It's Friday! Yay! No Quiz, Only Anger!

I can't help that some people are crazy, but I just wish they'd leave bikes out of it.  It's a machine with two wheels.  It's convenient, it's efficient, and it's relatively harmless.  So why do crazy people constantly have to incorporate it into their delusions?  Why the bike of all things?  Why not blenders, or barbecue grills, or irons?

Take Dorothy Rabinowitz, for example.  At this point I mostly just feel bad for her.  Citi Bike is pretty much polling through the roof, but this poor woman is still milking the bike crazy talk, and she doesn't even realize that the only reason people still pay attention is that they can't believe the stuff that comes out of her mouth:

Not only do I feel bad for her, but I'm legitimately worried about her, because this sounds like the behavior of a depressed person:

It was 1 p.m. on Sunday. The night before, she stayed up late watching The Sopranos, fell asleep at 4:30 a.m., tumbled out of bed at 10:30, made coffee, and played with her Tibetan terrier.

By the way, I've heard lots of slang terms for the vagina, but I've never heard it called a "Tibetan terrier."

Not only is she probably clinically depressed, but she's also deeply lonely--so lonely that she wishes the government would read her emails:

“Snooping into what? Most sane people would say, 'Go ahead, look at my e-mail correspondence, what do I care? As long you stop the bombers in Boston.' I mean, that is the normal, visceral American response.”

Apparently, in Dorothy Rabinowitz's universe, the government stopped the Boston Marathon bombings.

Anyway, I'm sure she's using the situation to her advantage:

She's also out of her fucking tree, and her addled brain is causing her to hallucinate:

“The pods have landed, only they've landed with the racks, and they're coming with allies called bicyclists. The activating force behind all of the fury was the racks, instruments of aesthetic torture.”

It's really awful when you think about it.  The poor woman is losing her mind and all we can do is interview her and laugh.  If only there was someone out there who loved her, like a family member or a close friend or even a friendly dry cleaner, they might keep the press away and get her the help she needs.  As it is, all she has is Simon Doonan:

I wonder if Simon Doonan's garden gnome visits her during those late night "Sopranos" jags and whispers into her ear about how bikes are ruining America before it starts playing with her "Tibetan terrier."

And no sooner do I finish reading that interview than I get an email that says this:

Here's a reasonable bit of opposition to the Citibike program; it might be a little harder to eviscerate than the WSJ's efforts.

And here's the article it links to:

Reasonable?!?  Holy shit!  This Daniel Greenfield guy must have been the biggest schmuck on the kibbutz.  He's like the offspring of Dorothy Rabinowitz and this guy.  Take this for example:

A city with streets full of cars is a working city. A city with streets full of bikes is a leisure city. 

Most of the people you see out there on bikes are riding them to work, dimwit.  And does this guy look like he's recreating?

Dumbass.

Then there's this:

The old loud New York City is being made smooth and quiet. Old noisy bars are making way for fake retro establishments that look like they date back a hundred years ago, but weren't even there last week. Car lanes are giving way to bike lanes. On one side overgrown children gleefully pedal their Citibank bikes, a habit they will abandon when winter sets in. On the other, the grandchildren of factory workers and the children of postal workers, watch them go by.

Clearly this putz moved to New York five years ago.  "Old noisy bars" are not "making way for fake retro establishments."  Rather, "fake retro establishments" are opening in neighborhoods that were previously quiet and residential, and in fact the most of the old quiet New York is being made loud.

By the way, every old-time Brooklynite likes to flaunt their authenticity by talking about how they grew up playing stickball in the street.  Well, you know why kids don't play stickball in the street anymore?  Because if they tried it they'd get run over by an SUV and die.

As for the ridiculous bit about the factory workers, I don't even know what that's supposed to mean, but I suspect he's trying to romanticize the sort of working class people he's never actually met in real life.  Mostly though he's just insulting them, since in his worldview they just stand there on the sidewalk being confused by bicycles.

And this is just fucking stupid:

There are rural parts of the country where walkers are suspect. A man who walks down the street, rather than drives, is suspected of being a bum or a criminal. Solid citizens own cars and drive them to work or to the mall. Indigents walk. The urban centers however are swinging the other way. It's the drivers who are suspect and the bike riders who are the solid citizens of the recyclable state.

So everybody, regardless of whether they're in the country or in the city, should suspect walkers of being bums or criminals.

Got it.

But wait!  It gets dumber!

Bikes, once associated with a wealthy leisure class who had the time to pursue their interest in nature and healthy activities, became universal when nearly every child could have one. Now bikes have been priced up into expensive adult toys. Cities are full of grown men and women who spend fortunes on expensive bikes that they hardly ever use except on the weekends, but hang prominently by their doors so that everyone can see.

Uh-huh.  Also, cars, once associated with a wealthy leisure class, became universal when nearly every schmuck went into debt to own one. Cities are full of grown men and women who spend fortunes on expensive cars that they hardly ever use except on the weekends, and park prominently by the curb so that everyone can see.

Fucktard.

Look, if this guy wants to write fucked up articles about "Jewish matters" and fondle his schmeckle while he waits for the "Moshiach" that's fine with me.  Just leave the bikes out of it.  That's a subject for sane people to discuss.

Oh, also, the NYPD appears to be redoubling its efforts to harass cyclists out of existence, for I recently received an email from a reader who got thrown in jail for riding on the sidewalk.  Here are the highlights:

Since my husband Lin and I came home from the hospital with our twin boys, Otis and Max, I've tried to sneak out for 20 minutes daily for a bike ride in Prospect Park to get a little exercise and clear my sleep-deprived head. It's been easy to do, especially with Lin's parents visiting. 

The Prospect Park traffic circle is pretty much a clusterfuck, and evidently the reader did what many people do, which is roll on the sidewalk for a bit in order to get to the park loop.  Unfortunately, he also did something I did a zillion times when I lived near Prospect Park, which was duck in for a few laps without carrying ID.

Obviously you're not supposed to ride on the sidewalk, and while sometimes there's a good excuse, other times I think if you get ticketed for it then tough shit, them's the breaks.  This, however, is ridiculous:

Without delay, she told me to put my hands behind my back and *handcuffed* me - not the plastic, protest-y kind of handcuffs, but big metal numbers. And then she put me in the car. (Thankfully a local business owner, alarmed at what he'd seen, offered to store my bike until my return, saving me an extra hassle.) While the one who cuffed me was outside on the phone, undoubtedly deciding whether to screw with me or not, I mentioned to the partner that I had two newborns and home and maybe they could verify my identity through the computer, as was readily possible. 

No, instead they threw him in jail.

Yeah, so I don't know, I think we're probably fucked.  You know who's kicking ass in the mayoral polls?  This guy:

(He must have bought that helment for $3 at a Park Slope stoop sale.)

I've never seen a non-roadie look so unhappy on a bike.  He looks like Simon Doonan being forced to have sex with Dorothy Rabinowitz.  Clearly though, he has to pretend to like bikes until he actually gets into office, at which point he can finally "have a bunch of ribbon-cuttings tearing out your fucking bike lanes," as he once put it.

We are so screwed.