To paraphrase a popular song from 1990, "Today is hump day, pronounced with a ump day."

Morning!

That's not a greeting, that's merely an observation.

Let's begin.

First off, I may have written about Citi Bike in no less a periodical than The New York Times, but I save my real insights for Bicycling, who recently published what will surely go down in history as the definitive piece on bike share in New York City:

I totally forgot I wrote this until it popped up on their Twitter, and then I clicked on it and read it again and high-fived myself the whole time because it's just that good.

In other cultural news, I recently received an email from a musician who performs under the name "AK," and she wanted me to know about her new video which she shot in Brooklyn:

The video is about a summer I spent with my girlfriends in Massachusetts, smoking J's and riding to lakes all over the place every afternoon. Now I live in NY and biking here is both terrifying and thrilling and it's one of the best parts of living in this crazy place.

Here is that video:


"Circles" by AK from alexandra kalinowski on Vimeo.

Okay, I'll now give you a few moments to get the obvious comments out of your system:

By which I mean, of course, the comments about how her crank is on backwards:

Anyway, so there she is riding through the part of Brooklyn that looks most like Portland, when all of a sudden an army of gentrifiers emerges like something out of Spike Lee's worst fever dreams:

And here's the view from some asshole's Altima as he lays on the horn and screams, "Get da fuck outta da street!"

Meanwhile, our heroine weaves along because she's intoxicated with delight--or possibly because her, uh, flowers are throwing her off balance:

Then they all head into Prospect Park:

Where they go whatever the blissed-out millennial equivalent of "ballistic" is:

After which they make like they're going to go swim in the lake:

Which we know they didn't do based simply on the fact that they're still alive afterwards.

Seriously, that water's fucking disgusting.

Then they go back to Ditmas Park:

Which is why you can't afford to live there anymore.

In any case, a great big Mazel Tov to AK, and when the Grammys start rolling in I expect to be thanked first.

By the way, did somebody say "Taco Bike?"



I think that they did:

Between the AK video and this I'm beginning to detect a theme (or more accurately a pair of themes) emerging in today's blog posting, though I can't quite put my finger on what it is, so instead here's a close-up of a taco:

Delicious.

Speaking of Portland (which I was awhile back, or at least I mentioned it), obviously they're changing the world by riding bikes, so they're now wondering what would happen if they all drove cars instead:

As it happens, the answer is "Not much:"

Even in Portland, a “day without the bicycle” would have very little effect on congestion.

Even in the bikingest part of the bikingest major city in North America, getting every single bike commuter with a car to drive to work for one day would barely increase auto traffic more than the normal day-to-day fluctuation on any given street. Overall, the impact would be 10 percent in the central business district, 11 percent in the Pearl, 9 percent in Old Town and 11 percent in the PSU area.

Though it would make Zoobomb a lot more interesting:

I suspect a small handful of Portlanders are secretly relieved that they can go ahead and drive their Subarus more often because it really doesn't matter, though I also suspect most of them are shocked to learn that the fate of humanity doesn't hinge on how they get to work in the morning.

And finally, remember Laura Weintraub?  Well, unsurprisingly, she's now crafted a highly contrived redemption narrative for herself in a desperate attempt to prolong her rapidly fading Internet fame and/or re-ingratiate herself with the Santa Paula police:

 

"I had my wake-up call.  And perhaps my mistake can help to bridge the gap and bring greater awareness to both motorists and cyclists alike."

"I, I, I, me, me, me..."  See that?  Everything's going to be okay now that the great Laura Weintraub has come around.  Clearly she's the savior we've been waiting for.

At this point I'm not sure whether she's a sociopath or a megalomaniac, though I suspect it's a little bit of both.