, when it opened--early in the COVID-19 pandemic--nobody could've anticipated the explosion of e-bikes, scooters and other motorized conveyances.

Mind you, the Crescent Street lane doesn't share some of the defects I've seen in other bike lanes in this city and country.  It is clearly marked and relatively easy to access from the RFK/Triborough Bridge.  The transition from the end of the lane to the 59th Street/Queensborough Bridge, or the local streets around Queensborough Plaza, could be better, but is still better than others I've ridden.

In light of everything I've said, I must say that I can't blame Bike Cleveland for advising local cyclists not to use the new Lorain Avenue bike lane.  According to BC. the lane, near the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, "is short-lived, and quickly  disappears and drops riders into the sharrow (shared)lane that has existed there for years." The bridge BC notes, is "well known as a haven for speeding motorists on the move to make the highway connection at the other end."

I've never been to Cleveland, but that sounds very familiar to me.

Who Benefits From e-Bike Rebates?

 As an undergraduate, I passed an economics course by telling the professor that, if I failed, I would have to re-take the course--and he might have me in the class!

The "threat" worked, sort of.  He told me I could barge in on him or call him whenever he was in his office (We didn't have e-mail in those days!) and he'd help me in whatever way he could.  I wonder whether he genuinely felt pity for me, was swayed by my  promise that if i passed that course and semester (I was also failing another class: Calculus), I would major in "something that didn't require math" or simply didn't want to see me in his class the following semester.

Anyway, I did pass that class--but not Calculus.  I returned to school the following semester--on probation.  But, as I promised, I changed my major--from Biochemistry and Economics (strange combination, I know) to English Literature and History.

I mention all of that so that you can take what I'm about to say with whatever amount of salt suits your taste.  Here goes:  The more expensive an item is, or perceived to be, the less likely they are to spend it on local merchants.

Denver's e-bike rebate program, which has become a model for similar schemes in other cities, seems to offer evidence of what I have just said. 

While more than 30 retailers in the Mile High City are eligible to accept the rebates, Seattle online retailer Rad Power bikes has been, by far, the most popular vendor in the program. That, in spite of the recalls, lawsuits and other safety concerns associated with the company.

To be clear, Rad Power offers e-bikes at lower prices than most brick-and-mortar retailers.  So, the rebats--typically 300 to 500 dollars--cover a larger portion of a bike from Rad Power than from a local shop.

Although I'm not ready to start riding e-bikes, I understand how they benefit some people and are certainly better for urban and global livability than automobiles. On the other hand, if e-bikes are being promoted in the name of "sustainability," I think planners need to think about what they mean by that term.  While e-bikes don't contribute nearly as much to ambient air pollution, we need to consider the costs to the environment of having our purchases delivered on single-trip runs by vehicles that pollute as much as passenger cars or trucks and spend more time idling--not to mention the distances from which e-bikes (and other items) are delivered.